Posts by Ian Campbell

Imagine if your doctor always gave you a positive bill of health, every single visit. Amazing if you were that healthy, but we tend to go to the doctor when there is a concern. “I wouldn’t worry about that rash. I don’t think it will spread. Oh that growth. Sure it’s discolored and hurts, but…

Imitation may be the highest form of flattery for fashion but in business, it usually means fear and signifies trouble ahead. Leaders become followers and lose sight of their unique differentiation. Take the late Windows Phone, for example. Or the New Coke attempting to taste more like rival Pepsi. JC Penny pretending to be a…

Earlier this year I wrote about the Mega-App – the trend of integrating enterprise software programs into one overarching application. Connecting the supply chain with ERP and CRM. Marketing automation with the back office. And at the time, we noted that integrated analytics was the driving force. In fact, it’s happening faster that many initially…

It almost feels like ThrowBackThursday to hear major blue-chip companies discuss plans to move to the cloud. That shift began in earnest about 10 years ago and, with the exception of several strategic legacy apps, is all but over now. Even phone service is delivered ‘as-a-Service’ for many companies. What’s not in the cloud at…

When it comes to industry analyst firms, you should ask yourself this: Do you want a firm that tells you what you want to hear or one that tells what you need to hear? With the former, you are essentially paying a so-called objective party to validate what you tell them to say. Not very…

What this seemingly bad number really tells us … At Nucleus Research, we’ve been stressing the importance of usability for more than a decade. Cool tech features are great, but they have no value if end users can’t take advantage of them. Yet we see a number of technology vendors continue to push trendy new…

Success stories are perhaps the most informative resource for understanding how to maximize value from technology. Learning from the best practices of peers is almost always more helpful than a user manual, list of product features and promises from the sales team. We understood this early on at Nucleus Research and built our industry analyst…

George Carlin had a famous stand-up routine about stuff. He had a more colorful name for it, of course, but he basically defined the human existence as a cycle of acquiring things. We are collectors by nature and he talked about how we fill a house with all of our useless ‘stuff,’ only to go…

Setting political discussions about government bailouts aside, when exactly is a company too big to fail? From a purely business perspective, the answer is never. In fact, there is a daunting list of once-dominant companies that rested on their laurels only to see innovative new companies pass them by for good. Netscape, Nokia, Novell and…

When you think of today’s tech giants, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and even Facebook come to most minds. It’s been a long time since IBM has been part of that pantheon. After absolutely leading the pack for decades, IBM quietly shifted over the past 12 years into the background. Or was that the back office?…

We’ve all been disappointed at some point by a product that promises exciting features and benefits only to find out it’s formidably difficult to use. Perhaps a home appliance with that cryptic set of instructions in 50 languages that no one understands. Home security systems are notoriously impossible to use. I’ve recently turned back to…

Back in 2012, we assessed the value of cloud applications, finding that they delivered 1.7 times more Return on Investment (ROI) than their on-premise counterparts. We recently updated our research, showing the value has grown to 2.1 times more ROI for cloud apps – an increase of nearly 25 percent. Where many technologies diminish in…

Many pundits predicted cost advantages of the cloud would taper off once the majority of applications shifted away from on-premise. After all, what more did the cloud offer beyond reducing upfront capital expenditures and maintenance costs. How very shortsighted that view was. In 2012, we looked at the Return on Investment (ROI) for cloud applications,…

Perhaps no application in the industry has evolved more over the past 15 years than CRM. An increasingly sharpened and sustained focus on the customer experience has driven this. Where other applications continue to compete on cloud advantages, mobile features and usability, CRM vendors are racing toward micro apps, the Internet of Things (IoT), and…

The biggest trend in enterprise software right now is integration. Every combination imaginable. CRM with ERP and supply chain apps. Back office applications with marketing automation. And analytics embedded everywhere. In fact, we are moving toward one massive mega-app for businesses. I’m not saying we’ll ever get there, but the consolidation is real. That’s because…

I can’t think of two more mismatched executives than the CFO and VP of HR. The former constantly looks for ways to reign in costs and mitigate risk while most HR professionals are passionate about corporate culture. It’s left brain – right brain. Of course this is an exaggeration of a stereotype, but in general…

If we learned anything from the BYOD revolution, it’s that employees will use those technologies that are the most convenient. Which fortunately, often translates into the solution that makes them the most productive. It’s all about that blend of the right features with high usability. Take data storage and content management, for example. While enterprise…

Perhaps no other industry conference showcases more on-premise technologies these days than RSA, the annual security show taking place in San Francisco this week. That’s because many have bought into the false narrative that cloud security is riskier than shoring up on-premise systems to protect valuable data. This outdated thinking is holding businesses back from…

Supply and demand: it’s economics 101. Too much supply and you’re left footing the bill for excess product. Too much demand and you’re wasting opportunities. The trick is to match the two for optimal business. And this is exactly what the supply chain has focused on for decades – delivering the right products to meet…

Advanced analytics deliver 2.2 times more ROI than traditional analytics and business intelligence (BI) apps. This was the finding from a December report authored by Anne Moxie, our analytics analyst. At face value, this is not so surprising. Don’t get me wrong, a jump from 334 percent up to 746 percent ROI is impressive, just not unexpected.…