New Product Addresses The Social, Mobile, Cloud, and Big Data World

The convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data (analytics), and video/unified comms changes the playing field from transactional applications to engagement applications.  The result – a sea change of new data types from structured and unstructured sources.  With greater volumes of data, demand for information shifts from real time to right time inside and outside the enterprise.  Context by process, by roles, by location, and by any other segmentation requires a robust MDM solution to improve the return on #bigdata.  Unfortunately, many master data management solutions have not been designed to handle this new world of business led requirements.

Samsung recently launched its Galaxy SIII smartphone, the latest update of its hyperbolically successful Galaxy Series. In the Fall of 2011 Apple did the same with its iPhone 4S, displacing the equally successful iPhone 4.  But step back: what changed? Not a lot.  This suggests that the pinnacle of smartphone function/relevance/capability matrix may now have passed and that the perhaps inevitable wars to differentiate through function variety (rather than customer needs) has begun, with practical utility suffering as ever more barely necessary features are added in order to try to sustain differentiation.

SAP’s In The Midst Of Massive Transformation

The arrival of PCs seemed to sound the death knell of hand-writing. To most, the arrival of smartphones, tablets and other devices was more like adding nails to an already well-prepared coffin.  But this might not be so if Israeli company N-trig (www.n-trig.com) has its way.

Most content creation today uses keyboards, mice and occasionally some form of purpose-specific pointing device (like Apple's Magic Trackpad or the Wacom family of digitizers). When the typewriter superseded pen and paper and then the keyboard superseded the typewriter it seemed that hand writing skills were doomed (if not unnecessary), unless exploited for specialty purposes (which still includes signing documents).  Yes, a few stylus smart devices appeared (remember HTC's XDAs) but these were, broadly, few and far between -- and none really achieved deep commercial penetration or acceptance.

Many enterprises are at cross-roads in creating their unified communications (UC) strategy. Assuming that the business drivers have been identified for unifying their communications capabilities, enterprises must decide among three competing deployment options for their UC solutions. These are: