I'm still in recovery from writing a few guest posts over on Paul Greenberg's CRM blog over at ZDNet. I put together a list of companies I'm keeping an eye on in 2010 I'm calling my Ish List... no, it's not what you think.
Ish is short for CRM-ish, and the company on that list are providing products and services that are aimed at helping small business find, catch and keep good customers. I talk about why these companies have caught my attention, and what I'm looking for out of them. Here are a links to parts one and two:
One name you won't find on that list is IBM. Let's face it most people don't think of IBM when it comes to serving the small business sector. That may be changing with the Lotus Live service they're rolling out.
Ripped right from the Lotus Live site is their description of the service:
"LotusLive provides a range of capabilities - host online Web presentations, choose from our hosted e-mail options and network inside and outside of your company. And the best part is, all of these tools work together!"
Being curious about how serious IBM is about the small business market, I caught with friend and small business technology analyst (and fellow University of Delaware alum) Laurie McCabe after she just returned from the Lotusphere conference. Laurie shares her opinion of what she saw at Lotusphere, what Lotus Live has to offer small business, and whether or not IBM is really ready to fight for the little guy against Google, Microsoft, Zoho and a host of other players. We even get a chance to reminisce a bit about the very first Technology For Business Sake show, as Laurie was our first guest!
To hear the conversation click on the player below, or download the mp3 file by clicking here.
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