BigMachines, Inc., the leader in sales configurator, pricing and quoting, proposal generator and B2B ecommerce software-as-a-service (SaaS), today announced the selection of featured speakers for its BigIdeas Chicago 2010 conference. BigIdeas Chicago is BigMachines’ annual customer and industry forum to be held October 24-26, 2010 at the Swissôtel Chicago. BigIdeas has become one of the largest SaaS innovation conferences where attendees discover best practices for deploying SaaS solutions to streamline their sales processes and enable B2B eCommerce.

“BigMachines will launch a new era in B2B multi-channel sales at BigIdeas Chicago”

We attended Gartner's recent webinar entitled "Emerging Technology Hype Cycle 2010: What's Hot and What's Not", presented by Jackie Fenn. Gartner's Hype Cycles are considered to be some of the most respected forms of research in the field of technology. Here's a quick overview of some of the points covered during the webinar.

The webinar started off with a quick description of how what a Hype Cycle is all about. To remind you, Hype Cycles are management models that help organizations understand the landscape of technology maturity and markets, and to decide which technology innovations to adopt, postpone or ignore, and when is an appropriate time to adopt. The Gartner Hype Cycle model was first published 15 years ago, and has grown to an annual release of between 70 and 80 Hype Cycles per year.

See the Hype Cycle explained below.

Today's cloud computing environment is relatively complex - so complex in fact, that it has motivated Gartner’s Global IT Council for Cloud Services to identify the six key rights (and one responsibility) to serve as a best-practices guideline for enterprises looking to deploy cloud-based solutions. The ultimate goal: to help cloud providers and their customers establish successful business relationships.

The recent report released by Gartner says all cloud services customers should have some basic rights to protect their interests. We’ll briefly outline their ideas :

The Council Defines Six Rights and One Responsibility of Service Consumers That Will Help Providers and Consumers Establish and Maintain Successful Business Relationships

STAMFORD, Conn., July 12, 2010 — All cloud services customers should have some basic rights to protect their interests, and Gartner, Inc.'s Global IT Council for Cloud Services has defined six rights and one responsibility of service customers that will help providers and consumers establish and maintain successful business relationships.

Gartner has established the Global IT Council for Cloud Services to facilitate successful business relationships between cloud service providers and consumers. The Council, which consists of CIOs of large enterprises that consume cloud services and Gartner analysts, has made identifying key rights of service consumers and how they might be upheld, a key priority.

Great article from CIO.com posted today on SFGate.com:

Recently I was in London, speaking at the Cloud Computing World Forum. From my perspective, it was an ideal event: large enough to have a critical mass of interesting vendors and attendees, and small enough to support quality conversation. If you've been to any of the large U.S. cloud shows, you'll know how hard it is to accomplish the latter quality at them - they're packed and conversations are reduced to sound bites. Of course, the conference being located in Britain, there was less tolerance for over-the-top claims and marketing hype, which was also a refreshing relief.

I participated on a panel chaired by Mike Spink of Gartner; the topic was switching cloud suppliers. Pretty much the conclusion of the panel is that cloud computing migrates the lock-in point, but lock-in is pretty much a fact of life in IT. My own contribution was to offer the recommendation (certainly not a unique insight and not one generated by HyperStratus) that lock-in can be reduced by good software engineering practices that partition apps and encapsulate interfaces.

"Proofpoint is off to an extremely strong start in 2010," said Gary Steele, CEO of Proofpoint. "Large enterprises and government organizations worldwide continue to look for ways to improve email security while reducing costs. At the same time, the global trend toward stricter, more complex data privacy regulations are driving interest in our data loss prevention, email encryption, compliance and eDiscovery solutions. As a result, we're seeing accelerated growth in our email archiving business and increased uptake of our DLP and email encryption solutions with both new and existing customers."

Year-on-year, business from Proofpoint's DLP and encryption solutions grew by more than 150%. Performance in highly regulated industries including financial services, healthcare and the government sector was particularly strong during the quarter. Notable trends from Q1 2010 included:

• Accelerating growth in SaaS email archiving: An increasing number of large global organizations adopted Proofpoint ARCHIVE to solve email storage management, legal discovery and regulatory compliance challenges. New customers included one of the world's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers (5000 mailboxes), a global energy services provider (29,000 mailboxes) and an international provider of postal and logistics services (30,000 mailboxes).

Global research firm Gartner recently reported that 95 percent of companies that currently use SaaS applications plan to continue or expand their use in 2010. The companies cite the widespread cost effectiveness of SaaS as well as the constantly improving capability offered by vendors that specialize in cloud computing.
Fifty-three percent of companies that plan to increase their use will do so slightly, while 19 percent plan to make significant increases to their cloud computing utilization. Companies that are only beginning their move into the cloud do not need to rush as providers frequently offer packages that allow customers to slowly transition into the cloud.
"SaaS applications clearly are no longer seen as a new deployment model by our survey base, with almost half of those surveyed affirming use of SaaS applications in their business for more than three years" said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. Perhaps the most important software type expanding in the cloud is security software. iSheriff recently announced the release of its newest email and disk security platforms designed to work together in bolstering cloud security.

For original article click here

Dubbed GoToManage, the new service lets Citrix Online tap into the growing demand for software-as-a-service (Saas)-based IT management, a market Forrester Research predicts will reach $4 billion in 2013. Citrix Online is positioning the latest addition to its online services portfolio as an affordable alternative to premise-based software.

According to IDC, Citrix Online was the remote support market leader in 2008 with a 34.7 percent global share via its GoToAssist services. IDC also pegs Citrix Online as the third largest SaaS vendor in the world based on 2007 revenue, but Citrix Online needed Paglo-like log analysis technology in order to offer its customers the next puzzle piece in its full SaaS picture.

Paglo has made a name for itself providing SaaS-based IT search and management services. In short, Paglo helps companies harness and analyze the information explosion coming from all their computer, server, network and log data. Paglo helps companies improve operating efficiencies, gain a clearer understanding of true IT costs and meet compliance requirements.