Online Travel Continues to Boom

According to RBC, within the U.S., online travel sales account for 43% of total travel sales. That number is projected to increase marginally to 44% by the end of next year. Analysts believe that increased online sales will be driven by the continued adoption of mobile devices. Meanwhile, online travel sites are expanding their international

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Laef Olson, CIO of RightNow (Part 7)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: Let’s talk about moving to Google Apps or Google e-mail at some point. Right now you work on an Exchange platform. You have developed all your applications on top of the Microsoft environment. Now if you move to Google, all of that investment kind of becomes

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Laef Olson, CIO of RightNow (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: Based on my research, I see a distinct trend [toward] interesting private cloud deployment. LO: Very interesting! What would you say is the driver; I am curious to know. SM: I think it’s cost that is the driver, which is why I was probing that, to

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Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Laef Olson, CIO Of RightNow (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: How do you handle pricing for a situation such as the private cloud deployment for the Department of Defense (DoD)? Your primary product is on a per user per month subscription model, right?

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Laef Olson, CIO of RightNow (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: What is your take on security in the cloud? As part of delivering this enormous infrastructure to your clients, you obviously have to worry about data security. What is the data security strategy that you deploy for your cloud-based infrastructure?

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Laef Olson, CIO of RightNow (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini SM: I see. So you use your own offering for CRM within RightNow? LO: Yes. We use our own system out of the cloud and have our own dedicated team that manages it separately from how we do that for our clients. For our expense management, we

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Deal Radar 2008: UpTake

UpTake is a travel site that offers users options to help them plan themed trips such as kid- or pet-friendly trips, girl getaways and romantic escapes. The site caters to the millions of people who have yet to decide what type of holiday they want – where to go, what to do, where to stay,

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Catching Up on Readings: Design In The 21st Century

Time for another round of recap since the last one on May 10 … See what you have missed, and catch up.