For decades, IT vendors have offered small 's' solutions that were really bundles of hardware, software and services that they wanted to sell regardless of what customers actually needed. Now firms such as Dell, IBM and EMC are using analytics to help customers decide which products are best for their needs. Oracle, HP and others struggling with big 'S' solutions may get left behind.

Microsoft is preparing to launch a new version of its Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) software that will include improved mobile applications and integrations with Yammer, Skype and the company's MarketingPilot marketing automation software.

You don't need a big budget to be successful with social media, according to Walmart's director of social strategy. Here are five steps your business can follow to reap the benefits.

For a product once described as Twitter with a business model, Yammer is becoming more nuanced, morphing into an important feature set that will cross over among Microsoft applications. Just as important, it continues seeing growth and popularity among businesses, where it can act as a hook that can encourage current Microsoft customers to upgrade and adopt Microsoft cloud services.

Kirsten Lynch, CMO at US-based Vail Resorts, says her partnership with the CIO leads to better guest experiences.

Upcoming integration points between Yammer and Microsoft products will include email interoperability, document collaboration and enterprise search, as Microsoft pursues its plan to make Yammer a common enterprise social collaboration layer across its business software.

The freewheeling flow of information on public social media sites may cause many people in conservative, highly regulated industries such as financial services to shudder. But one Canadian firm has taken the plunge, believing its employees can use social tools in a safe and ultimately profitable way.

As one of the computer scientists who created the Internet's TCP/IP protocol, Vinton Cerf is concerned that much of the data created since then, and for years to come, will be lost.

Microsoft has taken the first step in its integration roadmap for SharePoint and Yammer, allowing Office 365 customers to replace SharePoint Online's activity stream with Yammer's.

Marketo says it has created tools that put it far ahead of rival marketing automation software vendors by making it much easier to run targeted campaigns, and more effective ones to boot.

SAP is buying privately held Hybris in a bid to build out an e-commerce software offering that connects with customers across multiple "channels, devices and touch points."

Emerging markets and lower prices will push worldwide smartphone shipments close to the billion-unit level this year, according to the latest forecast by IDC.

Salesforce.com's pending US$2.5 billion purchase of marketing software vendor ExactTarget will help it develop a new $1 billion annual revenue stream and set the company on a clear strategic course for the foreseeable future, according to Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff.

Most analytics tools put data in an historical context. That's all well and good, but if what if you want to use past data to gauge future performance? That narrows your analytics options. These six tools will help you make practical use of your data in order to make business decisions.

Yoking cognitive computing with customer service, IBM has launched a system that can reference large amounts of unstructured data to help companies better field customer phone calls.

Yahoo has confirmed widespread reports that it will acquire the popular blogging service Tumblr, and also promised not to "screw it up." The deal is worth about US$1.1 billion, nearly all in cash.

Big data may seem to promise big insights to users, but more isn't always better, cautions statistician Nate Silver, who became one of America's most well-known faces of data analysis after his FiveThirtyEight blog accurately predicted 2012 presidential election results in all 50 states.

UK-based airline group, easyJet, is trialling mobile boarding passes for passengers but they have to first use an easyJet app to do it, which doesn't run on Windows or BlackBerry phones.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has laid out a new strategic and thematic direction for his company, saying that its goal will now be to help clients become "customer companies," with the end result being greater success.