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Cicala and Associates LLC

Where knowledge is power, CicalaOnline Strategies and Tactics give you the upper hand. Whether establishing an Asset Management program, selecting tools, or making a major acquisition, the newsletter topics keep you updated with the leading IT procurement and Asset Management thoughts and ideas.

"On-Demand" or Is it?: When "Software as a Service" Lets You Down

"On-Demand" Software, sometimes referred to as "Software-as-a-Service", has been gaining significant customers, especially in the Customer Management Relationship (CRM) space. Just recently, SAP announced the launch of its first hosted on-demand sales force automation application. However, over recent months, Salesforce.com, one of the market leaders, has experienced a number of "glitches", resulting in down-time when its users could not access their applications. In this newsletter article, we look at this issue, and make recommendations as to how buyers can protect themselves in this new licensing environment.
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Oracle Fusion: Finding One's Way Through the Maze?

As Oracle followed the acquisition trail, it announced Project Fusion, its "vision for next-generation enterprise technologies, applications and services". The supplier hopes to "fuse" the best functionality from each of its application product lines into a "single set of business services". In January, 2006, the company dropped the "Project" nomenclature, because it feels that it has reached the halfway point in this initiative. In this article, we look at Oracle's efforts for Fusion Applications, and provide our analysis and recommendations for buyers.
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Oracle Fusion: Finding One's Way Through the Maze

As Oracle followed the acquisition trail, it announced Project Fusion, its "vision for next-generation enterprise technologies, applications and services". The supplier hopes to "fuse" the best functionality from each of its application product lines into a "single set of business services". In January, 2006, the company dropped the "Project" nomenclature, because it feels that it has reached the halfway point in this initiative. In this article, we look at Oracle's efforts for Fusion Applications, and provide our analysis and recommendations for buyers.
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Reality Check: Keeping Contracts Up-To-Date

The past few years have seen significant change in the software industry, with high-profile mergers and acquisitions, proliferation of hosted software offerings, and changes to suppliers' policies to cover new technologies, such as utility computing, virtualization, and multicore processors. In this article, we go "back to basics" and provide advice and guidance on adapting common contractual licensing terms to today's environment.
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