CIO Insight recently published a slideshow about application adoption trends over the next year. According to a recent survey from SnapLogic, of which over 110 CIOs and other top execs took part, CIOs and other senior tech executives continue to pursue BI, analytics, productivity/collaboration, financial, sales and social media tools, as they strive to integrate IT with their organization’s strategic objectives.

This is yet further proof that the BI/analytics space is hot right now, and more and more companies are realizing that business performance can be largely improved by leveraging these tools.

“BI, for certain, remains hot. But so are other apps, such as those that are Saas/cloud-driven.”

Dell has just announced it has agreed to acquire Software-as-a-Service integration company Boomi. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and, as usual, the purchase is subject to customary closing conditions. Dell did not say when it expects to complete the purchase of the startup.

Dell chairman and CEO Michael Dell had yesterday teased the press about an impending acquisition in the cloud computing space (see Reuters).

The comment, made at an event in Hong-Kong, sparked a guessing game among tech reporters, but it turns out Dell is picking up a rather small company – Boomi has raised only $4 million in venture capital according to CrunchBase. Nevertheless, it’s a startup that does offer a compelling SaaS platform for many a company.

A Salesforce.com executive has stated that cloud computing users are expecting more and more from the applications they employ.

Parker Harris, executive vice president of Salesforce.com, said that one decade ago, the goal was to come up with business services that had the same simple level of usability as Amazon, reports PC Mag.

He said expectations have shifted over the course of time, with users wanting features such as connections to other services and social media functions as part of their cloud computing offering.

There is also often a requirement from clients to have the technology linked up to mobile devices, it was suggested.

Earlier this month, new Salesforce.com application Chatter was examined by Adam Honig on the CRM Insights website.

He stated that document and data changes can be easily tracked on the service, allowing users to keep on top of business opportunities, contact detail changes or account alterations, reported MarketingProfs.

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Good follow-up to a recent blog post on The Daily Telegraphs move into the Cloud

The Daily Telegraph appears to have its head in the clouds, though this is not meant in any way to be a criticism.

Indeed, in cyber circles, it is regarded as a major plus that the paper has embraced, to use the jargon, "a cloud adoption strategy".

In recent years, software-as-a-service (SaaS) has emerged as a viable application delivery method, and most enterprises are now including some SaaS software in their portfolios. SaaS saves IT infrastructure and maintenance costs, not to mention the hassle of initial deployment, integration and customization common with licensed software.

However, SaaS brings with it a unique set of challenges for those responsible for security. The most important shift is looking at your software vendor not as a product company, but rather as a service provider. Sound vendor management practices dictate that any third-party software is at least as secure as in-house packages. This guide will help you compare your organization’s risk management and compliance priorities to the SaaS provider’s security policies and procedures.

When you convert to SaaS, your data will be transported across the Internet to the SaaS vendor site. If their application is not secure, your critical business information will potentially be exposed to anyone who can take advantage of such a vulnerability.

The distributed, open-source SaaS model will expand the range of available software

Right now if you think about the way software-as-a-service is delivered, Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Google are the most commonly cited examples. All these companies deliver their software using what is known as the multi-tenant model. Just as multi-tenant software knocked on-premise vendors for a loop, new distributed, open-source models for delivery of SaaS software will have a powerful impact.

The implications for vendors will vary by the nature of their applications, but for businesses, the result will be an increased array of choices delivered with the benefits of SaaS. This week we look at how the arrival of distributed, open-source SaaS is likely to play out.

The leading SaaS companies started about 10 years ago. They saw how the Internet could change how business applications are created and delivered, lifting much of the annoying details of running a data center from the customer's shoulders. They built their applications to run on a remote data center and be delivered through a browser. Both the multitenant and the distributed open-source models deliver this same SaaS experience using different architectures.

 Options include public clouds and external private clouds. Here's how to choose wisely.

One of the biggest decisions IT managers have to make is how and where to run data center applications. Fortunately, there are multiple choices that lower costs and increase business agility, including server virtualization, internal clouds, public clouds and external private clouds.

Many IT organizations are taking advantage of these options. Server virtualization is currently being used by more than 70% of enterprises to reduce costs, and cloud computing is being used or planned for use by more than 10% of corporations, according to Antonio Piraino, research director at Tier1 Research.