Most technology companies, especially software companies, do marketing all
wrong.
Zendesk is NOT one of them. Their "Customer Service Hero Tour" - taking
place in various cities including Austin (where I'm currently based), Denver,
Chicago, Atlanta, Boston and New York, is a great example for other
technology companies to follow.
If you're connected with customer service in any of those cities, you should
attend the event - any software company smart enough to spend their marketing
dollars in this fashion is worth getting to know. If they're smart enough
to do "this" so very right, they're probably smart enough to do a lot of
other things really well too.
Plus, it sounds like a great event - I will definitely attend. Check out
the "registration page"...then read on for my perspective on why I love this
event in so many ways.
Me-Me-Me Marketing - Odious (Even on... (more)
I talk to a lot of CIOs. I met with one in early May who oversees the IT
operation of a $6 billion yearly entertainment-related company with about
7,000 employees. This top-notch exec was all about transforming a huge
investment in existing IT infrastructure into a new dynamic, extensible and
agile platform that would propel the business forward - not hold it back.
This guy is busy figuring out how to keep a Boeing 777 up in the air while
simultaneously re-fitting aircraft to make it best-in-class.
That's what IT should be all about.
But in some organizations, it's not. Either th... (more)
I like writing about "Infrastructure Software." One of the most challenging
things about being an advocate for a broad horizontally applicable technology
is that it does not solve a particular business problem.
Instead, it solves about 100,000 business problems.
That was an admittedly uber-geeky joke I made on my column "Integration Edge"
on ebizQ in an article about Legacy Modernization.
Although I was making light of the situation, the impact for a technology
advocate is real. The problem with writing about infrastructure software is
that everyone is impacted by it, yet nobody ... (more)
IT exists to support the business - and in best-of-class IT departments, this
truism is embedded deeply into the departmental culture.
Yet in so many cases, this self-evident truth gets lost in the mayhem of
building, maintaining and supporting the myriad of complicated and brittle
legacy application systems that have been put together over the years to
support the enterprise's business.
Legacy Application Modernization is a transformative initiative that has the
potential to not only change the way IT supports the business, but to change
the very nature and culture of IT.
IT Cu... (more)
The build vs. buy debate for integration software (both data and application
integration) continues - it's one of those debates that's been going on for
longer than most of us have been alive. Robin Smith from Virtual Logistics
grills Hollis Tibbetts on this topic in IntegrationTV's Episode Six.
Build vs. Buy for SaaS and Cloud Integration
I had a great phone conversation with (SaaS Integration pioneer) Boomi
founder Rick Nucci about a month ago on the build vs. buy topic -
specifically why some continue to believe that building their own integration
middleware stack is a good ide... (more)
Sue Poremba
Scott Sellers
Anthony Franco
Daniel Morris
Wayne Walls
Niki Acosta
Jereme Hancock
Oren Michels
Marvin Wheeler
Douglas Kim
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