I've been working in the software industry for over 25 years. Back in the late 1900s, when you sold software, you sold software. What your company produced was a large set of properly aligned bits (software). MORE

The top enterprise software trends to know in 2017 MORE

Does your organization have the right software to help it reach its end goals? You might be surprised as to how a normal software can create redundancies within the workforce, and waste up a considerable portion of work time. How does it differ from any other off –the-shelf software? MORE

Joel on Software. Software Inventory. The software production process has several major “inventory” accumulation points, itself. How is software like a factory?” Operating systems, or anything where software has to be installed by every user, is usually batched up. MORE

Just about a decade ago, I ran a guest column from Sridhar Vembu which was striking in that he promised to invert the traditional software model which typically invests 10 to 15% of revenues in product, and 50 to 60%. Enterprise Software (other vendors MORE

A number of years ago, I wrote a blog post talking about the need to teach middle school and high school students how to write software.  So began my quest to see more computer science and software engineering in the NYC public school system.  In a speech that was largely about the intertwined nature of education and the economy , he announced that the city is opening The Academy For Software Engineering this fall in the Union Square neighborhood of New York City. MORE

Just before I had flown up to New York for the Infor Innovation Summit, I had interviewed Malcolm Frank, EVP of Strategy at Cognizant about trends he is seeing in the outsourcing and software markets. Cloud Computing, SaaS Enterprise Software (other vendors) Outsourcing (other vendors MORE

This continues a series about customer moves to reshape their enterprise software landscapes. When I was researching SAP Nation, I was impressed with how many customers are swapping out software, moving to third party maintenance, “ring fencing” the core solution. Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP MORE

I’ve been telling this fictional story about Dentist Office Software for years to describe why we are so focused on our “networks” investment strategy. Since I’ve never told the Dentist Office Software story here at AVC, I will do that and then I will add Albert’s alternate (and better) ending. Around this time, an open source community crops up to build an open source version of dental office software. MORE

There’s an old joke in software development, “How much time does it take to design software?” If you’ve been involved with a number of software projects you already have an intuitive sense for this. MORE

For a software startup, a patent can be the intellectual property providing the key competitive advantage, or it can be an expensive non-defensible bureaucratic nightmare -- or both. Some argue to simply eliminate software patents, while others put their hopes in U.S. MORE

Plan software software business software development software engineer software entrepreneurs starting a business startup lessonsFollowing these fundamentals may not guarantee success, but they will lower your chance of failure by decreasing the room for error. MORE

I always advise software startups to file patents to protect their “secret sauce” from competitors, and to increase their valuation. Yes, the software patent process is a mess. I say this with conviction even after I survived the process, and have a software patent pending. MORE

Among them is the presence of a resource planning software for use in the management of various resources. But why would a business need this kind of software? A good resource planning software will go a long way in ensuring proper management of the numerous complex operations. MORE

Since the term “cloud computing” was coined in 1996—at least as we have come to understand its meaning—the software as a service industry has exploded. I started UpKeep after seeing and using traditional enterprise software. Noah says, “Agile is what most software companies use. MORE

Many of these tasks – accounting, billing/invoicing, marketing – can be streamlined and, in many cases, automated with the right software. CRM and e-Signature software), and is not an “apples to apples” comparison. by Tim Handorf, Co-Founder and President of G2 Crowd. MORE

That may sound like an oxymoron because innovation is supposed to be about breakthrough and brighter futures, but I am a big believer you learn from the past, Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP Many of my writing and speaking bios use the moniker “innovation historian.” MORE

The cloud makes software easily accessible, without waiting for CD shipments to arrive and installed. The good news is that the reach of your new software application is instantly worldwide, and the bad news is that most people still prefer to work in their own native language. MORE

For some reason many people discuss the problem of estimating software development timeframes without properly understanding the issue. To put this in context, let’s forget software for a second and look at a few tangible problems of different magnitudes. MORE

BusinessWeek had two recent stories – one was how quickly the bubble around rare earths has burst. Molycorp has filed for bankruptcy just a short couple of years after the world was fretting that China had a stranglehold on that. Cloud Computing, SaaS Industry Commentary MORE

The global trend for software powered innovations to permanently impacting every part of our lives and every part of our work is unstoppable and just at the beginning. Instead of funding or founding enterprise software companies – these new startups are increasingly hybrids. MORE

Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP) Enterprise Software (other vendors Throughout March, in NDA settings and at more formal events, I am getting a chance to talk to executives at E2Open, Infor, Microsoft. NetSuite, Oracle, Plex, Rimini Street, UNIT4 and Workday. As with all the spring games being played all. MORE

Put simply Chuck is amongst the smartest and most knowledgeable leaders in the CRM industry and in the components I consider the future of enterprise software — voice driving input/output, chat-based computing and mobile-first design. Chuck as a software visionary understood this. MORE

Cloud Computing, SaaS Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP) SAP Nation Book This continues a series showcasing customers which are adopting two-tier, ring fence, third party maintenance strategies or outright replacing their core enterprise applications. Previous posts have highlighted UNIT4, Microsoft, Rimini Street , E2Open and Infor. NetSuite has shared with us. MORE

They had a vision for a new way to develop software and created a new kind of company to pursue it. At a16z, we share this vision and I am honored to be joining the board and partnering with the company as they continue to build one of the great software success stories of our time. We just invested $100M in GitHub. In addition to the eye-popping number, the investment breaks ground on two fronts: It’s the largest investment we’ve ever made. MORE

They didn't feel they had visibility into timelines and costs for development of their software. In three of the cases, the founder was finding that the software teams (1 in-house, 2 outsourced) were delivering relatively well in the short-run. MORE

I’ve been railing against software patents for a number of years. I believe software patents are an invalid construct – software shouldn’t be able to patented. While a bunch of software engineers I know thought software patents were bogus, I had trouble getting anyone else to speak out against software patents. Martin Fowler, a software developer, had a well thought out article titled SoftwarePatent. MORE

I always advise software startups to file patents to protect their “secret sauce” from competitors, and to increase their valuation. Yes, the software patent process is a mess. I say this with conviction even after I survived the process, and have a software patent pending. MORE

I regularly get emails and have discussions with entrepreneurs who are on the receiving end of a software patent lawsuit. If you don’t believe me, read the latest rant from a young entrepreneur on the receiving end of a software patent lawsuit from a troll. Software patents are weapons of mass extortion. Patents patent trolls software patentsMany of these are young companies, often with little or no revenue. It’s total, completely madness. MORE

Congrats to my friends at Rally Software on the announcement that they’ve signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by CA Technologies for $480 million. I remember my friend Ryan Martens sitting down with me and Chris Wand around 2001 and walking us through his idea for changing the how he approached managing the software development process. To the extended Rally Software family past and present – congratulations. MORE

Today in the tech industry, we’re entering an era of Levittown software, and the change is important for all businesses. The companies that ‘rent’ these products on a SaaS basis enjoy the highest standard in software without the costs, risks and tech quandaries of in-house development. MORE

And you thought being a software engineer was all about dreaming up clever algorithms or amazing graphics routines and then instantiating them in elegant, tightly written code. According to the survey, software engineers spend as much time waiting as they do brainstorming and collaborating. MORE

One of the assets frequently sacrificed is software purchasing. Life with Software Integration. Like patchwork, each piece of software added builds up a system with poor planning and coordination which inhibits flexibility and productivity. MORE

Image credit: Software from Shutterstock. This concept is extremely relevant and important to understand today in a world where large numbers of businesses proclaim to peddle their software products for free. Take intranet software. Intranet software is personal by nature. MORE

The general presumption in the enterprise software marketplace is customers stay loyal for lifetimes – the more realistic thinking, of course, is they stay loyal for long periods, but not that long. Enterprise Software (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP When I was researching SAP Nation, I was. MORE

Since I don’t really celebrate Christmas, I end up playing around with software a lot over the holidays. This year my friends at FullContact and Mattermark got the brunt of me using their software, finding bugs, making suggestions, and playing around with competitive stuff. We have a long list of fundamental software problems that haven’t been solved. The word software didn’t even exist. MORE

I have always found the free software approach to be instructive. But there is a very vibrant community of software developers that build things and then make them available to anyone who want to use them for free. If you dissect the model, you'll see that the one time effort of building something is something many software creators are willing to do for free. Build software, give it to the community to maintain, and charge for ongoing support. MORE

For example so many software apps are making it possible for more people to engage in entrepreneurship. In this category, you have PDF editing software like the Wondershare PDFelement as one of the best for entrepreneurs due to its great features and how easy entrepreneurs can use them. MORE

It makes sense to me that software is the oil of the information revolution. Companies that control the software infrastructure of the information revolution will sit back and collect the economic surplus of the information revolution and that will be a path to vast wealth and economic power. It has already happened but I think we are just beginning to see the operating leverage of these software based business models. We are long software. MORE

One of the things I am noticing is the trend to try to solve problems with software instead of dedicated hardware. That makes sense for a whole bunch of reasons, but the biggest ones are that the marginal cost of additional user is almost zero with software and that you can iterate your product much more quickly with software. Then all internet connected TV innovation can happen in software instead of hardware. MORE

If you don't use mindmapping software, you don't know the fun, efficient productivity you're missing. Productivity MORE

The “enterprise sales software ROI analysis” as a selling tool comes up over and over and over again. After spending nearly 20 years selling startup software and services to big companies, I can safely say I’ve seen thousands of “Return on Investment” (ROI) slides. MORE

Software is eating the world, and doing so using smaller and smaller teams. Small teams can have a big impact because software development (and deployment) has improved dramatically over the past decade. Open source dominates every level of the software stack, including operating systems (Linux), databases (MySql), web servers (Apache), and programming languages (Python, Ruby). WhatsApp was able to disrupt the global SMS industry with only a few dozen engineers. MORE