By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Johnny Cash’s 2000 gospel retrospective, cleverly titled God:
Yesterday First CoffeeSM looked at Epiphany,
and afterwards received a polite note from Gordon
Evans, in Epiphany’s corporate communications department. Evans said that the ComputerWire article First CoffeeSM noted was mistaken in their analysis of how much
cash Epiphany has on hand.
“Always known for being cash rich,” ComputerWire wrote and First CoffeeSM quoted, “in the
second quarter 2004 the company had a $93.4 million cash pile, but by the
fourth quarter 2004 this had dwindled to $18.1 million, and at the end of the
first quarter 2005 it stood at $21.5 million.”
“I do want to point out,” Evans
wrote, “that Computerwire, while putting together a very balanced article, did
include some incorrect statements about our financials.
“In fact we have more than $250
million in cash on hand as of our last earnings report Q105, and have had
anywhere between $250 million and $272 million on hand over the last year.”
First CoffeeSM looked
up Epiphany’s results for the quarter ended March 31, 2005 and found
Epiphany CEO Karen Richardson quoted as saying “I am pleased that our results
were within our financial guidance and we maintained our strong cash and
investments balance of approximately $250 million.”
The other information was as ComputerWire had it, and if anything the second quarter looks
grimmer for Epiphany – for the quarter ending June 30, 2005, they currently
expect total revenue to range between $15.5 million and $18.0 million, with
license revenue ranging between $4 million and $6 million. Net loss per share
on a GAAP basis for the second quarter is expected to range between $(0.12) and
$(0.14), of which approximately ($0.05) will result from restructuring charges
of up to $4 million.
First CoffeeSM does not have an accounting
background, and is more than willing to be corrected in this – as well as any
other – area of ignorance, but knows “cash” is not an exact definition. First
CoffeeSM wonders if “cash” and “cash and investments” are
interchangeable terms – if we’re talking about cash and investments that can be
quickly converted into cash, or if ComputerWire’s
subtracting debt for a net cash figure, or what. First CoffeeSM has contacted them for a clarification of their figures, but has not received a reply.
In other words, First CoffeeSM wonders if both ComputerWire
and Richardson aren’t technically correct. Confusing $250
million and $21.5 million sounds more like a confusion of terms than a
confusion of figures, especially since there’s no reason to doubt Evans’s word
and First CoffeeSM has found ComputerWire pretty reliable in
the past.
…
Access
Co. Ltd. And Japanese firm Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
have announced a collaboration to
develop a joint mobile IP telephony product. They’ve developed a “mobile IP
telephony environment that integrates Internet browsing with VoIP,” and plan to
“commercialize” the result, according to officials from both companies.
The VoIP Integrated Client
Environment is the mobile IP telephony environment that links Access’
NetFront Mobile Client Suite, a software suite for mobile devices, with Oki’s
VoIP technology. The NetFront Mobile Client Suite integrates software
components including a browser, a messaging client, and Java.
Toru Arakawa, president and CEO of Access said the system is
designed to work in various environments, including overseas IP telephony
markets: “Going forward Access will work toward realizing a ubiquitous mobile
society by integrating its mobile terminal software technologies and Oki’s VoIP
systems.”
It will be displayed in the Access booth at the 8th Embedded Systems
Expo & Conference in Tokyo Big Sight from June 29th to July 1.
Founded in 1881, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. is Japan’s first
telecommunications manufacturer.
…
Nuasis
is announcing that it has integrated its
software-only, IP-based contact center system with Oracle CRM.
The Nuasis NuContact Center
handles customer inquiries via the phone, e-mail, Web and fax. The integration
of the Oracle CRM application with the software-only, IP-based Nuasis contact
center system extends the CRM investment, theoretically increasing contact
center efficiency and productivity.
When CRM applications are integrated with the NuContact Center,
companies can immediately “pop” existing customer information from the CRM
database onto the contact center agent’s desktop. Nuasis reports that nearly
100 percent of its customers are integrating their CRM applications with the
NuContact Center.
…
SASFest
winds down in Lisbon today, with
participants free to sample the joys of the beautiful Portuguese countryside
through the weekend.
At SAS Forum International
2005 more than 2,000 attendees, according to SAS’s figures, have convened
to “share their successes, learn from peers and experience the latest SAS technologies,”
and hear that SAS’s steady success in
selling business analytics and intelligence products is continuing.
SAS, of course, the privately-held software giant in Cary, North
Carolina has always been about business intelligence, and the wrap-up from
SASFest shows that not only has that not changed, if anything the emphasis is
stronger.
Nothing earthshattering was introduced at the forum – a new
forecasting product which’ll ship at the end of the year – it was mostly a time
for rallying the troops, hearing presentations, strengthening networking and chuckling
as SAS CEO Jim Goodnight chided
Microsoft, Oracle and SAP for selling buggy software and providing lousy
customer service.
It’s the mantra of SAS that business intelligence and analytics, in
the words of Dr. Goodnight, “help create knowledge for faster, more accurate
decision making.” This is a message that’s repeated from the top down. If ever
an organization believed that knowledge is power, it’s SAS, whose slogan is “The
Power To Know.”
SAS has always been steadily successful, a fact reinforced with some
of the numbers cited at SASFest – worldwide first quarter sales for SAS
Strategic Performance Management were up 20 percent over the same period in
2004, while sales of SAS Activity-Based Management jumped 43 percent over last
year.
As a privately-held firm SAS does not have to file public quarterly
statements or reveal financials, although their 2004 annual
report shows revenues of about $1.6
billion. And since revenues have been increasing steadily year-on-year since
the company’s founding in 1976, there’s no reason to think that’ll change any
time soon.
…
Want a good cup of coffee in
the neighborhood but not Starbucks? Hit www.delocator.net, enter a zip code and get a
listing of both Starbucks and “non-corporate” cafes within five miles.
The site’s the “brainchild of xtine Hanson, a member of an artist’s
collective based in California,” according to AFP.
Delocator isn’t run by the typical brainless anti-Starbucks chowderheads who insist it’s responsible
for the death of local coffee shops. Such morons conveniently forget that there
essentially was no coffeehouse culture in the United States until Starbucks
arrived, and that independent coffee shops have exploded right along with
Starbucks – in the past fifteen years the number of coffee shops has increased fifty
fold, only one-third of which are Starbucks.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content – we pick our own stories, music and beer.
