7 Trends in Enterprise Software Adoption for 2008

Forrester’s latest software adoption survey highlights the impact of SaaS, SOA, and Web 2.0 in the enterprise and these insights show that ERP upgrades, collaboration software, and information and knowledge management remain hot areas.

By R “Ray” Wang, Forrester Research

Forrester surveyed 1,017 IT decision-makers across North American and European enterprises via our Business Data Services Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q3 2007.

The latest Software Adoption Survey provides insight on how enterprises in 2008 will adopt, use, and manage all types of software, including enterprise applications, Web 2.0, open source, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and service-oriented architecture (SOA) - and highlights what they plan to do with IT budgets in the next 12 months.

Is Your Company Leading the Way in Enterprise 2.0?
Apply Today for the Software 2008 Innovation Showcase

The Innovation Showcase is seeking companies that deliver a new generation of enterprise applications in areas such as open source, mobility, analytics, and collaboration to speak at Software 2008. The program selects only the most promising vendors to present at the conference: in the 18 months since Software 2006, 12 of 20 Innovation Showcase companies have experienced a major financial event - including two IPOs from 2007’s class.

Innovation Showcase companies will receive a variety of PR and marketing opportunities at Software 2008 - the most influential gathering of enterprise software executives and investors of the year. Apply for the Innovation Showcase today at: http://www.software2008.com/showcase/. The deadline for applications is next Friday Feb. 29.

Stopping Sales “Self-Sabotage”

Curiously, two of the biggest problems salespeople face are caused by their own mistakes. Read which two forms of sales “self sabotage” are most common and find out how to avoid them in this post to the SandHill.com Blog on sales best practices from Prime Resource Group’s Jeff Thull.

SaaS as Recession Protection

One of the beauties of the SaaS model is its flexibility. Christopher Cabrera of Xactly points out the advantages of a SaaS sales performance management solution to help deflect the impact of a recession in this post to the SandHill.com Blog on SaaS.

Publish Your Perspective!

SandHill.com wants your opinions. Send your thoughts on the enterprise software industry to SandHill.com editor, Maryann Jones Thompson (maryann@sandhill.com) and have your opinions published on our site.

New on SandHill.com: Topics Pages

Need a one-stop destination for all of the insight SandHill.com has on SaaS? Open source? Offshoring? M&A? Now you can access all of SandHill.com’s opeds, blog posts, news and events on each of these hot topics on our new “Topics” pages. Simply click “Topics” on the top navigation bar on www.SandHill.com and you’ll receive a drop-down menu of all current Topics pages. Email us with feedback on this new feature and with ideas for additional Topics pages.

McKinsey Interviews Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker

The company’s chairman and former CEO explains the power of the participatory, open-source model of collaboration. Read how this company is approaching open source inovation in this article from The McKinsey Quarterly.

News Update: Turf Wars

Salesforce.com is on a squeeze-out path, Microsoft reorgs again, integration and collaboration are in demand, and more reports of the economic downturn impact. Read these stories and more software news of the week in the latest SandHill.com Software News Summary.

Poll: Enterprise Software Spending in 2008

Given the potential for a recession and the current technology landscape, what do you foresee for enterprise software spending this year?
Take our Pulse Poll >>

Last week, readers speculated on which company will end up with Yahoo.
Give us your opinion and see the results >>

More at SandHill.com:

HP’s Hurd is about to be tested.
Read the most important enterprise software industry news of the week >>

Safend closed a $9 million round.
Monitor the latest software venture capital deals >>

Novell bought SiteScape.
Size up last week's software M&A deals >>

Ron Verni named CEO of Corrigo.
See who's made it to the top in our list of recent software executive appointments.

Send us your feedback on this newsletter and the SandHill.com site.

Parting Thought

“Imagination is more important than knowledge...”
–Albert Einstein

Courtesy of Malcolm Kusher, The Kushner Group

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