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.”

Aberdeen Research are one of the research firms that have been following the SaaS Business Intelligence trend for a while now. They recently published a paper called “SaaS Business Intelligence: Driving Agility through Self-Service“. The paper ultimately recognizes the fact that the increased adoption of SaaS in the business intelligence field validates that it is increasingly becoming a viable option for BI deployment in all types of organizations.

Instead of giving you a long-winded written summary of the report, we’ve decided to pick out some of the more interesting numbers!

While I was writing this post, I had the B52s (screaming) in the background. The DJ was playing one of their songs, they weren’t actually here in real life… although this wouldn’t have been unrealistic, seeing as during the opening Keynote of M.Benioff there were, amongst others, Neil Young and MC Hammer, who actually testified as being Salesforce users (Salesforce helped them during their tours, for example).

When Prince uses Bime to analyze the opportunity cost in banning the publishing of videos on Youtube… that will be the day 

2 days ago I stumbled across a great article by Derek Singletonat syscon.com.

The article, entitled “Cloud Computing: It’s Not About the Web Browser“, discusses the new class of SaaS
(or cloud) application vendors and why they are racing ahead at great speed while the rest of the enterprise apps market ambles along with limited growth.

The author covers many of the common benefits of a SaaS solution, including multi-tenant architecture and the ability to be able to scale easily, the positive changes in which software is now evaluated and purchased (e.g. transparent pricing, free trials, flexible licensing etc.) and better UIs and UXs (user interfaces and user experiences).

Business Intelligence (BI) is one of the most rapidly evolving and changing industries. Here at Bime HQ we are observing a paradigm shift as users discard more traditional forms of BI for new players, more agile and more cost effective solutions such as Bime. We are seeing changing user habits whereby many users are turning to SaaS solutions for the lightweight infrastructure, flexibility and scalability. More generally, BI has now become a viable economic option for many more SMBs where it may not have been before, allowing small companies to unlock their large amounts of data!

Forrester Research are some of the best in the business for keeping check of this rapidly changing industry and providing market leading BI analysis and insight. They recently conducted a survey of BI vendors (in which we participated) and now they conducting asurvey of BI users in which you can express your expectations and your plans for implementing BI.

Forrester state the objective of the survey is “to help our clients understand business intelligence software vendor pricing and licensing differences, as well as attempt to see if there are some clear patterns in the total cost of ownership between different vendor products.”

A new network design that avoids the need to convert optical signals into electrical ones could boost capacity while reducing power consumption.

The heart of the Internet is a network of high-capacity optical fibers that spans continents. But while optical signals transmit information much more efficiently than electrical signals, they’re harder to control. The routers that direct traffic on the Internet typically convert optical signals to electrical ones for processing, then convert them back for transmission, a process that consumes time and energy. 

But Chan points to the explosion of the popularity of both Internet video and high-definition television in recent years. If those two trends converge — if people begin hungering for high-definition video feeds directly to their computers — flow switching may make financial sense. Chan points at the 30-inch computer monitor atop his desk in MIT’s Research Lab of Electronics. “High resolution at 120 frames per second,” he says: “That’s a lot of data.”

Los Angeles, CA, May 20, 2010 --(PR.com)-- The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Selects Supply Chain Management On–Demand from Less Software as Best Supply Chain Solution

Less Software’s On-Demand, Software as a Service application helps customers Acquire, Manage, and Sell their products more efficiently.

Less Software Inc. (www.lesssoftware.com) today announced that their Supply Chain On-Demand Application was selected by the SIIA as best Supply Chain Solution for 2010.

"The CODiE Awards represent excellence in the software and digital information industries. By providing recognition of the best new technology products and services, SIIA proudly advances the important role participating companies play in the digital economy," noted SIIA President Ken Wasch. "CODiE Award winners are a testament to the power of technology to deliver innovative solutions to businesses and consumers. SIIA warmly congratulates all of the winners and nominees of the CODiE Awards, whose innovation is essential for continuing America's leadership in the global knowledge economy," Wasch continued.

For more information about the CODiE Awards, visit www.siia.net/codies.
“Less Software is very proud to be part of the best of the best that represents the achievement of a CODiE award for our products” said Mike Flanagan, CEO of Less Software, adding, “this is a fabulous validation of our innovative approach for building easy to use but yet sophisticated enterprise applications.”

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to 500 leading software and information companies. For more information, visit www.siia.net
Less Software provides sophisticated supply chain management solutions for businesses delivered in the Software as a Service subscription model, and can be accessed from anywhere via a browser and Internet connection. From supplier management to inventory management to order fulfillment, Less Software’s supply chain management applications save customers time and money while delivering a completely streamlined end-to-end solution.

For more information about Less Software’s supply chain management applications, please contact Mike Flanagan at 866.603.1454 or via email at mike.flanagan@lesssoftware.com. Visit Less Software online at www.lesssoftware.com.

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For as long as I can remember, there has been this long standing debate inside the content delivery industry regarding which network architecture is better, one that is distributed or non-distributed. While many have opinions on the subject, to me, it's the content owner that decides which is best and not the vendor. Over the years I've spoken to hundreds of customers about the topic and frankly, I think it's time for the industry to redefine what it means to have a "distributed" network and the real metrics should be used when comparing one network to another.

Fifteen years after some of the first CDNs started delivering video, many of the CDNs still want to use their network architecture as a key selling point. While that's natural of any CDN to do, the problem is the way some go about doing it. Today, customers don't ask how many servers a content delivery network has and I can't remember the last time any content owner asked me how many servers any CDN has. While Akamai (AKAM) has spent the last ten years trying to convince everyone that a distributed network is the only way to properly deliver content, the market has shown us that there are now many different ways to deliver video with the a very good level of QoS.

In prior year's, Akamai's distributed network mantra was accurate. When CDNs first started to crop up in the market, they would start off with a few POPs and call themselves a CDN, even though they had very little coverage or capacity. But today, times have changed. The real questions customers ask are about capacity, coverage locations, quality of service and peering, not the number of servers. Those are the details content owners want to know and, as long as a CDN can deliver a good user experience, it doesn't matter to the customer if the network is distributed or non-distributed. How a CDN sets up their network is up to the CDN and most content owners don't care how they do it, only that the service they buy works with their expected level of quality.