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Over the next few years, the growth in online retail sales in markets such as Western Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America is expected to outpace U.S. growth. Given this increase in cross-border e-commerce, many retailers are rushing to reach new markets. However, the unique circumstances of international shipping call for unique systems and process capabilities. Cross-border shipping is more complex than domestic package handling, and international buyers do not like surprises. Organizations that fail to address complexities up front end up with a poor customer experience, low sales revenue and higher-than-expected costs.

For all the anticipation leading up to Facebook's initial public offering, opinions about how it performed are decidedly mixed. Clearly, though, the market didn't think the stock, which started at $38 per unit, was a grand bargain: Facebook ended trading on Friday just a few cents over its opening price. Underwriters reportedly had to step in during the day to support the price. More than 460 million shares of Facebook stock traded on Friday, a record for trading volume.

As Facebook launched its IPO on Friday, it was hit with yet another class action lawsuit over its practice of tracking of users even after they had logged out of its website. The amended consolidated class action complaint was filed by Stewarts Law in a San Jose, Calif., federal court. The timing of the announcement "is a good way for the plaintiffs to generate publicity for the lawsuit, which could impact stock prices and, accordingly, exert leverage to settle the case," said Yasha Heidari, managing partner at the Heidari Power Law Group.

Samsung overtook Nokia to become the world's top cellular phone maker earlier this year, shipping more than 92 million handsets in the first quarter. The company's Galaxy S II smartphone had stellar sales, reaching 20 million. The third time might be more than the charm -- it could be big on an intergalactic scale, with some 9 million pre-orders reportedly placed for the upcoming Galaxy S III, which will debut in Europe on May 29. Those pre-sale numbers do raise a couple of questions, however -- not the least of which is whether they will translate into actual sales.

Wearing his trademark hoodie, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg virtually rang Nasdaq's opening bell from Silicon Valley this morning to kick off the start of what will be a very interesting Friday. This is, of course, Facebook IPO day -- the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated initial public offering of the social media giant. It's an event that is being watched closely not only by Wall Street, but also by untold numbers of retail investors and even people who take little interest in stock market fluctuations.

HP is planning significant layoffs with the aim to increase efficiency and focus on new products, according to a recent report citing an anonymous source. The company could lay off more than 30,000 workers, or nearly 10 percent of the company's total workforce of 324,000. The large-scale cuts are reportedly part of CEO Meg Whitman's effort to rebuild the company. Whitman took over as CEO last September, taking the reins from Leo Apotheker.

In the U.S. market, the percentage of broadband households owning and connecting at least one product to the Internet has increased 45 percent between 2010 and 2011. Today, approximately 40 percent of all U.S. broadband households own at least one Internet-connected device, with game consoles accounting for 75 percent of these products. The increase in the adoption of these technologies offers manufacturers, pay-TV providers, advertisers and content owners new revenue and growth opportunities.

This spring has seen a raft of software company events and announcements, and they've been good meetings full of real news and important new developments. It is as if these companies bided their time during the worst of the recession, building new product, thinking about the future and how customers will use their technologies. It was time well spent. This week, SAP, NetSuite and others have held meetings, and more good news seems to be emanating from their conferences. I attended the NetSuite SuiteWorld event in San Francisco, and that's what I want to write about here.

Twitter has made an important overture to privacy advocates: It is giving users the ability to opt out of being tracked on the service by enabling the Do Not Track feature in the Firefox browser. Ed Felten, chief technology officer for the Federal Trade Commission, broke the news at an industry event Thursday morning in New York. The company later confirmed it in a message on Twitter. It is a significant move for Twitter, because tracking users with persistent cookies is controversial, said ESET Security Evangelist Stephen Cobb.

The image-based social networking site Pinterest has raised $100 million in a financing round, and this brings the value of the company to around $1.5 billion, an unnamed source told All Things D. Rakuten, one of Japan's biggest online retail operators, led the round of financing. It was joined by a group of investors including venture-capital firms FirstMark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. Pinterest reportedly will use the funds to develop country-specific websites such as Pinterest China.

Verizon will reveal a new shared data policy this summer and end its unlimited data option, according to CFO Fran Shammo. Currently, the company allows customers that had a $30-per-month unlimited data plan before Verizon's switch to tiered plans last July to keep their unlimited plans when they upgrade their phones to LTE devices. That option will soon be eliminated, said Shammo, at the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in Boston.

Google is extensively updating its search function with the rollout of a new Knowledge Graph. The heart of the Knowledge Graph is a database Google has compiled, via its own research and through its acquisition of MetaWeb Technologies, of 500 million people, places, things and points of history. That, coupled with a refined approach to search, will yield an experience aimed at better determining the searcher's intent and then providing a more-targeted, detail-rich list of responses.

RIM execs have invited me to dinner for an off-the-record discussion. I have asked a truckload of questions about them over the last few years here in this column and in media stories. Let me ask you: What are the big questions I should ask them now? What do you want to know about RIM? When it comes to RIM, the big question I want to start with is, how will it turn the ship around? Everyone is wondering whether it will recover. Will Research In Motion become a hot and growing company once again? Will BlackBerry become the smartphone on everyone's mind and clipped to everyone's belt once again?

There's always a danger of reading analysis by others that matches your own personal experience and then simply using it to build up the foundation of what you know and believe. But hey, danger can spike adrenaline, and I like adrenaline, so check this out: Information technology research firm Gartner released a report about its worldwide tablet sales projections for 2012. While Gartner expects sales to rocket up 98 percent from 60 million units to 118.9 units, it still expects the Apple iPad to overshadow all other tablets sales.

Customer service is a crucial part of the customer experience. That seems immediately obvious. And customer experience is the big buzzword right now, so companies are going bonkers revamping their customer service operations. Right? Would that it were so. Almost paradoxically, many businesses are still stuck in the mode of tweaking with utterly defective customer service processes, thus fatally contaminating any attempts to create better customer experiences. The problem's root is a classic one that has imploded many a CRM effort in the past: Leadership's vision of customer experience ends with the conclusion of a sale.

General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook because the ad campaigns are not paying off in any measurable way. At $10 million, the company's ad spend on Facebook is relatively small. The reaction to GM's decision, however, has been disproportionately big. The timing of the news, of course, has much to do with the furor. Facebook is two days away from a blockbuster initial public offering whose projected $104 billion valuation is highly predicated on projected advertising revenue. GM's decision stirred debate because it highlights a nagging sense of uncertainty marketers have expressed about Facebook.

Two years after its initial attempt to sell Nexus smartphones directly to consumers flopped, Google is apparently trying to revive the strategy. This time, though, it's added a few new touches. It's going to work with up to five device manufacturers at a time to create a portfolio of Nexus-line devices that include smartphones and tablets, and it will sell direct both through its website and possibly through some retailers, according to a report.

After months of legal wrangling between technology titans Oracle and Google, phase two of the case has headed to the jury, where 11 good people will decide whether Google actually infringed on Java-related patents, and more importantly whether this was a threat to Oracle's business. The two patents in question were actually acquired by Oracle when it bought Java maker Sun Microsystems in January of 2010, more than a year after Google launched its first Android handset. Oracle subsequently sued Google, claiming both patent and copyright infringement. If infringement occurred, did it result in $6 billion in damages?

The U.S. government's pursuit of cloud-based technology has been characterized by a blizzard of policies, directives, technical studies, proposed contract vehicles and conferences. The federal "cloud first" initiative, requiring agencies to give priority consideration to cloud solutions for IT operations, began in December 2012. Now, an idea of how much business is at stake for IT vendors has surfaced -- and it's impressive. However, IT vendors should not conclude that two recent hefty contracts mean federal floodgates have opened and a wave of eye-popping contracts will be awarded soon.

SugarCon, the SugarCRM user meeting held in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, did some important things for Sugar. It was a coming out party of sorts for a company with a distinct business model and strategy, namely open source. It was also validation of that strategy and, for many, a new realization of what open source means. In my discussions with CEO Larry Augustin and CTO and cofounder Clint Oram, I got a new sense of how pervasive open source really is in the software marketplace.

Apple computer users might soon have a thinner, lighter version of the MacBook, according to numerous reports. The new design will apparently still bear the "MacBook Pro" name but will more closely resemble an Ultrabook -- thin, light and affordable PC laptops. It will supposedly feature a high-definition screen similar to the ones found on iPhones and iPads. Perhaps most importantly, the new product wouldn't compromise battery life or memory for the sleeker design.

Groupon delivered earnings that pleasantly surprised shareholders. The daily deal provider reported a net loss of $11.7 million, a huge improvement from the $146.5 million it lost a year ago in its first quarter as a private company. It also posted stronger-than-expected revenue for the quarter, at $559.3 million -- an 89 percent increase from the same period a year ago. Despite the net loss, the results are a welcome sign of growth for Groupon, which has been under the gun for shoddy accounting practices, disgruntled participating merchants and disillusioned shareholders.

Half of Americans believe the social network giant Facebook is just a passing fad, and a similar number believe the expected asking price in its upcoming IPO is too high, according to a new poll. Since the dot-com boom of the 1990s ended with a dot-com bust, many once-dominant players have fallen by the wayside. Before there was Facebook -- or even competitor MySpace -- there were AOL, Compuserve and GeoCities. Today the latter two are just memories -- Yahoo's GeoCities live on only in Japan -- while AOL's presence is much diminished. Will Facebook share their fate?

Nvidia and Intellectual Ventures have partnered to buy a set of patents developed and owned by IPWireless. The patent portfolio comprises approximately 500 wireless patents, including in such areas as LTE, LTE-Advanced and 3G/4G technologies. The acquisition is viewed as another sign that the company is getting more serious about diversifying beyond its gamer-friendly graphics cards. For instance, the portfolio is believed to be complementary to its Tegra processor with LTE connectivity, which is expected to deliver in 2013.

The Sapphire Now conference kicked off Monday in Orlando, Fla., with 60,000 customers, partners and employees of SAP participating, either at the conference facility or watching it online. The first day of the event offered the usual lineup of celebrity speakers -- corporate and otherwise -- with Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong featured in the morning and SAP Co-CEO Bill McDermott delivering his keynote in the afternoon. In between the corporate presentations, SAP's marquee customers described their use of the enterprise vendor's business applications.

The U.S. government is learning quickly that achieving the next big thing in information technology depends upon implementing a huge number of little things. For federal IT managers, that big thing is the cloud. Federal agencies have busily pursued cloud solutions since December 2010, when the government adopted its "Cloud First" policy, requiring agencies to give priority consideration to cloud technologies, including a mandate to implement a first round of deployments by mid-2012.

Embattled Yahoo has a new interim chief executive. It announced Sunday that Ross Levinsohn, the company's global media leader, would take over as interim CEO following Scott Thompson's departure. Thompson's exit comes amid controversy over an unearned computer science college degree listed on his resume. Also leaving the company are several board members: Chairman Roy Bostock, and directors Patti Hart, VJ Joshi, Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson. Activist investor Daniel Loeb has won a long-sought seat on the board, along with two of his close allies, Harry J. Wilson and Michael J. Wolf.

Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin, a Brazilian native who is currently a resident of Singapore, has given up his U.S. citizenship. The widely-held assumption is that Saverin wanted to escape the tax liability he would assume from the Facebook initial public offering, expected as early as this week, by becoming a citizen of Singapore. Through statements made by representatives in the media, Saverin has denied that motivation, saying the move would make it easier to manage his affairs, many of which are now Asia-focused.

Facebook is testing a new feature that offers to promote users' posts and status updates for a fee. The new service is currently only available in New Zealand. There, Facebook users can pay $2 to "highlight" a post, making it more visible to a greater number of their Facebook contacts. Users can pay via credit card or PayPal. Facebook confirmed the trial launch and said it was one of many ideas it's considering to increase user engagement on the site.

CRM Conference is being held May 29 to 31 at the Chicago Hyatt Regency. This annual event offers a unique agenda for retailers, said Devon Wylie, CEO of CRMC. "It's specifically focused on case studies from topnotch multinational retailers. With this approach, attendees can get actionable learnings they can take home with them." The conference will offer three streams: basic loyalty and strategy; analytics implementation; and social and mobile. "Social and mobile is a new piece," Wylie said. "While we have touched on it in the past, this year it's hitting mainstream."

It now falls to CIOs to not only rapidly adapt to cloud computing, but to find the ways to protect their employees and customers as they adopt cloud models, even as security threats grow. This is a serious -- but not insurmountable -- challenge. Cloud computing has clearly sparked the imagination of business leaders, who see it as a powerful new way to be innovative and gain first-mover advantages, with or without traditional IT's consent. This simply now means that the center of gravity for IT services is shifting toward the enterprise's boundaries -- moving increasingly outside their firewalls.

It pays to advertise, right? Not necessarily, as Oracle found out when it tangled with IBM recently over advertisements in which Oracle claimed its servers were faster and much less expensive than IBM hardware. Unlike Oracle's headline-grabbing Java copyright and patent infringement suit against Google, Big Blue didn't spend big bucks to take on Oracle in court. Oracle's latest tussle with IBM, after decades of disputes between the two high-tech titans, is also noteworthy for the fact that it was fairly straightforward, and Big Blue didn't have to spend big dollars to take on Oracle -- at least, not this time.

Dish Network began offering a new service Thursday that lets users skip all commercials for shows broadcast on major networks when watched the day after the programming first aired. Dubbed "Auto Hop," the feature on Dish Network's digital video recorders allows users to bypass commercials on recorded HD prime-time programs from ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. Most DVRs allow users to manually fast forward through commercials, but Auto Hop is an exclusive Dish feature, the company claimed. Viewers can start using the feature at 1 a.m. Eastern on the day after the show aired.

The Facebook IPO roadshow -- a crucial time for the company -- is well under way, and the company's CEO has been in the spotlight. It was no doubt expected that Mark Zuckerberg would ditch his trademark hoodie for attire more befitting the circumstances, but no. At the few events Zuckerberg has attended, including the launch event in New York, he has sported the hoodie. By now the hoodie is perhaps something of a joke to Zuckerberg. For everything he has accomplished, one can almost hear him thinking, this is what people choose to focus on? From that perspective, it is easy to understand why Zuckerberg continues to wear it.

A Chinese company that claims it owns the rights to the iPad name reportedly refused to settle its claims against Apple for $16 million. The company, Shenzhen Proview Technology, was apparently offered $16 million by representatives of Apple to drop its challenge of Apple's right to use the iPad trademark in China. Shenzhen Proview, which is currently in the Chinese equivalent of bankruptcy, is reportedly looking for $400 million from Apple. Originally, it sought $2 billion from the make of the iPad.

The debate about the viability of cloud alternatives has given way to a new set of discussions about how to maximize the value of today's rapidly evolving cloud services. This new round of deliberations centers on the right approach to planning, selecting, deploying, administering, and optimizing the performance of cloud-based applications and other resources. Smart IT organizations are recognizing that they can no longer fight escalating end-user adoption and executive interest in cloud alternatives to traditional on-premises systems and software.

Zoho has enhanced its menu of offerings by incorporating social media into its customer support features. It has also added a Facebook social media integration point to its flagship application. The changes went live on Thursday, added automatically to the applications. These two developments -- the Facebook integration point and the social media enhancements to the customer service features -- are modest compared to the company's massive overhaul to its suite at the end of last year. "We still view it as important for our users and for the direction we are taking Zoho," said Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna.

Deutsche Telekom is rumored to be pursuing a merger between T-Mobile and MetroPCS Communications. How the merger may be executed appears to be a moving target at the moment. It could take the form of a stock-swap, giving Deutsche Telekom control of the combined entity, or it could be an initial public offering. Deutsche Telekom reportedly is considering an outright sale of T-Mobile as well. Also, there are other companies Deutsche Telekom is said to have lined up for negotiations along any of these lines.

The Oracle v. Google copyright infringement and patent violation trial is continuing with the second phase, despite key unresolved issues from the copyright portion of the case. Following the jury's partial verdict earlier this week, Google is seeking a new trial on the copyright phase. Meanwhile, as arguments over whether Google infringed on Oracle's Java patents get under way, it is clear that the jury will be presented with much of the same testimony and evidence that was central to the copyright portion.

Recently, I gave a speech at a company and one of the executives raised an interesting question: Will Apple or Google -- or both -- enter the wireless networking fray, just as both have become competitors in the smartphone side of the business? I believe the answer is yes. How is the question. When Apple and Google jumped in with the iPhone and Android OS, they quickly transformed the entire smartphone sector. If they jump into the network space, they could upset another apple cart just as dramatically and just as quickly.