Salesforce.com will include some new analytics capabilities at no additional cost with the Enterprise and Unlimited editions of its CRM (customer relationship management) software, following complaints from customers who argued that the features should have been used to fill long-standing gaps in the products' core functionality, not sold separately.

Increased sales, increased participation, increased engagement. It doesn't sound like a game, but those are some of the goals, and reported achievements, of the new field of "gamification."

IT spending by banks will grow to $173.3 billion this year, up just 2.8% over 2011 and well short of an earlier forecast that pegged growth at 4.3% in 2012, according to research firm Celent. In fact, IT spending in banking is expected to be weak over the next couple of years.

Self-service procurement. Self-service business intelligence. Self-service recovery. User provisioning in private clouds. It's a wondrous world for end users today as IT departments roll out tools that hand them the reins to the data and services they desire, whether it's instant access to their employee benefits accounts or a deep dive into corporate data stacks that were once off-limits.