insight

Proxy marketing: It's the (other) product!

In this new age of " radical transparency," British firm Garlik has unveiled a new way to gauge popularity on the internet. The "QDOS" digital status rating system factors in how many times a person's name appears in a search, as well as a person's popularity, impact, and activity, among other criteria. Garlik's system plays on the phenomenon of "vanity searches:" googling" and comparing oneself to others. I couldn't resist the temptation: My QDOS score is Q3176 -- that's less than Nelson Mandela (Q6624) and Woody Allen (Q7764) but … Read more

RenGen: a generation of cultural consumers?

Isn't it interesting how trends are made? "One of the things I like about trends is that they seem so easy -- Blue is the color of 2008! GenY likes health food!" observes Stacey Gillar. Coupling the disparate ("Chic Trash"), pushing an already extreme concept to the extreme ("Radical Transparency"), or simply announcing the advent of something "new" ("Nouvelle Vague," "Nouveau Niche," etc.) are some of the flourishing categories. Or you simply repackage an old concept.

"RenGen," short for Renaissance Generation and the title of … Read more

Trends 2008: The end of marketing?

Robert Stephens, founder and chief inspector of The Geek Squad, contends that " Marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable." Does marketing smell bad? Or is it perhaps even dead? There have been a number of articles recently that question the marketer's ability to make sense of his/her somewhat wishy-washy role. BusinessWeek reveled in the "short life of the CMO," and McKinsey Quarterly provided some stats that reveal how much today's marketing executives are grappling with the new social media environment, arguing that "many chief marketers still have narrowly defined roles … Read more

CIOs rate Red Hat the #1 IT vendor for value...again

The only friend open-source vendors have is the customer.

That's what a wise friend at Red Hat once told me. If it's any consolation to him, he's got lots of friends, because CIO Insight 's ranking of IT vendors just came out, and Red Hat tops the list for the fourth consecutive year. 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. Customers have voted Red Hat the #1 vendor for value over Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Novell, etc.

Wondering who consistently was given the worst ratings by CIOs? CA, Oracle, Microsoft, Cognos, and a range of consulting companies. If you dig into the numbers, the reasons often stem from overpriced and unreliable software.

Red Hat can't rest on its laurels, however. Why? Ask the numbers.… Read more

Fonality acquires Insightful to tightly integrate SugarCRM with VoIP

Fonality , a leading open-source Asterisk-based VoIP phone system vendor, announced today that it is acquiring Insightful Solutions, a distributor of SugarCRM-based customer relationship management (CRM) software, to merge telephony and CRM for the small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) market.

While the deal is being struck with Insightful, the company that should primarily benefit (beyond Fonality) is SugarCRM, since the FonalityCRM bundle of Fonality plus Insightful means that more copies of Sugar Professional will be shipped with Fonality's PBXtra and trixbox Pro IP-PBX applications. Insightful has been a SugarCRM Gold partner for some time, and has been active in modifying and improving SugarCRM's code. It hosts more than 1,000 seats throughout the Asia-Pacific region.… Read more