As you can see from the new layout of this Newsletter, DSG has a new tagline – Cloud Accelerated Business – and we're going social. Read more, hop in the DSG CAB and enjoy an accelerated ride to Cloud success!

Social Media is now mainstream. We've all heard the statistics – if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest in the world, there are more tweets every day than phone calls, etc. But what you may not have heard is the increasing body of evidence about how businesses are benefitting from social media. For example, according to research from The Society for New Communications Research, blogs are now the fourth most commonly used source of online information for executive decision making.

So it seemed not just the right time to launch DSG's blog but also to embrace social media, and launch our "DSG Goes Social" program. This program extends DSG's presence onto Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and we'd like to invite you to participate by liking, following or recommending us on these sites and, in return, we'd be happy to do the same for you. And of course, a good old fashioned recommendation to a friend is always appreciated!

Part of this program includes a new look to our newsletter and our website. We want to find the best ways to get timely information out to our customers and we'd like to engage you in conversations to create a more meaningful dialogue. We'd like to start with your feedback on how well our blog, newsletter, website and webinars are meeting your information needs and we encourage your ongoing comments and questions.

So that's our plan. The same trusted DSG content but shared as a more timely two-way communication. Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

NetSuite's 2011.1 release is packed with new features. DSG has been a beta for this release and are therefore in a great position to help accelerate our customer's success as they implement this new release. Here's a sneak peak at a few key features and the new Demand Planning module:

• Bills of Materials Reporting on Assemblies - this makes it simple to see the build requirements for an assembly including all the components used in the multi-level bill of materials structure in an easy-to-read nested hierarchy.
• Enhanced Period Close Management - NetSuite now provides support for locking individual periods and modules from posting to ensure greater control throughout the close process.
• Search for Customers Based On Date of Last Order - you can now search for customers based on the date of their last order or their last sales transaction.
• Increased Support for Currency Formats - NetSuite greatly expands support for additional currencies bringing the overall total to over 190 currencies supported.
• New Module! Demand Planning - with this new module, purchasing and inventory managers can project demand for items based on historical data, trends or sales forecast; plan inventory levels and then create purchase and work orders to meet anticipated demand.

The Salesforce.com Spring Release had a number of updates that are worth noting.

• Chatter - continues to be enhanced and can now be managed centrally; file sharing is supported as is the Twitter-style use of the '#' sign to show hash topics and, most importantly, Chatter can now be accessed via iPhone and Blackberry smart phones.
• Sales and Service Clouds Enhancements - this release supports email attachments of up to 5mb and email can now be associated to any object; Knowledge is enhanced to support multi-language and a toolbar on the Service Cloud Console and, lastly, a new report builder is available to all users with greatly improved filtering logic.
• Force.com - sharing rules can now be based on field values on the object; many Apex limits are increased or removed; the Google Chrome is now officially supported and a new process designer call Visual Workflow is now generally available. This tool will allow you to build complicated workflows and it will generate Visualforce pages that can be linked to your base application.

For more information, see
www.salesforce.com/customer-resources/releases/

There is a perfect storm driving the Cloud as companies of all sizes use SaaS applications to reduce operating costs and increase the effectiveness of their sales, service, operations and finance systems. DSG has been at the forefront of this move to the Cloud and has partnered with leading ERP and CRM SaaS vendors like NetSuite and Salesforce.com to accelerate business performance. With its objective approach and proven Launch and Optimize methodologies DSG provides the right Cloud solutions to customers and drives business success while reducing cost, risk and time-to-value. To learn more about how DSG can cloud accelerate a business visit: www.DSGcloud.com.