Have you ever experienced application crashes on your Windows PC? Hours of work lost to nirvana with unsaved data files. This in the happiest cases. The worse scenarios involving stealth bugs parasiting your PC's memory with the single goal to steal your secrets,  to copy out what you type as you type, or just to turn your computer into a zombie networked to online holdups.  Here's an interesting solution addressing the issue right to its inner core, it's suggestively called DieHard Software:

 AMHERST, Mass. – Today’s computers have more than 2,000 times as much memory as the machines of yesteryear, yet programmers are still writing code as if memory is in short supply. Not only does this make programs crash annoyingly, but it also can make users vulnerable to hacker attacks, says computer scientist Emery Berger from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
 
 With such problems in mind, Berger created a new program that prevents crashing and makes users safer, he says. Dubbed DieHard, there are versions for programs that run in Windows or Linux. DieHard is available free for non-commercial users at www.diehard-software.org .
 
 Berger developed DieHard together with Microsoft researcher Ben Zorn. Berger has received a $30,000 grant from Microsoft, a $30,000 grant from Intel, and a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for his work on DieHard.
 
 Almost everything done on a computer uses some amount of memory—each... (more)

Survey says...Oracle users want support for Windows and SQL Server

By Chris Gonsalves, VARBusiness
 Fri. November 10, 2006
 
From the November 13, 2006 VARBusiness

Love it or hate it, there 's little doubt Microsoft is at the top of your users' wish lists when it comes to platform support for enterprise apps.

In a recent study, an overwhelming majority of end users polled said they rely on Windows Server and SQL Server support for their ERP and CRM applications .

New CRM on-demand release from SAP, by Barney Beal, News Director at SearchCRM.com:

SAP AG today released the third module in its CRM On-Demand suite, adding service capabilities to the existing sales force automation (SFA) and marketing tools.

Executives at the Walldorf, Germany-based company voiced skepticism early on about the benefits of on-demand applications, or Software as a Service (SaaS). However, according to analysts, companies like San Francisco's Salesforce.com began installing its own systems in SAP's customer base. SAP responded and first launched an on-demand CRM application with SAP Sales On-Demand in February and followed it up with Marketing On-Demand at its Sapphire user conference in May. read more

Richard Roach gives us 10 things to think about before contracting an SaaS/on-demand software slution for our business:

When it comes to deciding between implementing a software application in-house or using an on-demand service provider many organizations would follow the same rationale. In fact, research from analyst firm IDC predicts that spending on software-as-a-service will reach $10.7 billion by 2009.

Go get the rest of the article, together with the 10 points before considering your small biz switching to on-demand software services .

Chris Talbot writes on echannelline.com:

 More and more small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are thinking about mobile data applications. While SMBs have lagged behind enterprises in the deployment of mobile data, they are now starting to see how it fits into their businesses and can provide productivity benefits, said Russell Morgan, president of ITSPA.

According to a new Yankee Group survey, 60 per cent of small business owners have already implemented or are planning to deploy mobile data solutions over a cellular network. Compared to 2005's survey results, when 54 per cent of small business owners said they would not implement mobile data applications, this is a significant leap forward, Morgan said.

read more on SMBs implementing mobile data apps