2004---Enterprise software gets interesting for a bit...
2004--Enterprise Software Old School: Oracle's battle for PeopleSoft was mildly entertaining. Er, that's about it . ..
2004--Enterprise software New School: The Salesforce.com IPO was a key turning point, despite CEO Marc Benioff's last-minute gaffs. I like Marc -- he is a larger-than-life character and Silicon Valley needs more like him -- it would give me plenty to write about.
Marc Benioff: The valley needs more larger-than-life characters
Also, let's not forget RightNow Technologies' IPO, one of the hottest performing IPOs of this year, and kudos to RightNow for not taking an acquisition offer from a much larger rival this time last year. Too bad Diane Greene at VMware didn't do the same, and accepted EMC's $635m acquisition bid a year ago. At least she insisted on cash. Still, web services are definitely the future, and so is virtualization, lots of virtualization.
2004--Outsourcing/offshoring: Everybody's doing it. Nobody wanted to talk about it though. It was a hot political topic so everyone kept their heads down.
