Purchases have included Group 1 Software (2004), MapInfo (2007) and Portrait Software (2010), which are now part of a customer analytics and interaction group within the company’s software division. IO is also integrated with GX Software BlueConic to track and segment Web site visitors. External models can be created in Portrait’s own modeling tools or with third party software. Both IO and Dialogue are available as on-premise software or hosted by Pitney Bowes. Pricing of IO is based on the database size and number of channels supported. MORE >>

Tech talk – Cloud, Multitenant, J2EE, Open Source and other techie buzz words March 26th, 2010 by Tom Elrod I’ve been asked a lot lately to talk about our solution platform and technology used here at LoopFuse, so figured it would be worth a blog… To start, LoopFuse OneView is an on-demand marketing automation software solution. In a nutshell, this means it is software hosted by a vendor on the internet that can be run using a web browser without having to install any software, so is ready for use immediately. Lately the term “Cloud” has replaced SaaS as the new buzz word. MORE >>

software companies) are, of course, the early adopters. Unfortunately, many of these services require require 12 or 24 month subscription contracts, professional services implementation consultants, onsite training, and often a pricing model based on the size of your wallet. As certain markets mature, a disruptive player sometimes steps in to challenge the accepted pricing model in the interest of mass market adoption. Other times it’s a massive price reduction in the market. Why Free? Why Now? Why Now? The timing of this move is based on several factors. Why Free? MORE >>

Vendors didn’t want to reveal pricing and specifications to their competitors, and in many cases buyers didn’t want their own competitors to be aware of what they were buying (as it could tip off competitors to new product designs or process improvements) or even the terms they were getting. Some of the market pioneers flamed out: Commerce One , founded in 1994, went public in 1999 and saw it’s stock price soar from $20 to more than $600 per share before the dot-com bust. The company was acquired by an Italian cement maker in 2007 for $15 million. MORE >>

While recent studies show that about half of marketers say that social media reduces their overall marketing costs , it is by no means without a price. While offshoring works well for tasks like IT consulting services and software application development, it tends to be less efficacious for market-facing activities. Certainly the tools are new: Twitter has only been around since 2007, Facebook since 2006, and even blogging has been popular for less than a decade. This confusion is partly due to some still-common misconceptions about social media marketing. Argh, no! Um, no. MORE >>