First Coffee for 26 December, 2006

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

First Coffee for 26 December, 2006

By David Sims

[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a Glenn Miller swing set:

Funniest line in a news story so far today: “The claim by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was based on reporting by Hamas activists who observed the counting in the polling stations, the group said…”

A latest global survey reveals that “the theft or loss of personal or financial information is the number one concern among consumers worldwide,” according to a results reported in Comtex Environment.

The Harris Interactive survey was commissioned by Visa International, and found that “theft or loss of personal or financial information” was the number one concern among 64 percent of consumers worldwide, edging out environmental degradation (62 percent) and terrorism (58 percent).

Other major issues for the consumers are job losses, disease or epidemics, and natural disasters, the survey says. The release of Chris Selland’s all-time favorite movie, Miss Congeniality II on video and the possibility that Sandra Bullock might be possessed by Satan to make Miss Congeniality III scored only slightly below Iran’s nuclear arms program and Asian bird flu.

Seventy-seven percent of the Chinese surveyed are “highly concerned” about having personal or financial information lost or stolen, 13 points higher than the worldwide average, the survey shows. Seventy-six percent of Indians were likewise concerned about lost or stolen information, but only 52 percent of Japanese and 48 percent of Australians.

“Corresponding to China’s overall concerns, an overwhelming 90 percent of the Chinese reported that they are more concerned as a result of what they have heard or seen in the news over the past few months regarding people’s personal or financial information being lost or stolen,” Comtex says.

In Nigeria, the number one concern was that there are fewer and fewer moneyed morons taking those “Hi, my name is Obutu Obsanjano, and my father’s a dictator who wants to put $27.8 million in your bank account” e-mails seriously, as most fools appear to have gone separate ways from their money by now. At least fools with e-mail addresses and bank accounts.

Twenty-one percent of Chinese consumers consider it “very” or “extremely” likely that their personal or financial information will be lost or stolen in the near future.

“More than 6,000 consumers in 12 countries including Australia, China, India, Japan in the Asia Pacific region responded to the survey,” Comtex reports, “which was conducted in November and December 2005 by Harris Interactive.”

Network vendor Netcentrex and T-2, which claims to be the first company to offer VDSL Internet access and triple play services in Slovenia, have announced that
T-2 will use Netcentrex for its IP-based communications management and
delivery
.

T-2 launched services on Slovenia’s residential and corporate communications markets in October 2005, using Netcentrex’ MyCall Residential Services suite and Business Services suite. The services run on the CCS application softswitch platform, connected to an SMC SS7 signaling and media controller to ensure call control between the legacy and IP networks. The solutions are IMS compliant.

T-2, a Maribor-based company owned by financial firm Zvon Ena Holding, thinks it has a shot at gaining 25 percent market share and becoming Slovenia’s leading alternative service provider over the next few years. To this end T-2 is deploying triple play services combining traditional Internet access with fixed telephony, video communication and 120-channel digital television using VDSL technologies.

Siebel’s fourth quarter 2005 total revenues were $469 million, about 30 percent above analyst consensus expectations, and up 35 percent sequentially, and 19 better year over year. License revenues for the quarter were $215 million, beating analyst consensus expectations by a whopping 73 percent, up 92 percent sequentially, and 34 percent year over year for this Siebel’s last quarterly report as an independent entity.

OnDemand total contract value was up for the fourth quarter of 2005,$16 million, up 43% sequentially and 66% year over year, but still not what the company was hoping for when they launched the hosted product.

The reason the results were so out of whack with analyst expectations is most likely a flurry of last-minute deal-doing before Siebel’s swallowed up by Oracle at the end of the month. Still, you’d think analysts would have taken that into account when they issued their projections. I would have, anyway. Not being an analyst or playing one on TV, though, what do I know?

Operating income was $116 million, $5 million, or one percentage point over the high end of the preliminary results range, up $80 million. Still it’s up 220 percent sequentially and up $50 million, or 77 percent, year over year. Net income was $89 million, up $54 million or 156 percent sequentially and up $35 million, or 65 percent year over year.

Earnings per share for the quarter ended December 31, 2005 were $0.16, a ten cent or 167 percent increase sequentially and a six cent or 60 percent increase year over year. Total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2005 were $1.43 billion, a seven percent increase from 2004.

The company’s cash, cash equivalents and short term investments were $2.39 billion as of December 31, 2005, reflecting net cash generated during the fourth quarter of 2005 of $147 million. And as of December 31, 2005, the unchopped head count was 4,686.

Telindus Group NV has announced that it has signed a five- year contract with Amdocs to standardize its global customer help desk on Amdocs customer relations management software, according to the Israel Business Arena. No value was disclosed.

“Under this contract, Telindus has already deployed Amdocs CRM in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK,” IBA reports:

“Amdocs CRM is replacing Telindus’s several disparate CRM support systems with a unified, state-of-the-art platform for a single view of the customer. Standardizing on Amdocs CRM enables Telindus to adopt information technology infrastructure library best practices.”

Happy Australia Day, folks, that day we celebrate the great culture which gave the world Vegemite, Ned Kelly and Olivia Newton-John and which tries to claim bungee jumping. Thinking about Australia reminds me of our recent month in New Zealand, and I have one question: How can an Auckland bar named The Loaded Hog not sell t-shirts?

Calypso Wireless, Inc. is claiming that Calypso ASNAP Session Controller is “the first Open Source Seamless Mobility solution that hits the market,” and with Calypso ASC and Calypso C1250i WiFi-GSM Dual Mode VoIP Smart cellular phone users “will be able to seamlessly connect between cellular mobile GSM network and WiFi networks and enjoy new added services such as broadband connectivity and wireless VoIP services.”

ASNAP works with Asterisk’s IP-PBX starting with release 1.2.2 making ASC an Open Source solution for seamless mobility.

Alfredo Sarrazin, Vice President of Sales of Calypso Wireless, Inc. says the combination of Calypso ASC and Asterisk Open Source solutions offers “rich and flexible feature sets like Voicemail, Conference Bridging, Call Queuing and Call Detail Records.” Asterisk offers both classical PBX functionality and advanced features, and interoperates with traditional standards-based telephony systems and VoIP systems.

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