Articles by Jeffrey M. Kaplan

With every market forecast predicting rapid growth of the overall Internet of Things, industry and investor focus shifts to specific market segments that will experience the quickest adoption. While most of the attention is on particular applications and technologies, I think managed IoT services will be one of the biggest market opportunities One ...

The idea that software is eating the world has become a generally accepted dictum since Marc Andreessen penned his milestoneop-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal in 2011 Everywhere you look, industries and institutions are being disrupted by the unprecedented power of software. Now, the world is demanding a new way to develop software to keep pace...

Although the consumer implications of the Internet of Things have generated plenty of public attention, the real growth in the embryonic IoT market is coming from less visible industrial environments and business applications. The early IoT advancements may come as a surprise to some, but in these industries, organizations moving quickly to deploy...

More than half of major new business processes and systems will incorporate some element of the Internet of Things by 2020, according to Gartner. That means that every piece of software that supports those business processes and systems must be redesigned to accommodate the requirements of the rapidly evolving IoT market Nearly every major independ...

Growing acceptance of cloud computing quickly is becoming a double-edged sword for the leading players in the SaaS, PaaS and IaaS marketplaces. As a broader set of customers adopts cloud-first strategies, even the biggest cloud players are being challenged to scale their operations to keep pace with escalating customer demands without becoming too complex for customers to easily utilize their solutions...

There may be no better way to capture the state of the technology industry than to borrow Charles Dickens' famous opening from A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." It never has been a better time to launch new offerings via the cloud. However, the availability of low-cost computing power combined with open ...

One of the clear indications that the cloud movement is becoming mainstream is the growing number of CFOs and finance departments that are adopting Software as a Service solutions to support their corporate responsibilities. Even more interesting is how cloud-based alternatives can redefine the accounting and financial management function in forwa...

The recent flurry of consulting company acquisitions focused on cloud computing is another clear indication of the accelerating shift of IT systems and enterprise applications to Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service alternatives IT and business decision-makers are no longer asking why they should move to the ...

The latest quarterly financial results from Salesforce, along with the buzz surrounding the company's upcoming annual Dreamforce lovefest, have brought greater attention to the rapid migration of customer relationship management to the cloud. However, today's Software as a Service CRM solutions deliver limited value-add if the organizations that u...

The Internet of Things market has been struggling to get untangled, despite the hype regarding unprecedented business opportunities. GE's latest initiative to capitalize on those IoT opportunities might be the catalyst many corporate executives have been waiting for to advance their own goals....

Despite all the attention being given to the extraordinary opportunities promised by the Internet of Things, many software and technology vendors are still waiting for demand to match the predictions provided by analysts, press and their own PR campaigns. Security concerns are the most common inhibitor to IoT initiatives, industry surveys suggest,...

The 18th annual PwC CEO survey of 1,322 corporate leaders in 77 countries, conducted between September and December 2014, found an overwhelming proportion are embarking on digital transformation initiatives to respond to escalating customer demands and intensifying competitive pressures However, many are taking different paths to achieve their cor...

Nearly everyone agrees the Internet of Things will create unprecedented business opportunities that will dramatically change the way almost every industry operates. There is also universal agreement that the IoT will force organizations to rethink the fundamental nature of their products and services. One company that has become a leader in the rapidly evolving IoT market and is bravely facing the challenges associated with the transformation process is PTC...

Now that cloud computing has made it economically feasible to capture and collate large volumes of data -- that is, "big data" -- many organizations are trying to find an equally economical method to analyze and move the data across various business applications. The rapidly escalating demands for powerful analytic tools to decipher the meaning of...

I've been traversing North America keynoting a series of cloud events hosted by Oracle. At every stop of the roadshow my comments regarding the opportunity to transform traditional product businesses into powerful information services via cloud-based alternatives has generated the greatest interest among enterprise decision-makers and software developers alike.

Cloud-based alternatives to traditional hardware and software systems and enterprise applications are experiencing a new level of CxO acceptance. Chief Financial Officers are the latest members of the C-level suite to embrace SaaS, PaaS and IaaS solutions to not only reduce operating costs, but also improve their operating effectiveness so they can better achieve their corporate objectives...

This past week's International CES brought even greater attention to the seemingly infinite opportunities being created by the rapidly evolving Internet of Things. However, it also created plenty of hype that can become pitfalls for companies that are not properly prepared to achieve the promise of the IoT There are 10 steps IT organizations must t...

Since December 'tis the season when industry prognosticators provide their predictions for the year to come, I'll offer my ideas about how three major tech forces -- cloud computing, big data the Internet of Things -- will converge in 2015, and four ways organizations can capitalize on this convergence The idea that cloud computing, big data and th...

While most people view Salesforce.com's annual Dreamforce event as the largest user conference in the cloud industry, it is also the biggest gathering of cloud companies and their growing assortment of business partners. In many ways, Dreamforce is the best demonstration that the channel isn't dead and actually is prospering in the cloud This year'...

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff last month tweeted about the tentative agenda for this week's Dreamforce and caused a tizzy by revealing a keynote session entitled "Analytics Cloud." Although the company immediately denied that it was planning to unveil such a thing or that Benioff intentionally spilled the beans about the new offering, Salesforce....