Alexa, Turn Up My Kenmore AC: Sears Makes Deal with Amazon
Sears will begin selling its appliances on Amazon.com, including smart appliances that can be synced with Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa. The announcement Thursday sent shares of Sears soaring more than 13 percent in midday trading, after jumping 18 percent at the opening bell. The tie-up with the internet behemoth could give shares of the storied […]
Court: IBM Owes Indiana $78M for Welfare Automation Failure
IBM owes Indiana $78 million in damages stemming from the company’s failed effort to automate much of the state’s welfare services, a judge has ruled in a long-running dispute. Marion Superior Court Judge Heather Welch issued the ruling dated Friday, nearly six months after she heard arguments from attorneys for the state and IBM Corp. […]
Microsoft Dynamics Partner Roundup: NAV go-live in IT support; Partner wins in citrus, bakery equipment; Enterprise VAR enters SMB
By: Linda Rosencrance Europlus Direct Optimizes Efficiency and Improves Customer Responsiveness with Microsoft Dynamics NAV IT support provider Europlus Direct has chosen Microsoft Dynamics NAV from The NAV People to optimize efficiency, improve workflows through the automation of manual processes and provide a scalable platform as the company expands internationally. Deploying Dynamics NAV has enabled […]
ISV Development Centers: Microsoft’s new approach to accelerating channel R&D
By: Dann Anthony Maurno Microsoft has new a way to push cloud-first R&D into the channel. The Microsoft ISV Development Center program, announced at Inspire 2017, opens a conduit between Microsoft development teams and channel partners, with seven ISV Development Centers in between. The ISV Development Center program emerged, in a way, from the Global […]
Enterprise software fuels IT spending as CIOs become builders again
By: Marc Ferranti Companies are refreshing enterprise software platforms for the cloud era and stitching together new systems to support digital business projects, triggering an uptick in IT spending worldwide. Gartner is forecasting a 2.4 percent increase in global IT spending this year, amounting to $3.5 trillion, up from an anemic 0.3 percent growth last […]
Oracle refreshes entire SaaS line, aiming to fuel cloud momentum
By: Marc Ferranti As the migration of enterprises to the cloud picks up steam, Oracle is intent on keeping up. It has taken to refreshing its SaaS applications twice a year, bringing them up to feature parity with its on-premises software and adding brand-new features for e-commerce and internet-centric supply chain management. Oracle Cloud Applications […]
Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Talent reaches General Availability
By: Linda Rosencrance Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Talent is now generally available to help organizations worldwide to, in the company’s words, “strategically attract, retain and optimize their talent so they thrive and achieve high-impact, sustainable results.” Microsoft announced the technical preview version of the product at the beginning of June. At that time, Microsoft stated […]
Partner-to-Partner (P2P) success, Part 2: The York Group on revenue objectives, identifying Dynamics partners and selection criteria
By: Dann Anthony Maurno In Part 1 of this series, The York Group President Harald Horgen described the risks of ISV-channel partner relationships, on both sides. The rewards are there for strategic partners – but, they must do the math. Horgen suggests that the technology-oriented ISVs must put themselves in the partner’s place and ask, […]
Deployment methodologies, Part 4: Why Microsoft Dynamics partners go vertical
By: Alan Earls Following is the conclusion of a four-part exploration of deployment methodologies used by Microsoft Dynamics partners. Part 1 explores the promise of proprietary methodologies, Part 2 classic and modern project management, and Part 3, signs of project success. Not every VAR or reseller offers a methodology purposed for a specific vertical, but there’s broad agreement […]
6 traits of highly effective project managers
By: Moira Alexander Every project manager knows to execute projects on time and on budget. And good project managers also take pains to consistently meet project requirements. But truly great project leaders go above and beyond. Not only do they execute projects within scope, they are accountable, strategic business partners fully vested in organizational success. […]