Salesforce.com Announces
Outlook Email Integration
San Francisco
- March 27, 2003 - Salesforce.com today announced the availability of
its Outlook integration solution. Featuring bi-directional integration
between salesforce.com's CRM service and Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook
application, the solution provides the flexibility to communicate with customers
using either application without concern that vital information will be trapped
in desktop silos.
Unlike other email integration options on the
market, salesforce.com's solution builds on its on-demand platform to tightly
couple Outlook with its CRM service, without Exchange server integration.
Instead, the solution leverages real-time data lookups via salesforce.com's XML
API to deliver immediate benefit without hassle or additional cost. Sales and
customer service personnel can easily send and receive email messages through
Outlook and log relevant messages in salesforce.com through familiar Outlook
controls to ensure a complete 360-degree customer view.
A recent Gartner survey found that 42 percent of all enterprise CRM
software licenses purchased are never deployed (Gartner Group, March 2003). In
contrast, salesforce.com's utility model delivers robust CRM technology on a
pay-as-you-go basis for immediate success. Salesforce.com currently has over
6,000 customers and 80,000 users in 110 countries, making it the world's most
successful application utility.
...Salesforce.com |
|
Manning Selvage & Lee
Releases Results of Bay Area Media Reputation Analysis
SAN
FRANCISCO, CA and DETROIT, MI - March 24, 2003 - Despite a two-year meltdown in
the tech industry, technology companies in the Bay Area boast the strongest
corporate reputations, according to a study released today by Manning
Selvage & Lee (MS&L) that analyzed media coverage of several of the
area's largest companies.
The study, conducted by Hass MS&L's (the agency's Michigan
operations) MediaQuotient division, found the 10 companies with the most
positive corporate reputations are: HP, Intel, Sun, Apple, Palm Inc., Oracle,
Gap, Wells Fargo, Levi Strauss and E*Trade.
Companies that found
themselves at the bottom of the list include: Providian Financial, Charles
Schwab, 3Com Corp., Nvidia, JDS Uniphase, Advanced Micro Devices, Siebel
Systems, ChevronTexaco and Pacific Gas & Electric. The 50 companies
included in the study were chosen from lists previously published by San
Francisco and East Bay Business Times and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business
Journal. A cross-section of organizations was chosen from those lists in order
to have a wide-variety of businesses in the area represented.
"The results of this study strongly indicate that technology
companies still command a good deal of media attention," said Mark Hass,
chief executive officer of Hass MS&L. "It is vital for these
organizations to understand both the nature and the scope of the coverage so
that they can maximize their current reputation or take steps to counter a
negative media environment."
...MS&L |
|
Top Traditional Advertisers
Increase Share of Online Ads to More Than 30% According to Nielsen//Netratings
NEW
YORK - March 20, 2003 - Nielsen//NetRatings reports that the top 100
traditional advertisers increased their share of online advertising and are
leading the way for bolstering the online medium. The top traditional
advertisers comprised more than 30% of the online advertising market by the end
of 2002, as measured by ad impressions, climbing upwards since January 2000 when
the group's market share made up just 15%. Integrating online advertising in
their overall campaigns, top traditional advertisers are embracing the Web as an
important channel to get their message across.
Among the top traditional advertisers, AOL Time Warner boosted their
online advertising presence by employing 28% more unique ads since 2001, with
the launch of AOL 8.0. Microsoft increased their use of online advertising by
9% with their push of rival product MSN 8. Promoting brands including Volvo,
Hertz and Mazda, Ford Motor Company's online ads jumped by 34%, primarily in Q4.
Disney's promotion of ESPN The Magazine, ABC's Alias and Disney Cruise lines
increased their online presence by 28%. Other big growth rates came from
DaimlerChrysler whose online presence skyrocketed by an astonishing 407% over
2001.
"No longer dominated by the smaller dot-com companies,
traditional business-model advertisers are staking their claim," said
Charles Buchwalter, vice president of client analytics, Nielsen//NetRatings. "This
increased usage by the heavy hitters of advertising clearly signals their
recognition of the validity of the Internet as an effective ad medium."
...Nielsen//NetRatings
Editor's
comments:- there's no point advertising in a medium unless it's used by your
target customers. One of the reasons that consumer web advertising failed in the
1990s was that most consumers weren't online. Now that they are it means that
consumer marketers can learn lessons from IT B2B marketers who have been using
this medium successfully since 1995. |
|
Gartner Says Half of
Business Intelligence Projects Will Not Reach Their Full Potential in 2003
SAN
JOSE, Calif.- March 19, 2003 - During 2003, at least 50% of business
intelligence (BI) projects will not reach their full potential or will be
hopeless failures, according to Gartner, Inc. Through 2004, more
than 50% of Global 2000 enterprises will fail to use BI properly, losing market
share to those that implement and leverage BI correctly. However, Gartner
analysts say that with the right approaches, best practice examples, and the
right methodologies, architectures and technologies, enterprises can win big
with BI.
"Success in BI can be defined as the ability to add real insight
to the business and enhance the decision making process," said Howard
Dresner, vice president and research director for Gartner. "The best
outcome becomes more probable when the IS organization and end users have an
equal amount of ambition in their desire to promote BI, and they work together
to deliver valuable and sustainable BI solutions to the enterprise."
Gartner analysts, joined by select client organizations, will identify
how to succeed with BI at Gartner's Business Intelligence 2003 conference, which
will be held May 15-16, at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, in Chicago.
...GartnerGroup profile |
|
STORAGEsearch.com Reveals Most Popular Product Categories
March 19, 2003 - ACSL reports
that readership and pageviews of STORAGEsearch.com continue to grow
year on year.
February 2003 pageviews were 20.5% higher than in
February 2002, which in turn was 96.4% higher than 2001. February 2003
readership is 9% higher than February 2002, indicating that stickiness has also
improved.
The top 5 product segments viewed by readers in February 2003 are
listed below.
- Serial
ATA (14)
- Solid
state disks (3)
- Backup
software (1)
- NAS
(2)
- iSCSI
(4)
(Numbers shown in brackets) = the rank
in Feb 2002.
The movements indicate that many readers rate
either the lowest cost (Serial ATA) or the highest performance (SSDs), as
subjects which merit most attention. It would appear that the middle ground,
where products are not clearly differentiated as being either the lowest cost or
the best performance will be a difficult area for vendors this year, as so many
competing technologies now overlap to provide broadly the same functionality.
...ACSL profile |
|
Web Services Development
Market will Shrink in 2003, Says Aberdeen Group
BOSTON, MA
- March 17, 2003 - Over-hyped technologies that have failed to deliver on
promises and an inability to use development tools to overcome Web services
development challenges will result in a flat to shrinking development tool
market of $5 billion in 2003 - compared with total IT spending on development of
$750 billion, according to a recent report by Aberdeen Group. The
report, Web Services Development Solution Buying Guide (Fourth Edition),
examines the state of the market for development tools in general and tools
focused on creating Web service applications in particular.
"Over-focus on 3GLs, standards, reusability, formalism, and
quick-and-dirty implementations of e-Business functionality have led to
decreased programmer productivity, spaghetti architectures, and buggy and
hard-to-upgrade code in many cases," says Wayne T. Kernochan, managing vice
president at Aberdeen Group and author of the report. "The IT buyer who
looks at supplier hype with a contrarian eye, considers new technologies such as
agile programming and refactoring, assembles a "best-of-breed" toolset
from multiple suppliers where appropriate rather than reflexively creating a
one-size-fits-all tool, and outsources effectively after fully understanding
offshore programming's limitations, will achieve much greater rewards in
scalability, application flexibility, programmer productivity, and application
quality."
The report notes that the advent of new development solution
technology and the importance of development to Web services strategies will
force major suppliers to upgrade their development offerings. As a result, IT
buyers should begin to see greater clarity in their choices, as Web services
development platforms coalesce around suppliers such as IBM, Microsoft, and Sun.
These suppliers, in turn, will add functionality to their development solutions,
making IBM's acquisition of Rational a key indicator of a wave of development
tool acquisitions.
...Aberdeen Group
profile |
|
When Your Company Ad is a
Blank Screen - Maybe your Accounts Department Hasn't Paid the Invoice
Editor:-
March 17, 2003 - as a web publisher we've been very lucky with our customers,
because they rarely go bust. But sometimes they can be slow to pay. This can
cause problems for the marketers who placed the ads. We have a simple sanction
which we exercise in the couple of cases each year that payment reminders go
ignored for an unreasonable time.
- for banner ads - it's very simple. We stop running the banner. This
only takes about 30 seconds to arrange. But this can cause long term problems
for the advertiser, even if the invoice is eventually paid. Yes, we will run the
full amount of impressions ordered, but if the ad was in an exclusive targeted
section, and the advertiser has been dysfunctional in their payment, they may
lose the right to continue advertising in that slot when their ad has ended.
Instead we'll sell that slot to another advertiser with a better payment record,
or to a new advertiser on a pro forma basis. So an exclusive slot which has
worked well for an advertiser for months, or maybe even years, can be put at
risk by a bad payment record.
- classified ads - present a bigger problem to a publisher. Because
we don't like to have dead links or bad data in our directories, it can take
almost as much work to remove entries as it originally took to put them into
place. So we follow a 2 part strategy.
A short term strategy, which
usually gets results after a couple of days, is to replace the content on the
advertiser's pages with a white screen, which is redirected after a few seconds
to an alternative directory page. Readers are not greatly inconvenienced by
this, and the original content can be replaced in a few minutes when we get
payment.
A longer term strategy, when we don't think we're getting the
right level of attention, is to remove all links to the offending advertisers'
pages. That includes recent press releases, if they are still visible on current
active pages. The effect is to make a company invisible in our portal. They
don't even get a free basic entry. That sanction takes time to put into place.
It also means that when payment does come in, it can take several days before
the ad is fully restored and cross referenced in its original state. As
a publisher we typically remove hundreds of company entries every year, when a
company goes bust or is acquired. We even have a
directory page to help
readers track down what happened to those suppliers. That's a completely
different situation from the late payment scenario, when the advertiser is
actually still in business, and may even have links from their home page to
their ad in our portals - which is now a blank screen.
Other
publishers have their own ways of dealing with these situations. But we usually
find that the blank screen sanction works effectively in the handful of problem
cases which arise each year. If you've been an advertiser getting a good flow of
leads, which suddenly stop, then you're going to do something about it. Talk to
accounts. They might be the source of the problem. ...ACSL profile |
|
Join OptiView Technologies
for an online seminar on how to speed your Web site and Web-based applications
Editor:- March 12, 2003 - OptiView
Technologies will run an online seminar on Friday, March 28, 2003 2:00 to
2:30 pm EST. Their core product, which used to be called GIF Wizard,
compresses images for web sites far beyond the level normally available in
standard image ceration tools. I use it from time to time when advertisers send
me a banner ad which is about 3 times the load size that it should be for
effective operation. In many years of use, it's never let me down. We don't use
their site wide service, because we don't have the time to optimise everything,
but they can compress all the images on your site to get faster loading. ...OptiView Technologies |
|
IDC Launches New Research
Service on IT Marketing Measurement and Effectiveness
FRAMINGHAM,
Mass. - March 11, 2003 – IDC today launched its new CMO Advisory
Service, a research and advisory service designed to help information technology
marketers improve the effectiveness and productivity of their marketing
organizations. The new service, which will focus on technology marketing
measurement, return on marketing investment (ROMI), and industry best practices,
will be led by Rich Vancil, IDC's recently hired vice president for Technology
Marketing Research.
Preliminary results from a recent IDC survey of more than 90 senior
technology marketers offers firm evidence of the need for marketing measurement
and evaluation tools. Faced with the need to provide verifiable returns on their
marketing investments, technology marketers have gravitated toward only those
program elements offering quantifiable measures. Consequently, more tactical
program elements, such as direct mail and Web marketing, have received budget
increases over the past two years at the expense of strategic, brand-building
elements, like advertising and events, whose effectiveness is not easily
quantified.
Moreover, two thirds of the survey respondents indicated that their
primary measure of marketing effectiveness is in fact a sales or sales-related
metric. Those respondents that are using marketing program-specific measures
tend to favor brand awareness or preference studies and simple media exposure
measurements. Only two of the 90 companies IDC surveyed indicated that they use
a comprehensive, integrated marketing metric, such as a multi-part balanced
scorecard, to evaluate the results of their efforts.
...IDC profile |
|
PR on Websites: Increasing
Usability
March
10, 2003 - a new article on Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox - reports on a
study which looked at the effectiveness of the PR areas on corporate web sites.
Compared with a similar 2001 study, a new study of journalists as they looked
for information on corporate websites' PR areas showed significant usability
improvements: a 5% higher success rate and 15% increased guidelines compliance.
...Useit.com/alertbox |
|
Business Wire Experiments
with new web design for real-time news distribution
Editor:- March
10, 2003 - real-time news distribution company
Business Wire looked completely
different this morning (UK time). The only problem was that the redesign meant
a lot more time was needed to look at news headlines. After a few minutes, I
gave up. It just wasn't worth the effort.
This may have been an
experiment to test a new concept for the web site. Anyway, the site went offline
for a while, and then this afternoon came back with the same classic look and
feel that it had before.
Maybe there were teething problems with the
new design concept. But all credit goes to the brave manager who decided to take
the new design offline again. Although the new look may come back later, it's
generally not a good idea to drive away users of your web site. When you make
massive changes to your web site, learn from this important lesson. Sometimes
you can tell how things are going within hours of a new web site design
starting. Don't be afraid to switch back if things go wrong. ...Business Wire
...Later - by the end of the week the "experimental"
style was permanently in place. Personally I don't like it. It seems cumbersome
and takes a lot longer to find anything useful. But I will persist for a few
days - just in case I'm missing something worthwhile. |
|
Re: Web Advertising as
Signposts
Basingstoke - a town in Hampshire UK combining the charm of
glass fronted high rise office blocks in the center with the scenic historic
moat of the ringway. Do you really want to go there?
Editor:- March
7, 2003 - as a publisher we've been very fortunate this year, getting a good
flow of new advertisers, while keeping most of our long established ones. The
new ones sometimes present a problem, because the first contact we have is when
they place the order.
They've seen our web site and know what we do.
But when we look at their web site, it's not always clear what their main
strengths are and which way they are heading. We need to know this, and
communicate it to our readers for their advertising to work. That's an
interesting process, and one of the satisfactions I get is helping our customers
see themselves through the eyes of a potential buyer.
I've been selling
web advertising since 1996, which is nearly as long as the industry itself has
existed. When I'm asked "What is web advertising?" or "What
can web advertising do?" my answer today is pretty much the same as it was
six years ago when I figured it out based on my own experience as a buyer and
seller. (In those days we advertised a lot on search-engines - although we
don't any more.) My answer to those questions has nothing to do with banner
ads, pop ups or any other visual artifice.
You should think of web
advertising as signposting.
A potential customer can buy products like
yours from thousands of different companies. Whatever motivates them to look on
the web for information about products or suppliers is not important. Maybe
they're unhappy with their supplier. Maybe they need to do some research to to
keep their boss happy with a few facts for his budget. Maybe they have a budget
approved and need to place an order today. Maybe they're looking for a new job.
It doesn't matter. It's the fact they're looking that's important. That's your
opportunity to make it easier and quicker for them to become aware of you and
what you do, compared to the thousands of other companies in your market
segment.
That's it.
The signposting should give a concise and
accurate idea of what they can expect to find when they get there with that
precious click. What happens after that, is another matter. But creating
awareness of your site as a possible destination before they plan to travel
there, is very important. Leaving the signposts permanently visible and easy to
find is also important. They may not want to go there today, but they need to
know that when they have that need, they can easily find the signpost again.
That's
why short term on-again off-again advertising is a waste of money.
Say
you advertise on a portal for a couple of months. Thousands of readers see your
ad, but maybe they don't have a need to buy your product just yet. Then your
advertising budget runs out so your stop advertising for 3 months. But readers
are still going back to those portals. Someone saw information about your
company but they can't remember the details. They know that they saw your ads on
their favorite portal. But when they go back they can't find you. Shoot. Well,
that's a disappointment, but there are other suppliers and a few minutes
research will take them somewhere else. And the number two choice also does the
job. You were the number one choice they would have explored. But you
removed the signpost. And, unlike print,
the web has no
memory for your past ads.
So - web advertising doesn't necessarily
sell your product. A banner ad is not going to sell a million dollar
solid state disk system for
example. But it tells buyers where they can go. And following the signposts is
faster than just drifting aimlessly around.Your potential customers don't have
time to waste on undirected supplier research. They follow the well worn grooves
on the map, which are the roads that others have travelled down the web before.
There's no point in you developing a good destination, if you make it hard to
find.
Customers want to buy stuff. You just have to make it easy.
That's all there is to it. |
|
Introducing Sparkle!
Marketing insight to help you shine
March 4, 2003 - launched today by
Catch Light Productions, Sparkle is a FREE monthly eNewsletter for
marketing professionals. We know you don't have time to read every article
about marketing. That's why we've created Sparkle--to bring you concise
information on the things that matter most. In each issue you'll find these
regular features:
- Who Are You? (corporate identity and branding)
- At Home (environmental graphics)
- Take It Or Leave It (sales and collateral materials)
- Online (websites, search engines, email, oh my)
- Offline (marketing strategies not involving the web)
- Postage PAID (direct marketing: email, snailmail, and otherwise)
- Work Smart (tips for a more fulfilling workday)
- Make A Difference (because it's not all about you me)
And of course, the latest happenings at Catch Light Light Productions.
Thirty minutes. Once a month. A career's worth of knowledge.
...Catch Light Productions |
|
Looking Ahead - the 10
biggest storage companies in 2005? Your inputs invited.
Editor:- March 3, 2003 - next
month I'm going to update the STORAGEsearch.com long range forcast -
the 10 biggest storage companies - 2 years' time. Based on analyzing
financial data and product trends, this long range chart has proven to be
remarkably accurate.
In January 2001
when I predicted that Dell would be one of the top 10 storage companies
(measured by revenue) in 2003, many marketers in competing storage vendors
contacted me to say they thought I was up the creek. They didn't even regard
Dell as a storage company. Unfortunately a lot of those skeptical readers
probably don't have jobs any more, as their companies have been shunted aside by
Dell's voracious appetite for market share.
The big change we're now
seeing in the storage market is the shift in gravity from West to East. If you
look at the revenues of the top 100 storage companies today more of them are now
based in Asia, and less are in the US. There's a whole bunch of reasons for
that, such as years of recession in the US, lower manufacturing costs and
faster network storage growth in some parts of Asia. Will that affect the top
10? And if it does, who's going to drop out? Keep tuned to these pages to learn
the answers.
If you're a marketer in a company not previously listed
in these articles, and you think your company will have storage revenues around
$7 billion in 2005, send me an email telling me why. |
|
| today's news etc from
MarketingViews | |
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high-tech internet marketing to news@MarketingViews.com |
|
Other news on this page
Salesforce.com
Announces Outlook Email Integration
Manning Selvage & Lee Releases
Results of Bay Area Media Reputation Analysis
Top Traditional
Advertisers Increase Share of Online Ads to More Than 30% According to
Nielsen//Netratings
Gartner Says Half of Business Intelligence Projects Will Not Reach
Their Full Potential in 2003
STORAGEsearch.com Reveals Most Popular
Product Categories
Web Services Development Market will Shrink in 2003,
Says Aberdeen Group
When Your Company Ad is a Blank Screen - Maybe
your Accounts Department Hasn't Paid the Invoice
Join OptiView
Technologies for an online seminar on how to speed your Web site and Web-based
applications
IDC Launches New Research Service on IT Marketing
Measurement and Effectiveness
PR on Websites: Increasing Usability
Business Wire
Experiments with new web design for real-time news distribution
Re: Web
Advertising as Signposts
Introducing Sparkle! Marketing insight to help
you shine
Looking Ahead - the 10 biggest storage companies in 2005
earlier news (archive) |
|
 |
US VARs on
STORAGEsearch.com |
| Megabyte's young
nephew Cheaperbyte joined the sales department in a storage reseller company
after leaving college.
No one ever beat him on price. | | |
|
|
|
Nibble: Why Server Revenue will Decline Again Next Year
Recently
IDC
reported that in 2002, worldwide server factory revenues declined 11.6%,
while unit shipments increased 5%. We've been used to seeing revenue declines in
the IT market, so that news comes as no surprise. But that got me wondering if
we might continue to see server revenues decline for the next couple of years,
even if total spending in the IT market increases.
That might be bad
news for companies which get a lot of revenue from servers, but good news for
network storage makers, and users.
In the past couple of years we've
seen increasing adoption of the network storage model, and a recent
IDC report
quoted by EMC said that spending on SAN and NAS has now overtaken
spending on DAS (directly attached storage). That means, when someone buys a
server, a decreasing proportion of the storage cost associated with that server
is now installed in the same box. The storage can sit anywhere on the network.
It doesn't even have to be in the same building.
And, of course, it
doesn't have to be from the same manufacturer.
The recent recession has
speeded up the unbundling (or dismembering) of the server market. Users have
less money to spend and so will pick and mix the bits they like. A server from
company X, disk storage from company Y, and a tape library from company Z. It
used to be technically difficult and risky for users to make these kind of
choices. But not any more.
As long as you avoid some obvious pitfalls
such as choosing Sun storage to go with a Dell server, then you're probably on
safe ground. And there are plenty of VARs and systems integrators who have done
it before and can reduce your risk and your cost.
If we extrapolate
this trend, there's no good reason why a server should contain any disk
storage at all. apart from what is needed to store the operating system.
Technologies like
InfiniBand at the
high end, Fibre-channel
and NAS in the middle and
Serial ATA at the
entry level, will get sufficiently standardized so that anyone can connect a
storage appliance to their server as simply as you connect a satellite
connection to your TV. Choosing your favorite programs to watch, or setting up
your backup & SRM
software might take a little longer. But nothing's perfect.
Of
course other factors will also contribute to making servers cheaper. Many users
have found that rackmount
server farms give them adequate peroformance at much lower cost that factory
assembled mainframes. But a 64 processor mainframe still costs a lot more than
64 times the cost of a single server. Not for much longer. The increasing use of
compact PCI blade
servers, where multiple servers sit in the same high speed bus, will cut
out the fat in the low end mainframe market, and that too will help to shed
cost.
So we'll just get used to a new market in which the server is a
decreasing part of the total IT budget. Bad news for server sales people. Good
news for everyone else. | |
