E-Commerce Blog

In this episode of BriefingsDirect Insights Edition, our experts examine the state of Microsoft at the onset of the annual Professional Developers Conference. Two narratives emerge from our roundtable discussion, that Microsoft is behind on many new IT trends and is tied to past business models. The opposing view is that Microsoft will ride pedestrian app dev, business intelligence, data services, Xbox, unified communications, virtualization and cloud computing to become bigger and more pervasive than ever.

View post:
Ruminations on Microsoft’s Future

The Pakistan Software Houses Association recently handed out its peer awards for the Pakistan IT industry. The awards provide an industry snapshot at a time when Pakistan has become the third most popular global IT outsourcing destination on RentACoder, an outsourcing marketplace. India and the U.S. are the top two outsourcing destinations. Two factors account for Pakistan’s success: cost and quality. One year ago, IT and back office work in Pakistan was 20 to 25 percent cheaper than India.

Read the rest here:
Pakistan’s Software Industry Celebrates Achievements

Most retailers experience a downturn in a weak economy. As consumers rein in spending, a downturn is usually not distributed equally among all retailers. The extent of the downturn depends on a number of factors, including geographic location of stores, product categories being sold and specific market segments. In order to survive a tightening economic climate, retailers must focus on their short- and long-term objectives. Despite the current economic condition, retailers should continue to explore investments in technologies that provide improved customer service.

Read more from the original source:
Stop Giving Your Customers Reasons to Leave

There’s little room for error if your company decides to make the transition from a provider of on-premise solutions to a service provider via cloud computing. If you don’t take the time to develop reliable services that match the reliability of your on-premise offerings, your credibility will suffer — and customers will lose faith in your ability to deliver on your service promises. However, done methodically and carefully, cloud computing allows you to bring products and services to market faster, using a delivery method that customers will increasingly demand.

See the original post:
10 Tips for Taking Your Business to the Cloud

On occasion, Google’s Gmail service has gone dark, in some cases for hours at a time. Predictably, users of the free service flipped out and took to the Web to sound off. Google’s response, up to now, has merely been to issue apologies and get the system up and running again. However, for users of its Google Apps Premier Edition — a cloud-based suite that includes business-oriented messaging and collaboration apps, along with support and integration capabilities — Google has rolled out an SLA that guarantees 99.9 percent system accessibility.

More:
Google Woos Business Customers With Uptime Guarantee