• Salesforce.com yields to pressure over analytics pricing

  Salesforce.com will include some new analytics capabilities at no additional cost with the Enterprise and Unlimited editions of its CRM (customer relationship management) software, following complaints from customers who argued that the features should have been used to fill long-standing gaps in the products' core functionality, not sold separately.

• Salesforce.com customers say new analytics should be included in core fees

  Salesforce.com customers are sounding off about the fact that an upcoming Analytics Edition of the CRM (customer relationship management) software will have an additional price tag, saying that the functionality it includes should be part of their base subscriptions.

• Microsoft reveals launch date for next-generation SQL Server 2012

  Microsoft has announced a March 7 online event for the launch of SQL Server 2012, the next generation of its database product.

• Net Optics acquires nMetric, targets network intelligence

  In a move to broaden its offerings for the growing network intelligence and diagnostics market, telecom equipment manufacturer Net Optics recently announced the acquisition of network analytics software provider nMetric.

• NetApp's Tom Georgens: How we got big, stayed nimble, and view storage today

  Those of us with a bit of institutional memory recall a brash upstart named Network Appliance that burst onto the storage scene to challenge EMC -- itself once a brash newcomer -- and other storage royalty like IBM. But that was 20 years ago, as difficult as that seems to believe, and the company, now named NetApp, is $5 billion-plus storage leader in its own right.

• CIOs highlight BI, virtualisation and cloud computing as key to competitiveness

  An IBM survey of 2500 international and 129 local CIOs suggests business intelligence and centralisation of IT systems through virtualisation and cloud computing will be crucial to remaining competitive in the coming months.

• IT managers seeking new tools that can analyze Web 2.0 data

  Some IT leaders look to new offerings that analyze data from corporate blogs, social networks.

• How IT could have prevented the financial meltdown

  In the coming weeks the feds and the surviving financial services institutions will have the daunting task of unraveling all the securitized loans and other instruments that are hiding the toxic investments. But does the technology exist to do that? And if so, could it have been used to prevent the bad debt from hitting the fan in the first place?

• Building a new window into crime

  By combining business intelligence and two foundations of Web 2.0 -- search and mapping -- a police department in the US state of Kentucky has built a brand-new window into crime. This Web-based BI portal allows patrol officers to enter data -- or even pieces of data such as a few numbers from a license plate -- into a simple search interface and retrieve information from their own databases and those of neighboring towns.

• Analytics vendors show there's still innovation in BI

  Managing data isn't as glamorous as many of the glitzy Web 2.0 apps on display at the Demo Fall 2008 conference in San Diego, but it's what keeps businesses running. Enterprise applications to speed databases, manage unstructured data, and handle BI queries on a massive scale made their debut this week, and at first blush they look positive. Of course, all will have to stand the rigor of real-world use and testing.

Whitepapers about business intelligence

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  Forecasting & Planning - Achieving the correct staffing levels with continually fluctuating demands

  Managing a high performing service operation in today’s complex environment requires a complete rethink of the way the operation is managed. Accepting current capacity without a real understanding of the fluctuating demand will lead to inconsistent performance. This white paper looks at the applications and processes available to achieve a balanced demand capacity curve, which will deliver consistent high quality service, satisfied customers and good margins.

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  Visual Collaboration: Boost Employee Productivity and Drive Customer Interaction

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  Storage Virtualisation - What to Know and What to Look For

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  Building Virtualised Datacenters and Private Clouds: The Critical Role of Unified and Converged IT Infrastructure