A Software Insider's Point of View

In the past 2 weeks, emails from 31 software insider readers highlight a growing and concerning trend with support and maintenance contracts.  Vendors concerns about support and maintenance contract retentions has led to new initiatives to consolidate contracts.  At first glance, this may appear to be proactive and beneficial to customers.  In fact, common rationale [...]

Blogging Platforms Provide A Good Showcase For The Power And Benefits Of Open Source
Over the past 3 years, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of experimenting with a variety of blogging platforms.  For my day job, I use TypePad and at night I build this blog with WordPress.  (Prior to that, I used Blogger.)  Without [...]

(Photo: Main show floor for Dreamforce 2008 at Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA. Copyright © 2008 R Wang. All rights reserved.)
Over 9,000 attendees made it to the annual San Francisco pilgrimage to hear the high priest of SaaS kickoff the event.  This year’s theme focused on the future of Cloud Computing, a focus on [...]

I’ve been meeting a number of VC firms this past month to see if anything new had emerged in terms of enterprise software and tech service provider trends. Standard topics ranged from Web 2.0, future of SaaS, would Larry continue to be the exit strategy, and whether or not IBM would publicly come out [...]