By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is The Allman Brothers’ magnum opus, 1972’s Eat
A Peach:
The war between SAP
and Oracle
is escalating now that SAP’s combing through Oracle’s client base as part
of a “telephone market research survey” trying
to get JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users to switch to SAP products.
And they’re having some luck: Industry observer Sandra
Rossi writes that “in its first round of calls,
30 percent of recipients agreed to hold talks with the German software company,”
according to SAP Australia managing director Geraldine McBride.
“Two years ago these customers
wouldn’t talk to SAP, but now they are interested; they want to get off the
frog march of upgrades they are on and take control of their maintenance spending,”
McBride tells Rossi. She doesn’t expect JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers to
immediately migrate to SAP, but to make incremental moves.
“For examples, they can keep their AS/400 on the backend and just add SAP
analytics, CRM or portal technology,” she says.
Part of SAP’s strategy was to
acquire TomorrowNow at the beginning
of this year. TomorrowNow provides support to JD Edwards and PeopleSoft systems,
so the fact that they’re a “fully-owned subsidiary of SAP” gives them access to
over a hundred Edwards and PeopleSoft – i.e. Oracle – clients.
No doubt Oracle will have a return
volley soon. This could get interesting.
…
Parature, a provider of on-demand customer
support software, is announcing this morning that TrialSmith, what Parature calls “the nation’s largest online
deposition bank for plaintiff lawyers,” has selected Parature’s customer
support product.
Having end users with demanding schedules – those ambulances
run all night, y’know – TrialSmith wanted to provide customer support 24/7
without having to hire additional staff during non-business hours. Kent Hughes, president of TrialSmith said “in
addition to providing 24/7 support, we needed a solution that could track the
hundreds of calls” during business hours – you know, the “Whaddya got on
McDonald’s?” and “John Wayne Bobbitt department please.”
First CoffeeSM is not a lawyer, although he has
read quite a number of John Grisham, Scott Turow and John Lescroart novels, and
nothing in this article should be misconstrued as legal advice, beneficial or
otherwise, and family members and employees are not eligible and if you act
before midnight tonight batteries are not included, but as far as he can
determine TrialSmith is the service formerly known as DepoConnect, where if you’re
a lawyer and you’ve got a client who wants to sue Budweiser because his
girlfriend got drunk on Bud longnecks down at the river one night and broke up
with him, you search their database for expert testimony that has appeared in
other cases where someone’s had a similar case, or depositions that might help
you win your case.
In most cases this reporter’s found defense attorneys, the
ones representing the doctor who’s being sued for malpractice, are not allowed
to use the service.
…
Vancouver- based TenDigits Software Inc., who works with
Microsoft CRM apps for BlackBerry is launching
its “TenDigits Alliance Program,” aimed at providing MobileAccess to its
partners who support the deployment of Microsoft CRM.
MobileAccess gives BlackBerry users immediate access to accurate MSCRM –
changes to the data are instantly stored on the BlackBerry device as well as
the office system.
TenDigits has recently signed on 20 partners in key markets in North America
and Europe including Vox Wireless, ePartners and AI Informatics GMBH.
The program’s really for organizations that deploy Microsoft
CRM, and wireless carrier partners who are looking for some way to snazz up their
BlackBerry offerings.
Bart Hammond, Chief Executive Officer of Interlink,
a MSCRM provider says his customers “have been asking us for a wireless option
for Microsoft CRM that leverages BlackBerry devices.”
…
San Francisco-based Global IP Sound, a provider of embedded
voice-processing tools for the VoIP market is announcing that it’s received $6.38 million in funding.
The company issued 3.5 million new shares at a share price of 12 NOK. They’ll
use the funds to “capture the expanding VoIP market opportunities in both technology
and market positions,” according to company officials.
Gary P. Hermansen, President and CEO of GIPS said the
company has “set our sights on capturing significant market share in the
booming Asian market and on exploring new opportunities in the mobile and video
markets.”
In 2004, Global IP Sound executed over 30 new license
contracts and expanded its customer list to more than sixty active accounts.
Corporate revenues increased 267 percent over 2003, for a positive cash flow
for the year.
The company plans to continue to develop new
voice-processing technologies that help application developers, as well IP
phone, gateway and chip manufacturers, improve sound quality and ease of
implementation in voice over packet networks.
…
EagleACD, a provider of IP hosted call
center products, today announced that Pronto Networks has upgraded its customer
support infrastructure worldwide with EagleACD’s hosted call center services.
Already in operation for six months, the new global call
center has “greatly improved efficiency while reducing overall operating
expenses for Pronto Networks,” according to EagleACD officials.
Pronto Networks, a leading provider of carrier-class OSS products
for large-scale WiFi hotspot networks and citywide hot zones, serves a broad
global market. It liked EagleACD’s predictable pay-per-use pricing model.
…
It was seven days ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to
play – no, that Taleo Corp. released their Taleo Business Edition 6 at the
2005 Society for Human Resource Management Conference and Expo. Designed for
small and mid-sized organizations, TBE 6
is an on-demand “talent management” product.
This isn’t an area First CoffeeSM normally
covers, but it’s interesting. The idea behind “talent management” is that is
cuts costs and increases the quality of selection for the hiring process – in
press release boilerplate, “Taleo Business Edition allows customers to manage
requisitions, candidates, careers web site, and the full hiring process.” It
basically seeks to be a single product for both contact management and sourcing
and recruiting.
Along with dozens of other serious start-ups Taleo –
formerly known as Recruitsoft – copies salesforce.com’s
by-subscription model, it’s run by former PeopleSoft exec Michael Gregoire and
it saw about $60 million in revenue last year, one-third of salesforce.com’s
$176 million and roughly equal to fellow on-demand vendor RightNow Technology’s.
Taleo’s competitors include Webhire,
Brass Ring, PeopleClick, Softscape
and Hire.com.
According to a good intro to the topic on ZDNet
India, talent management is “a small but growing niche of the $14 billion
human resources software market.” Programs such as Taleo’s do things like
store, rank and sort resumes for an instant searchable database of job
candidates. Reports are that the software “has helped companies fill positions
more quickly and reduced paperwork,” according to IT researcher AMR Research.
The fledgling market generated about $156 million in license revenue last year,
by AMR’s estimate.
Prices for Taleo Enterprise Edition are
between $75,000 and $125,000 a year for a company of over 10,000 employees, the
SMB version starts at $99 a month per licensed user.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content – and never drinks decaf, either.
