February 2006 Archives

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is John Cage’s compositions Music For Prepared Piano, Vol. 2, performed by Boris Berman. A little break from the Louis Jordan and Robert Earl Keen, the way William Gaddis is a little break from John Grisham or Stephen King:

Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. has announced that Vodafone K.K., a mobile operator in Japan and a subsidiary of Vodafone Group Plc, which bills itself as “the world’s largest mobile community,” has selected Oki’s face recognition middleware for their mobile phones.

The “Face Sensing Engine” enables instant face recognition using the camera on mobile phones to restrict access to mobile phones. FSE will be embedded in the Vodafone 904SH, manufactured by Sharp, which is planned for launch in late April 2006 and future Vodafone K.K. 3G mobile phones to be launched in Japan.

Gee, no loaning your phone to anyone except your twin sister or brother.

Masao Miyashita, President of Network Systems Company at Oki Electric. claimed the FSE has the industry’s fastest authentication speed for mobile phones, saying “an owner’s face can be instantly verified.” He said his company plans to “provide such products to the embedded market for entertainment devices as well as to the mobile phone market by combining FSE with our other products, such as FaceCommunicator-E2.”

In some ways Oki’s FSE could be more convenient than password-protected phones, in which users need to input the data to release the lock. FSE can instantly verify the owner with the industry’s fastest authentication speed, company officials claim, as soon as the owner looks into the camera. Oki claims their authentication method is “less likely to be affected by brightness,” so “verification can be done in various situations both indoors and outdoors.”

But in other ways, unless you’re hyper-paranoid about cell phone security, it could be a dreadful pain, as there would be no way for your wife to call for help when you’re out camping and your face has been mauled by a bear.

To facilitate its face recognition function, the FSE includes functions to detect facial characteristics including the location of the eyes, eyebrows and mouth, and a function to track facial characteristics that calculates the changes in locations, which occur due to changes in facial expressions.

…

Stora Enso and Orion are introducing a series of pharmaceuticals packages equipped with Radio Frequency Identification tags to pharmacies. Stora Enso’s PackAgent software is used to authenticate the products throughout the supply chain.

The pharmaceuticals produced by Orion Pharma and distributed by the wholesaler Oriola are sold in selected pharmacies in Finland and Estonia, and the success – or failure – of the program will be watched closely by countries and firms around the world.

“We are using item-level identification and the tags are read at every stage of the supply chain. Our PackAgent software verifies the item ID and uses it for product authentication,” explains Kirsi Viskari, Manager of Intelligent Products at Stora Enso.

The pharmaceutical company Orion Pharma is participating in this trial in anticipation of future requirements. If traceability becomes mandatory in the United States, for example, Orion Pharma will have to add an RFID tag to all their packages sold on that market. At present, tracking is based on the batch number.

The trial covers the whole supply chain, and is conducted using Orion Pharma’s anticoagulant drug Marevan. The packages are manufactured by Jaakkoo-Taara, and the pharmaceuticals are distributed to the pharmacies by the wholesaler Oriola and its Estonian subsidiary.

“For Orion Pharma, the trial is an opportunity to gather experience from the use of RFID technology in tracking deliveries and authenticating products in a commercial environment. We are looking for ways to streamline our logistics operations and co-operation with our suppliers and to put us in a better position to face future challenges as regards the traceability of products,” says Markku Huhta-Koivisto from Orion Pharma.

RFID is seen as one way to combat the presence of counterfeit drugs in the phamaceuticals industry.

Stora Enso’s PackAgent product is based on the Trackway software developed by Stockway, a Finnish specialist software provider.

…

Just amazing, reading about the Enron fiasco, stuff like the Associated Press’s report of how the discovery of a tray of uncashed checks from a California utility worth tens of millions of dollars under an Enron Corp. trader’s desk was “bad news” for the company’s retail division, “as accountants dug into its chaotic billing and losses in early 2001.”

“Basically, Enron’s risk books already assumed we would be receiving these checks,” the AP reports former Enron accountant Wanda Curry as testifying Monday as the fraud and conspiracy case against its former chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, and founder, Kenneth Lay, entered a fifth week.

“We began a quantification effort to know what the exposure was, not only what was received, but what we expected to receive,” she said.

Curry’s project, assigned by Enron’s chief accounting officer Rick Causey and dubbed “Deep Dive,” the AP reported, revealed “wildly overvalued contracts along with the uncashed checks, like those from Southern California Edison.”

“The number grew to millions, hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Curry, who had been directed by Causey to “stop the bleeding.”

This might be cruel, but here’s a press release Enron issued from February 2001, as millions of dollars of uncashed checks were turning up under employees’ desks:

Enron Corp. was named today the “Most Innovative Company in America” for the sixth consecutive year by Fortune magazine.

“Our world-class employees and their commitment to innovative ideas continue to drive our success in today’s fast-paced business environment,” said Kenneth L. Lay, Enron chairman and CEO. “We are proud to receive this accolade for a sixth year. It reflects our corporate culture which is driven by smart employees who continually come up with new ways to grow our business.”

Enron placed No.18 overall on Fortune’s list of the nation’s 535 “Most Admired Companies,” up from No. 36 last year. Enron also ranked among the top five in “Quality of Management,” “Quality of Products/Services” and “Employee Talent.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea to grow our business: Let’s cash the checks people send us!”

Gasps of surprise. “Why, Martin, how… innovative!” (Aside: “What a talented employee!”)

$101 billion company when this press release was issued, the sixth-largest corporation in the world, one of the most admired companies in America. By the end of the year the stock was junk and the company was in Chapter 11, thousands of people having lost life savings and thousands out of work.

…

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is “What’s The Use of Gettin’ Sober (When You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again)?” by Louis Jordan:

Fueled by continued demand for ERP and CRM equipment, small and medium businesses in the United States are on track to spend $2.2 billion on enterprise software this year, up 10 percent from last year, according to a recent report from AMI-Partners.

“More MBs in the U.S. now seek to streamline and automate business processes and thereby maximize the value from their current assets,” says Sau Lam, New York-based research analyst at AMI-Partners.

Lam thinks the healthy growth” for enterprise software spending comes mainly from medium businesses, defined as those with 100-999 employees. He suggests that “many of these MBs also want to ensure they meet new regulatory requirements and see automation as the best way to do that.”

The halcyon days of the huge, multi-million dollar land grabs, installing IBM, Coca-Cola or First Coffee^SM with CRM systems are long gone, the sweet spot for ERP and CRM vendors these days is the SMB market, emphasis on M.

ERP itself is becoming a mainstream application for MBs, AMI’s research finds. Currently, 31 percent of MBs use ERP products, a percentage which will only go up with “close to a quarter of MBs indicating their interest in adopting ERP products in the next 12 months.”

CRM adoption is also higher among MBs than among SBs. Over half of MBs currently use and/or plan to use CRM products in the next 12 months, compared with 23 percent of SBs. Although ACT! and other packaged software offerings are most prevalent, survey data shows salesforce.com gaining traction in both small and medium businesses.

Salesforce.com would do well to speed up that $50 million overhaul of their service to avoid such obnoxious service outages as happened on February 9^th, lasting for over an hour. Load balancing’s a great idea, it makes an even better reality.

Adoption of such hosted, software-as-services products is low, but growing, AMI found: “A majority of SMBs have yet to embrace the software as services model, but pervasive high speed Internet access, growing awareness and wider availability of products will fuel future growth across many application areas. Currently, less than a fifth of SBs and 27 percent of MBs use or plan to adopt SaS and hosted applications.”

Those who do adopt on-demand CRM such as that peddled by salesforce.com are generally low-tech types of companies, and not likely to have in-house capabilities to glide past service outages, making such lapses on the part of salesforce.com even more aggravating, according to David Dobrin, an analyst at B2B Analysts Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. Are their service outages “an artifact of their changeover to a more robust, dual data center model?” he asks. “Is it a size problem? Are they having the same problems with their hardware and software vendors that other people frequently have?”

AMI-Partners’ report, “2005-2006 U.S. SMB Applications & Products Market Overview and Assessment,” tracks a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support.

…

It’s the day to catch up on market studies of CRM, evidently, as according to a recent IDC study, the Western European market for CRM applications reached $2.55 billion in 2004, evidently the proverbial last year for which reliable data can be found.

The five major countries – France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. – made up 72 percent of the total market. Siebel and SAP each led five vertical industries.

IDC’s still flogging the report, itself written at the end of 2005. Seems to me the proper response to such knowledge at this point, however, is “Oh. Hm, gee.” Studies like this are great, but it’s almost March of 2006, one wonders how much business value can be extracted from knowing what things were like at the end of 2004, it’s like knowing what your girlfriend looked like a couple years ago. The point is…

Predictably enough, though, “SAP has sold its CRM product in the industries where it has a strong ERP installed base such as manufacturing, transport, and utilities,” said Bo Lykkegaard, program manager, European Enterprise Applications. Lykkegaard also finds that Siebel defends its turf in industries where it has developed industry-specific offerings, such as finance and communications.

Who’ll win in the future? That, Lykkegaard says, will be determined by factors such as the ability to transition to a service-oriented architecture and increase usability and ease of deployment of their CRM products.”

The largest vertical segment in the Western European CRM applications market is finance, followed by communications and discrete manufacturing. Siebel leads in communications, retail/wholesale, finance, government, and education and healthcare, while SAP leads in discrete and process manufacturing, transport, utilities, and business services, the study finds.

The U.K. is the largest single country market, followed by Germany. Vendor ranking across the five countries shows SAP dominating in Germany, while Siebel leads in France, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. Presumably such trends have held true in the past 14 months, it not being a static world.

There are a few exceptions at the country/industry level, such as Oracle’s lead in government in the U.K. and SAP’s lead in utilities across Western Europe, except the U.K.

…

Over the weekend First Coffee^SM heard from yet another happy camper who made the mistake of ordering from Caiman.com:

Look, I’ve ordered online extensively for many years. I’ve never filed fraud complaints before. They jerked my refund about for MONTHS after repeatedly lying to me about a product they never had. It took the intervention of the authorities to shake my money loose.

It was too late for me to leave eBay feedback. They’d stalled me out. I’m not angry, I’m aware. I posted here to provide feedback which can be taken into account for those inclined.

First Coffee^SM, himself victimized by Caiman.com’s false “ship-by” dates, is surprised how his account of the bad experience has brought forth so many accounts of similar – and worse – experiences with this one vendor, which is still allowed to sell on Amazon.com, eBay, and other online markets.

It’s gotten to the point where a significant number of burned customers are getting law enforcement’s attention, as another customer tells me, and Amazon.com might finally be waking up:

Well, they never delivered, and it was definitely NOT a hard to find item that I ordered. Again, this was not just myself, but 3 other classmates as well. The REAL problem is that many people don’t bother to give any feedback on the Amazon site...however, when I talked to the customer service people at Amazon I was told they have received numerous complaints and “A-Z Guarantee” claims lately, and are researching if they should stop Caiman.com from being able to do business through them.

And not being angry Kelly, but if you want to talk about the “truth”, don’t go by what a few people may or may not have said on Amazon’s site, contact the Florida state Attorney General’s office- I did...there have been a LARGE number of complaints filed, and Caiman is being looked at for possible fraud charges.

Oh one more thing...by the way, the comment that “there is always the option to cancel...” well no, with Caiman there is not. They supposedly ship within 2 days (which has also been shown not to be the case) and once they have “shipped” they can/will no longer cancel an order. Tried that one when they failed to deliver.

The bottom line for such companies, who damage the credibility of online commerce itself, should be obvious. Here’s hoping Amazon.com and other online commerce sites do the right thing by their customers.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bob Dylan’s The Bootleg Series, Vols. I – III (Rare and Unreleased), 1961-1991.

Boy, it’s another sign of just how great this guy is that songs like “She’s Your Lover Now,” “Moonshiner” and “Blind Willie McTell,” which would be career highlights for most any other singer-songwriter of the past 50 years, are throwaways which end up on the cutting room floor until they’re swept up and put in bootleg anthologies ten, twenty, thirty years later. Astounding.

We’ll move on to other things soon, but just to wrap up the comments First Coffee^SM has been getting on the GlobeTel coverage. Again, like salesforce.com’s AppExchange, I don’t vouch for any of these comments, they might be true and they might not, I’ve weeded out the obvious loons but that’s the thing about loons and liars, they’re pretty tricky. If you make any investment decisions based on what somebody said anonymously, well, I guess you probably do a lot of other stupid things too:

Incidentally, GlobeTel CEO Tim Huff has not responded to my requests for an interview, and the law firm GlobeTel claims represents them in Moscow, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, has not gotten back to me to confirm the representation one way or the other, they don’t list GlobeTel on their web site’s chronology of recent clients.

And there’s a good summary of GlobeTel’s stock on Zachary Prensky’s Upside Surprise stock-tracking blog, that’s an area First Coffee^SM doesn’t cover as such, my interest is in their $600 million Russian Wi-MAX deal, see Zach’s blog for the stock market part of things.

Oh, and happy birthday to Sharon Sims. Love you, Mom.

Kicking off:

“Good bit on GlobeTel, right on the mark. Here is a scoop for you, GlobeTel and MGWB are about to do some big time business together. MGWB is a company called Magicweb run by a Nobel Prize guy named Dr. Becker.

“It will make GlobeTel look like they know what they are doing and save face from this Russian deal that looks to have gone south.”

Another one:

“Enjoyed your article on GlobeTel. Yes I am an investor and have been in ADGI>GlobeTel for over 7 years now.

“Hopefully this is the year our company comes of age.

“Thank you for the interesting snapshots of the various investors’ insights and viewpoints on the stock.

“And yes I am from Istanbul. Immigrated to Canada in 1962 when I was 10 years old. Am quite familiar with the environs on the Sea of Marmara and the Asian suburbs of Istanbul, (Kadikoy and Uskudar).”

Another one:

“I saw that some of the comments discuss all the great equipment that GlobeTel has. One question that must be asked is if any of the equipment is certified in Russia. I doubt it. That will add another 4 months to their implementation.

“I also saw the comment that GlobeTel is working with China Railcom and other operators around the world. Some of these operators are highly suspect. For example China Railcom (which has now changed its name) has very little traffic, but will speak to everybody. It’s no ‘big deal’ to get them to sign anything as long as they don’t have to commit to delivering correspondent traffic.

“Having worked on a lot of emerging market projects, I see holes in almost every claim GlobeTel makes.”

Another one:

“Well, what can I say? Your writing intrigues me. You tell the story almost like writing plot and sub-plots of a Tom Clancy novel. Complete with suspense, doubt, twists and turns, your writing is very entertaining. I have nothing bad to say about your article.”

Another one:

“I see where one investor believed that GlobeTel’s real money was going to be made on the VoIP-International business.

“Well… Russia’s new telecom law that went into place officially on Jan 1 prohibits offering a service like this. Under the terms of the new law any VoIP originating or terminating onto the Russian PSTN, or that terminates internationally, must switched through one of the nation’s long-distance operators. The existing card operators (Zebra, DIrectNet, etc) have all been scrambling to do deals with the incumbents that hold these licenses. The incumbents don’t want the alternative operators to fail, but they will severely limit their profitability.

“Now I think we both know that limiting the growth of VoIP is a regulatory impossibility, e.g., how do you prohibit people from just purchasing the service offshore from one of the thousands of VoIP operators? However, if you are an aspiring Russian operator with ambitions for growth (like GlobeTel), you certainly do not want to be challenging the Ministry of Communications on this. Particularly if you will be seeking their cooperation to get radio spectrum permits, radio plans approved, and equipment certifications for that hot proprietary kit.

“GlobeTel will have no choice but to cooperate with Ministry of Communications and the few incumbents who today have long distance licenses: MTT, Rostelecom, Golden Telecom (eventually Equant, TransTeleCom, and maybe two others).

“Or, GlobeTel could spend another $60 million and build out the requisite infrastructure to be eligible to apply for a long-distance license. This will add another year to their project timeline as well as consume a pile of cash.

“Just nothing about their claims really adds up.”

Another one:

“Caught your article today on GlobeTel and I came at it from a solar/photovoltaic technology perspective.

“I’ve asked the company via e-mail several times going back 2 years as to what solar cells they will use on the stratellite. Response has been zero. Not even a response as in ‘we can’t divulge’ or ‘proprietary,’ just silence.

“There are very few sources for solar cells for the Stratellite and frankly I would be surprised if GlobeTel has arranged supply agreements with a single one... but GlobeTel no doubt would say... stay tuned.

“I’m too busy to stay tuned to their PR machine which sometimes appears to be the core of the company.”

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

A second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?” to the delight of my colleague Michelle Pasquerello here at TMC, one of the enlightened individuals who appreciates Louis Jordan’s genius:

Amazingly, it seems the tinfoil-lined baseball hat brigade has decided to stop hassling me about my GlobeTel coverage (“Why are you criticizing this company I’ve invested in? Who are you really working for? Send me your biography.” I swear I’m not making this up), and, I don’t know, go protest global warming for interfering with their Studebaker stock or something.

As a result, I’m getting intelligent comments from people with money invested in the company, as opposed to stupid comments from morons with money invested in the company.

Some of them write a lot about what technology they claim GlobeTel has, or the great plans GlobeTel has, and while it’s interesting, I don’t have the expertise, time or inclination to verify if what these people say is true or not, my interest in GlobeTel is in their audacious $600 million Russian Wi-MAX bid, since that’s the market I cover, I’m not a stock analyst or company analyst, I report on interesting things happening with wireless.

But these folks, who in most cases do have a financial interest in the company, remember, seem to be a distinctly more literate and informed breed than the first onslaught I got when I dared criticize some pennystocker’s baby, so I offer them, unvouched for and uncorroborated, nothing herein should be construed as an offer or buy or sell securities, act before midnight tonight, batteries not included, these are trained professionals, don’t try this at home:

“As a GlobeTel shareholder. I wanted to say that I enjoyed your article today. All that is ever asked for is some balance. And real investigative journalism.

“One other thing. If you could get Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, to confirm they are the law firm handling the transaction, I believe that would go greatly to confirming there is a real and serious deal here. I have not been able to get a response from them. I hope you can.

“I do like the fact that you folks are holding Mr. Huff’s feet to the fire. But only when you present the whole picture as you did today.”

A bit later, from the same guy:

“Here is some more ammo about Cleary, Gottlieb. They have a web page that shows recent assignments. GlobeTel is not on this page. It would seem that if they are willing to post this information that we should be able to find out about GlobeTel:

http://www.cgsh.com/english/news/news.aspx

“Happy hunting. Here’s hoping I don’t need a life preserver.”

Another one:

“My personal feelings is Huff is getting his ducks all lined up for the move to the NASDAQ. The SP has to move a bit north of $4, though, before compliance is met, but, if all his divisions fire on all cylinders, he does have a winner.

“On a more personal observation, I see you are reporting from a base in Istanbul. I spent a few years roaming that area back in the late 60’s while stationed in Karamursel, just a ferry and hair-raising taxi trek on the other side of the Marmara Sea.

“The Golden Horn was intoxicating, under a more relaxed political climate, and the women as dark and intriguing as the chi.

“Blend in and don’t look nervous *Last words to Billy Hayes as he left the pudding shop across from the Blue Mosque* (We both rented rooms there).

“*Laughing*”

Another one:

“I am a very middle of the road type, not willing to bet away my earnings, but I have followed the GlobeTel story for a few years. This is by far the most interesting time for this company. Irons in the fire at GlobeTel include high-altitude airship testing scheduled this month and sky-dragon airship demos as seen on the GlobeTel website, as well roll-outs of Gcash debit card transactions, margins from switched telephony, combined offering with 2 developers and manufacturers for VOIP equipment GlobeTelX, StrateVoip POS platforms, and of course the potential HotZone Wireless WiMax deals in Russia and Germany.

“I just wanted to write and let you know that before the Press Release of GlobeTel of the Russian Deal in December 05 – I have been very happy with the company’s progress. I do not claim to be overjoyed with extended timelines, but I communicate regularly with several GlobeTel investors and we all agree that in the last 4 years – the company has made excellent progress…

“You do know that Tim Huff has put his reputation on the line? He believes this company will be profitable sales and marketing company and we will see this in the results by the end of year, or else he will step down. I think these details are important to not overlook – and your readers deserve the complete story.

“I just wanted to say again, that I enjoyed your article. I found it a good read and I think you have a very neutral tone which is what GlobeTel deserves – but that is in my opinion.”

Another one:

“Unfortunately, it seems that you guys have not done your research. In Germany, Uli Altvater is considered one of the pioneers in Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks. To understand why GlobeTel has major contracts in play in China (China Railcom), Russia, Japan, Germany, Mexico and other Latin American nations, you need to understand what GlobeTel brings to the table.

“The offering that GlobeTel has is a ruggedized outdoor basestation that can operate in extreme weather conditions, ala Russia and the statosphere. Although broadband internet connectivity is obviously part of their offering (80MB/S per basestation), the real prifts will come through the DECT phone service, which allows any Digitally Enhanced Cordless Telephone to be able to connect within the network and also use VoIP to allow international calling.

“As the biggest cost in network deployment is the CPE cost, DECT phones (with messaging) can be bought for around $20 and many people in Europe already have them in their homes.

“Further, GlobeTel also has a unique solution that allows for IPTV based on the DVB-RCT standard. The final kicker is that GlobeTel is developing a High Altitude Rigid Airship Platform that the Russians very much want to be a part of. Near Space technology has almost unlimited applications, especially over rural areas and for use in Homeland Security, Military, Pipeline Monitoring, etc….

“It seems apparent to me that Mr. Meyer, who speaks fluent Russian, was brought on to help finalize this deal and with this now in hand, he will find someone who does not have other commitments…

“Having seen first hand the rugged zip drives that the US Army uses to transfer map files, I have no doubt that Near Space Airships will be a requirement to protect not only our borders, but also our military. Such airships can also be used to efficiently search for and image areas using ground penetrating radar to find oil or ‘rare earth metals’ such as platinum, palladium and gold, which also are prevalent in Russia.

“Of course it comes down to execution and GlobeTel needs to execute. If you had bothered to talk to Mr. Altvater, you would understand how he blew away the Russians and walked in and quickly enabled DECT phones inside the DUMA, along with wireless broadband and media. The man spent many years at IBM and many years designing communication systems for the German military. His WMAN and WMAN II systems are still operating around the globe, as Germans build quality products that are designed to last.”

Another one:

“I will disclose that my biggest pet peeve with the GlobeTel management right now is their lack of disclosure and secrets. In your article, Nigel said it is somewhat normal to harbor a few secrets. I believe that to be true. The problem with GlobeTel is that it seems – in pure Tom Clancy style – the operations are ‘black bag’ secrets and shareholders are left in the dark.

“The SEC filings are very clear in the operations to date, but it has not been profitable so there is no credibility. As a shareholder, I would like more than LOI, but I am a patient person looking to score on the long side (and trade some in the short term…) So, we (collective shareholders) are left wondering and hoping that Huff is a man of his word.

“On Huff… in his defense, he has been very clear with shareholders and available in the past years with open letters to shareholders. He would address questions one-by-one in the older days, and was working his ‘3 year plan,’ (which btw is now in its 4^th year). It has only been since NASA, and the subsequent change from OTC to AMEX, that things really started to get quiet.”

Another one:

“Go to Cisco or Lucent’s web page and try to find a WiMax product. You can’t do it. None of the big boys are ready to roll out WiMax yet. As I said, the only big U.S. company to try is Verizon. Why haven’t they tried to penetrate the Russian market? Maybe they think they’ve got better things to do.

“So the question that Seth [Jayson] keeps asking and you keep repeating, ‘why haven’t the big boys done it?,’ is easily answered. They’re not ready to release here, much less there. So would it surprise me that Russian investors are interested in the product? No. Are there an abundance of alternatives if you want to be one of the first to offer WiMax in Russia? No, there really aren’t. Yes, there are some, but not a lot to choose from. If the product is what they say it is, I think the Russian investors are buying pretty cutting edge technology.

“Do I think GlobeTel really has a deal and they’re really going to get $600 million? Dunno. I’m waiting and watching like everybody else. Do I think GlobeTel can really execute on a signed deal? Probably not. I’d be shocked if service and support were adequate once they get a network up, but Russians are accustomed to bad service, right?”

‘Nother one:

“Funny, Robert Earl Keen graces your morning while the haunting lyrics of Dusty Springfield’s ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ seem to greet me every time I check on my investment in GlobeTel.

“‘How it Looks From Russia’ is a fair and objective piece with just enough of a tickler in the closing to make any long wear a sly smile.

“The only time I cringe is when the name ‘Seth’ appears. *GlobeTel longs have taken to wearing garlands of garlic and have been seen brandishing crosses whenever his name surfaces* After all, the rumors abound that Mr. Jayson shares ‘Underoos’ with the hedge funds that are influencing GlobeTel’s sp.

“I thank you for the advance notice of your writing and I look forward to the next installment when Sanswire ll *no blimp ‘ala Seth’ puns here* takes off into the stratosphere, or, *GULP* plunges into the ocean next week.

“The Russian funds will provide the fuel while the flight of the Stratellite™ will make believers of all. *Putting on my best Elmer Gantry face*

“…..all while the haunting strains of Dusty run rampant through my head…..”

And another:

“GlobeTel was buying the equipment from HotZone Wireless, so they were getting it on the ‘open market,’ but they purchased HotZone around the middle of last year, IIRC, so now GlobeTel is manufacturing the hardware themselves. WiMax hardware is hardly a commodity product at this point. The first certifications to the standard just occurred last month (no GlobeTel’s equipment has not been certified to the standard yet, but they do claim that if adjustments need to be made their product is readily upgradeable).

“So, while you can probably buy WiMax hardware on the open market, it’s hardly readily available. GlobeTel’s product is the only one I’ve heard of that incorporates Dect phone capabilities. Whether or not that’s really valuable is a matter for debate.

“My point is that the statement you keep referring to actually shows some technical ignorance on your part. No, it is not a simple thing to go buy millions of dollars of Wimax equipment from another vendor to go install and support in Russia. Vendors at this stage are not ready to put Wimax equipment on the shelf at your local Best Buy. All of the big names are still developing and testing. The only major company that I know of to try to release a version of pre-Wimax is Verizon and they’re not selling their equipment to the competition, no matter how small.”

And:

“It really is an interesting story to watch, and an interesting study on how people invest. Not on real facts, but on reading the hype on the message boards.”

Caveat emptor, sports fans.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is - here’s a surprise, something you’ve never seen here on First Coffee^SM before, better be sitting down – Robert Earl Keen’s What I Really Mean:

Sage Software has been busy with the ol’ publicity mill here recently, trumpeting their Dublin deal a couple days ago and now announcing that Yocream International, Inc., a leading producer of frozen yogurt marketed under the Dannon Yocream Frozen Yogurt brand, has implemented Sage CRM to “automate sales processes and enable consistent information sharing for its on-premises and field sales representatives,” according to Sage officials.

Yocream also uses the Sage Accpac ERP system to manage its general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, inventory control and order entry processes.

“Our biggest gain from Sage CRM is the ability to share customer and prospect databases with all users,” explained Brad Gaylor, information systems manager for Yocream International, Inc. “We were aiming to better manage leads and accomplish more sales growth, which is what we are seeing as a result of implementing Sage CRM.”

Yocream provides frozen yogurt and beverages for food service distributors who sell to customers at convenience stores, restaurants, schools and hospitals.

Twenty-four Yocream employees use Sage CRM, including nine sales team members who are equipped with the Sage CRM Solo client for remote synchronization. Field representatives use the system on wireless laptops, at home and during travel by synchronizing prospect and customer data to the company database whenever convenient to their schedules.

“There has been a significant increase in communication among our sales team,” Gaylor said. “Our rep in Florida, for example, knows what our rep in Michigan is doing without having to pick up the phone.”

Demand for front and back office applications continues to be strong among growth-oriented small and mid-sized businesses, said Bob Neeser, vice president of CRM sales for Sage Software.

In a related development, according to Datamonitor, Sage has “bought non-exclusive rights to certain Timeline Inc. software patents that automate the design of data marts and OLAP cubes, a move that will guard against possible patent infringement lawsuits down the road.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Datamonitor says, Sage will be provide integrated data mart capabilities within its ERP, accounting, CRM and business intelligence products which are aimed at small and medium-sized firms.

“Timeline, which is based in Irvine, California, is a curious company to say the least,” the research firm writes. “Its corporate boilerplate bills the company as a developer and marketer of patented Microsoft Windows-based financial management reporting software… however it seems the company also makes a fair living out of defending its patents in court, rather than selling software.”

In 2004 the company won $1.75 million from Canadian business intelligence firm Cognos, and has also filed successful suits against Oracle, Sagent Technology and Clarus.

Hey, why get your hands dirty working? Just send out the lawyers and cash the checks. In fact, in recent years Timeline’s gotten rid of most of its actual employees and concentrates on what Datamonitor calls “its patent portfolio.” Translation: They sue other people for a living.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is still the Louis Jordan collection Let The Good Times Roll, this might last in the changer a while, it’s always fun to make new musical discoveries like this:

Junction Networks today announced the release of enhanced hosted PBX services including Voicemail and Failover Routing. These features can be added to existing inbound SIP and IAX2 business trunking services already available and in use by – Junction claims – over 1,000 business customers.

CEO Michael Oeth said that as part of the company’s VoIP offerings, “we have expanded our offering to include hosted services such as Voicemail and Failover Routing.”

Customers can now add voicemail accounts to their existing inbound service from Junction Networks. Additionally, customers can shelter their VoIP communications from internal network failures by forwarding calls to alternate IP PBXs, traditional landlines or cell phones should there be a local network problem.

“Rather than implement their own systems, many SMBs would rather put the management of voicemail in the hands of a company that obsesses about VOIP services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” thinks Robert Wolpov, president of the company. “That’s where we come in.”

Junction Networks voicemail is also available as a standalone service and is available on a wholesale basis to service providers.

...

Patton Electronics is announcing new software for SmartNode VoIP products with new features, including encrypted voice with Voice-over-VPN and automatic IPSec keying with Internet Key Exchange.

The products are aimed at enterprises, banks, and other institutions using Internet telephony.

Voice-over-VPN, a virtual private network that uses the Internet, maintains privacy through the use of IPSec and DES/AES encryption. IPsec is the standard for securing communications over the Internet, while DES and AES offer strong 256-bit encryption.

SmartNode IPSec creates private VPN tunnels for secure VoIP, voice, and data traffic. The tunnels allow users, located in separate offices, to communicate as if they were connected by a single private network, company execs claim: “Now all data, voice and VoIP will be kept from prying eyes and ears while ensuring that all communications came from the trusted source.”

The IKE feature, an automatic security exchange function, is supposed to further enhance the security and ease-of-use for Voice-over-VPNs and data VPNs. By changing the encryption key at user-configurable intervals, say once per hour, IKE greatly reduces the chances of traffic interception.

In addition, IKE simplifies SmartNode deployment by eliminating manual keys, thereby making the encryption software easier to configure and administer. It’s designed so a network administrator won’t have to manually reconfigure SmartNode devices in order to maintain security.

The new SmartWare features are already deployed throughout a large VoIP network at IBM.

…

Sage Group, plc has announced the addition of a Dublin-based localization and application hosting center to its global CRM infrastructure, which company officials say will enable the company to “accelerate the development of localized CRM products to meet country-specific needs,” as well as “provide hosted CRM services to small and medium-sized businesses throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.”

This latest development is considered a major step by Sage, as far as its global CRM strategy introduced in October 2005 goes. Sage’s global CRM organization oversees the company’s Sage CRM Products portfolio, which includes the popular product ACT! by Sage for individuals, small businesses and enterprise workgroups.

“This new global CRM facility is an important step for accelerating the pace of delivering localized CRM products to diverse markets, especially those in Europe,” said Dave Batt, general manager of global CRM for Sage. “The co-operation and support of IDA Ireland in making this possible is a strong endorsement for Sage and our CRM strategy of global reach with local touch.”

Sage is also announcing the creation of its second application hosting center in Dublin which will be responsible for hosting of its expanding number of customer on-line applications. The center will provide additional levels of back-up and disaster recovery operations for both customer and operating divisions worldwide.

The new localization and application hosting center is being developed through expansion of existing Sage facilities in Dublin and is supported by Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency, which has grant aided both initiatives.

IDA Ireland is an Irish Government agency with responsibility for securing new investment from overseas in manufacturing and internationally traded services sectors. It also encourages existing investors to expand and develop their businesses.

In 2006, in addition to continued product upgrades for its Sage CRM Products family, Sage is planning localization of ACT! by Sage into German, French, Spanish and Dutch, and of Sage CRM SalesLogix to German and French.

…

Noted British retailer Marks & Spencer is extending its trial of radio frequency identification technology on individual products, according to industry observer Miya Knights.

The retailer already uses RFID to track fresh foods in its supply chain, Knights says: “The extension moves further into the next phase of using the technology to improve the availability of multiple-sized items, including women’s underwear and men’s suits.” The company’s especially noted for its women’s underwear.

The firm will this week extend the initial item-level tests, launched last year in nine stores, to another six shops, while a further 36 UK stores are earmarked for pilots before the end of April.

Knights says that Marks and Sparks, as it’s sometimes called, scanned its 10-millionth RFID food tray last week:

“M&S became an early adopter of RFID in autumn 2002, using tags embedded into standard trays used to transport fresh food from suppliers to depots.”

This is the sort of thing privacy advocates are afraid of, where companies implant tracking devices into consumer items, and keep track of personal habits unbeknownst to the consumer.

…

ITAP International, Inc., which describes itself as “a cross-cultural consulting company,” is now offering its proprietary Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire to “perform cultural audits on an organization’s global customer service footprint,” company officials explain.

The product is to help companies with the challenge of integrating outsourced technical, back office and customer service operations in countries such as China, India, Costa Rica, Canada, South Africa and the Philippines.

Catherine Mercer Bing, President of ITAP Americas, said auditing customer service performance “has proven really powerful. The tool reveals issues that we are then able to resolve through training, feedback and coaching, and modification of training, learning and teaching approaches.”

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Robert Earl Keen’s What I Really Mean, an album which is, if possible, even better than I had thought at first:

One thing that’s been missing in this whole GlobeTel deal so far is how it looks from the other side. So I decided to get an industry opinion on the Russian angle, since that’s been virgin ground in the journalistic coverage so far.

Of course I have no stake in the company at all, financial or otherwise, and I don’t cheer for companies to fail. I’d like to see these guys pull this off, it’d be a massive coup and shake the Wi-MAX industry up in a good way. If it all turns out to be hot air, that’s no good for anybody – bad for the shareholders, bad for the industry, bad for Russian investment. Nobody wins. And I do believe strongly that stable investment in the former Soviet Union is crucial, so I’d hate to think GlobeTel is playing fast and loose here.

Yet from their lairs in disused missile silos in North Dakota, bought for a good price from the Y2K refugees, the tinfoil hat brigade mutters darkly about the “motives” of journalists who cover GlobeTel’s spectacular Wi-MAX in Russia claims in anything less than sycophantic manner – “why’s this clown dissing my stock? Why doesn’t he just believe GlobeTel’s press releases like I do?”

Actually the better question is, why would anyone take GlobeTel’s claims – any company’s claims, GlobeTel’s, Microsoft’s, Dubai Ports World’s, anyone’s – at face value? But hey, don’t take my word for that. “If I were an investor, there are sure a lot of questions I would want answered,” says “Nigel,” a Brit who’s worked on emerging economy telecom projects, many in Russia, as his career.

The plot so far:

GlobeTel stock shot up 75 percent in a single day in late December after the firm, which describes itself as a “diversified, global telecommunications and financial services company” announced a $600 million Wi-MAX wireless network deal for the 30 largest Russian cities.

GlobeTel CEO Tim Huff predicted at the time that “Russia will, quickly and at a relatively modest cost, have a wireless infrastructure that will rival any in the industrialized world,” according to Red Herring.

He promised GlobeTel would have $150 million of the financing in place by January 31. That deadline came and went, GlobeTel announced that it had extended by 30 days the payment deadline for their Russian partners, LLC Internafta, to present its first payment “so that lawyers and bankers for the parties may continue to work on structuring the payment to be in compliance with banking and currency transfer regulations” in the United States and Europe.

“This is a highly complex international transaction on which all sides continue to work together in good faith,” Huff pleaded. “There are numerous legal and regulatory issues that must be resolved and those steps require time and specialized expertise.”

The real head-scratcher here, as Motley Fool’s Seth Jayson puts it, isn’t that things in Russia get snagged, they do, but “how is it possible for this unheard-of Florida company, with little track record, to suddenly vault past established equipment makers like Qualcomm, Cisco, Nokia, and Motorola, not to mention powerful multinational telecoms?... Especially since GlobeTel seems to have no technological advantage, as evidenced in its regulatory filings, where it explains that the equipment and software it uses are readily available from major suppliers on the open markets?”

Jayson also finds the only publicly-identified member of Internafta is Maxim Chernizov, who made his money in “rare earth metals” and admits he has no experience in telecom or wireless. He swears he isn’t Mafia.

Wondering how all this looks from the other side, I sought Nigel’s opinion. “Funny,” he wrote, and you could almost hear him sigh. “All the operators here in Russia are getting lots of calls on GlobeTel, and even the authorities are asking us about it.”

The Russian market has lots of potential, but the penetration of broadband is not going to be that spectacular, Nigel thinks, “even amongst us that are enthusiastic over the market potential. We don’t see more than 10 per 100 penetration for broadband subscribers (note subscribers and not users) over the next 6 years on a nationwide basis.”

Still, given that current penetration is less than 1 per 100, that’s big growth. GlobeTel is onto something, at least in theory, since “at this sort of density, DSL and cable are not good economic options. Too much money has to be invested up front. And, in most cases, the existing copper can’t accommodate these technologies so it has to be replaced which adds to the cost,” Nigel explains.

“Conversely, wireless is pretty well suited in terms of coverage versus cost. And, with wireless there is better matching of costs and revenues, so it’s friendly to investors in these sorts of economies.”

Now GlobeTel seems focused on both voice and data, which Nigel thinks would greatly expand the addressable market, and would justify a $600 million investment. The hitch, he says, is that “mobile voice requires different licensing, and I am not aware that there are licenses available right now. There is no license available even for mobile WiMAX (802.16e), only fixed wireless.”

One thing I hear from people who have worked on emerging economy telecom projects is that they don’t throw big money at these markets without really understanding what they’re getting into. “I sure wish I had $600 million to spend in Russia, but even if I had a quarter of this amount, it would be a challenge to invest it wisely,” Nigel observes.

By the way, according to Nigel, it takes a good nine months in Russia to obtain the spectrum permits and to file the “radio plans” with the State Spectrum Committee and the Federal Authority for Communications before an operator can begin operation. Just like in the United States, the operator needs to specify to the authorities the base station locations, equipment being used, etc.

“This all takes a lot of time and experience,” Nigel notes, adding that “most of the really interesting spectrum is not even available at this point. That’ll change as more spectrum is “cleaned” and turned over to civil authorities, but Nigel shivers at the prospect: “In any case, I would not want to be doing this for the first time in Russia.”

Nigel doesn’t think Huff is out of line in not talking to the press, saying it’s not unusual to be secretive when planning such a huge project, “secretive on partners, equipment, spectrum, license applications, etc. However if I were an investor, there are sure a lot of questions I would want answered.”

In other words, Russia has a difficult investor image already. If GlobeTel is a hoax, Nigel says, the association with Russia will probably hurt the credibility of legitimate operators who are in the equity markets. Another reason to hope they pull this sucker off.

Jayson wrote a piece for Motley Fool titled “GlobeTel’s Australian Odyssey,” which is required reading before sinking a nickel in GlobeTel, where he raises a number of other questions investors should want answered.

GlobeTel is, in fact, “primarily a VoIP telephony provider that, until recently, was most notable for its years of heavy losses,” Jayson found: “GlobeTel’s much-hyped foreign operating units, which are always trumpeted with promising PR, not only come under strange circumstances, but they also often do very strange things and meet with very strange ends.”

(Incidentally, someone speculated that Sir Chris switching to independent director hints that Huff’s getting his ducks in a row to list on NASDAQ, where you need things like independent directors. Bear in mind that back in January Dorian Klein became one, too.)

Of course of GlobeTel does swing the deal, and stranger things have happened, it’ll be a great David-kills-Goliath story, a lot of investors will be very happy, and Russia will get improved Wi-MAX coverage. I have no reason not to hope that all that happens, but at this point no reason to think it will, either. Right now my gut’s telling me it’s not going to happen, but I’ve been wrong before and it would be nice to be wrong again.

Stay tuned.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Louis Jordan’s Let The Good Times Roll anthology:

Haven’t heard from the tinfoil hat brigade who think I’m on a personal mission to repossess their houses on the news that Sir Christopher Meyer, GlobeTel’s Non-Executive Chairman, has quit that job to ratchet down to “Independent Director.”

First Coffee^SM’s been interested in GlobeTel since their out-of-nowhere announcement of a $600 million Wi-MAX deal in Russia. Curiously, GlobeTel CEO Tim Huff refuses to talk to the press about it.

Refuses to talk to First Coffee^SM, anyway, or Motley Fool’s Seth Jayson; he hasn’t replied to this column’s request for an interview and told Jayson he’d talk only if Jayson personally visits Huff at GlobeTel’s home offices, a ridiculous stipulation immediately raising the question why.

It’s a shame, because GlobeTel has already missed their January deadline for getting the financing from their Russian partner completed, refuses to identify their Russian partner beyond one individual who has no background whatsoever in telecommunications, and have doubled their bet from getting $150 million of the funding to getting $300 million in place with their Russian partner by the end of February, and we’re sure GlobeTel shareholders would like to get Mr. Huff’s perspective on those developments.

The company itself has a quite, ah, colorful past, a reputation for talking big (Colombian blimps, anyone?), a history of interesting dealings with their stock and subsidiaries, and have one of the most swashbuckling bets in the Wi-MAX world on the table right now, but the tinfoil hatters think that a journalist who covers Wi-MAX anyway has questionable motives for being interested in writing about such a fascinating story.

Anyway, last Friday Sir Christopher Meyer, GlobeTel’s Non-Executive Chairman, requested a change in his status, effective March 19, 2006, to that of an Independent Director.

I can’t tell you how many GlobeTel shareholders, suffering from the usual American credibility insecurity/inferiority complex in the face of any Brit with “Sir” in front of his name, have written to me since I started covering GlobeTel to point out that if such a distinguished soul as SIR Christopher Meyer, a former ambassador (but a man with no track record in successful telecommunications), was in with GlobeTel, why, of course I was all wet to criticize the company.

Never mind that diplomats and politicians rarely make good businessmen (and businessmen rarely make good diplomats or politicians, remember Clark Clifford and BCCI, Alexander Haig’s Sky Station, etc.), how could I, an untitled American, a mere plebe, a colonist, doubt Ye Olde Brit who had actually met the Queen? Would a serf joust with Sir Launcelot?

Wonder what they’re reading in the tea leaves now that Sir Chris has decided he doesn’t want the job after all? I don’t know, I haven’t gotten too many e-mails from those who sent such snide, condescending, sniggering ones when Sir Chris was on board. They’re keeping awfully quiet.

The press release reads “As a result of his current professional obligations and commitments in the U.K.,” which one imagines he was aware of before the took the job, “Sir Christopher has advised the Board that he feels unable to commit the time to the Chairmanship of GlobeTel that the company’s shareholders have the right to expect.”

Indeed. Sir Chris stated, “I have the highest regard for GlobeTel, and its Officers and Directors. But my pre-existing obligations carry a heavy weight of responsibility within my own country. Thus, I believe I would better serve the company by passing the leadership baton to another qualified individual who is equipped to devote the time and attention that this important job requires.”

“Leadership baton?” From a “Non-Executive” Chairman? Folks, the person who holds the real “leadership baton” at GlobeTel is Timothy Huff, never mind the window dressing.

“We have greatly valued Sir Christopher’s tenure as our Chairman. Under his administration and vision, the company has made great strides in all of its businesses and we particularly appreciate the significant enhancements that he has brought to our Board of Directors, exactly in the way that he suggested when he initially joined the Board. We look forward to a continued relationship with him as one of our most distinguished Board colleagues,” Timothy Huff, Chief Executive Officer of GlobeTel Communications said in the press release.

“In the context of this change,” the press release reads, “Sir Christopher will assist the company in identifying and securing an appropriate replacement during the coming weeks.”

First Coffee^SM’s standing request for Tim Huff to answer a few e-mailed questions remains on offer. In fact, I’ve got a couple more.

…

Internet Initiative Japan Inc., a Japanese Internet-access and products vendor, has announced that in April 2006, Net Care, Inc., IIJ’s 52.5 percent-owned subsidiary, will launch an IP contact center integration service using VoIP technology.

This new service will use Cisco Systems K.K.’s Cisco IP Contact Center Enterprise Edition and the IP contact center construction experience of Hewlett-Packard Japan, Ltd.

“As we approach the peak period for system upgrades among contact centers using a conventional private branch exchange,” company officials say, “there is a growing need for conversion to IP. For customers with existing contact centers, conversion to IP provides many benefits.”

What might those benefits be? IIJ outlines what they think a few of them are:

Reduced equipment costs and maintenance costs. Without the need to install a PBX at every site, initial investment in equipment and operation/maintenance costs drop drastically, they say: “A small- to medium-size contact center can be established at a very low cost.”

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Loudon Wainwright III’s “Dead Skunk.” Ever cranked this song up and sung along, with appropriate hand motions? Gives your kids a whole new window into your personality:

Choice One Communications Inc. has announced that Easton Telecom Services L.L.C., a Cleveland-based telecommunications service provider, has signed a multi-year agreement for Choice One’s UNE-P Alternative Access service.

The agreement with Choice One gives Easton a choice of provisioning options and provides them with an alternative to the ILEC. This should let them be a bit more aggressive with pricing.

“New federal regulations have changed the rules governing the incumbent providers,” observed Nick Sgroi, Vice President Choice One Carrier Services.

Robert Mocas, President, Easton Telecom Services said the agreement with Choice One lets his company use “the breadth of Choice One’s network to offer competitive plans and to expand our product offering. Most importantly, it gives us the ability to look beyond the ILEC and avoid being forced into accepting the stringent terms found in the RBOC UNE-P Replacement commercial agreements.”

Choice One Carrier Services offers a wide range of carrier class services including UNE-P Alternative Access, Metro Private Line, Private Line, Collocation, Local Loop, Integrated T1, DSL and Voice services in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets across the Northeast and Midwest. Choice One provides CLECs, Switchless Resellers and VoIP providers with an alternative to the incumbent service provider, and maybe lets them offer services in markets they would otherwise not be able to hit.

…

Ascom Wireless Solution Inc., a developer of on-site wireless communications products, has announced that NeTeam, Inc. has become an Ascom Certified Product Partner.

NeTeam, an IT products company with headquarters in Akron, Ohio will be a reseller of the Ascom FreeNET and UNITE messaging products.

Huh? Well, we just felt we weren’t covering Ohio well enough, you know? Got a problem with that? Maybe it’d do you good to know more of what goes on in flyover country.

The Ascom FreeNET standards-based product consists of market-specific VoWiFi portable handsets, a messaging system, VoIP Gateway for integration with an existing PBX and supports IEEE standards, including 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11e (Quality of Service), and 802.11i (Security).

The UNITE Messaging Suite consists of small embedded computing servers with Ascom software applications using a Linux kernel providing unparalleled reliability. This is a major improvement over current servers and operating systems and yields substantially longer mean time between failures.

Tom McKearney, VP of Marketing and Business Development for Ascom said the partnership should help NeTeam in deploying wireless and integrating VoIP systems “by having access to our VoWiFi handsets and integration middleware.”

…

The Bangkok Post is reporting that the Thailand Excise Department is preparing to introduce microchips with radio frequency identification to replace excise stamps on cigarettes and liquor products within the year.

The point is to “strengthen the department’s efforts to identify counterfeit products,” according to director-general Uthit Thammawathin:

“It’s very difficult to distinguish between genuine and fake excise stamps, as those who produce counterfeit products or illegally import products to avoid tax are able to perfectly copy them,” he told the Post.

The Excise Department has a collection target of 284 billion baht (oh, about $7 billion) for fiscal 2006 ending on Sept 30, based on the assumption that the government will not reduce excise taxes on any products.

But since the anti-smoking campaign was stepped up, cigarette sales have dropped by 20-24%, resulting in a decline in excise-tax collection. In the past, the department collected around 40 billion baht (a billion and change) per year on tobacco sales.

…

Proxim Wireless Corporation, a provider of broadband wireless equipment and wholly-owned subsidiary of Terabeam, Inc., has announced that it has launched a family of WiMAX standard-based products that offer service providers what Proxim thinks is “a compelling cost profile for a high performance wireless product in the 3.5 GHz band.”

And hey, who are we to argue?

Because the Tsunami MP.16 offers a “modular, scalable approach to system deployment, a wider range of service providers will now be able to use the WiMAX technology,” company officials claim, “from rural providers requiring less dense configurations to metropolitan providers who need to support more nodes at closer range.”

Nodes at twenty paces.

Lionel Chmilewsky, Vice President International Sales, Proxim Wireless and somebody who never has his name misspelled, said until now, the company has not had a product for the rapidly-growing 3.5 GHz market: “By using the radio, mechanical, networking and management experience behind our existing Tsunami product line, we are bringing a proven platform to the 3.5 GHz market. While some competing products have been developed from scratch, the Tsunami MP.16 is actually our third-generation point-to-multipoint product set.”

The Tsunami MP.16 3500 is currently in customer trials at nine companies in Europe and Asia. It’s also undergoing certification testing at the WiMAX Forum laboratory and has, as of last report, passed “substantially all” of the required tests.

The Tsunami MP.16 3500 is compliant with the 802.16d-2004 WiMAX standard. It operates within the 3.4-3.6 GHz frequency band and offers time-division duplexing, which is optimal for asynchronous traffic patterns as typically experienced by service providers. The system is comprised of base stations and subscriber units in integrated, outdoor form factors for easy installation.

Proxim expects that the Tsunami MP.16 3500 will be available for volume commercial shipments beginning March 20, 2006.

…

Hey, since you’re going to be looking for work next year, Ricky Williams, the Austrian biathlon and cross-country skiing Olympic team has an opening for a new ski coach. BYOS. Bet you could throw that bag of needles and “medicines” a lot farther than that Austrian guy did.

And is it just me, or does that loopy Olympic medal they’re handing out in Turin look like someone got a deal on a box of used CDs?

First Coffee^SM’s favorite event in the Olympics so far: Women’s biathlon. Any sport where competitors collapse on the ground in utter exhaustion as soon as they cross the finish line is a sport where you know the athletes are being pushed to the limit.

Surprisingly fun sport to watch: Curling. Not that it’ll ever rival the NFL or college basketball, but if you’ve got an hour to kill you could do worse, if just to chuckle at the sweepers.

And repeat after me: Figure skating is not a sport.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Miles Davis’s Kind Of Blue:

Sokymat SA, a supplier of RFID transponders, has developed a 13.56 MHz RFID label specially designed as an anti-counterfeiting tool for printer ribbons.

Printer ribbons? Mais oui. The label attaches directly to the core of the printer ribbon, making it “impossible” to tamper with. So a printer with integrated reader module can now distinguish between an original ribbon and unauthorized counterfeits.

The company says the system is good for high-end printers used to produce bank cards or official ID documents, where the use of non-original printer ribbons can endanger the print quality.

The transponder is available both as a standard label, which comes in a material with the same printing characteristics as paper, or customized, such as a PET laminated ring label. Sokymat provides this high frequency label with an I-Code1 IC chip.

Basically Sokymat has developed a small specific flip-chip module package for this application – the SK1 – which makes it possible to produce a thin, narrow ring transponder, about 10mm wide and less than 1.2mm thick. This HF label cannot be produced with traditional label manufacturing techniques, such as printed or etched antenna, which require a larger pitch resolution between the turns of the coil.

In early February Sokymat announced the launch of an RFID tag designed specifically for the jewelry industry, in collaboration with The Jewellery Store dmcc, a Dubai-based service provider to jewelry wholesalers and retailers.

The purpose there is to guarantee traceability and quick inventory checks of jewelry, from the manufacturers to the retailers. Not quite as small as the new chip announced today, the one developed for jewelry use is a 13.56 MHz RFID tag with a diameter of 16mm and a thickness of 2.6mm.

…

NetHead LLC of South Florida has announced that it has acquired the rights to VoIP for the United States and Canada through an agreement with Infinet Communications.

NetHead officials say they’ve jumped into this market “to serve the needs of its loyal community of users.” As broadband has been more widely adapted, people have become comfortable with having their phone service through their high speed connection, they believe.

NetHeadVoice offers plans starting as low as $14.99 per month. Users can expect to pay, on average, 35 percent less than traditional phone service, if company officials are to be believed.

This savings could be seen as significant enough to justify the hassle, time and uncertainty, or it might not. VoIP’s had a tough time cracking the domestic market, even in a time when utility costs have spiraled higher, leaving many families looking for ways to cut their fixed expenses.

NetHeadVoice also has plans to tackle the small business market. There are no setup fees or expensive equipment purchases, is how their marketing pitch will go: The setup is easy and tech free, as the company’s sales pitch implies – “you simply plug in your adapter and you can begin making calls.” Your number works if you unplug the adapter and take it with you anywhere in the world where there is a high speed internet connection.

NetHead has plans to launch NetHead IPTV within the next few months.

…

It was on this day in 1950 that the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas embarked on his first reading tour of the United States, setting the dreary stereotype of the drunk, bohemian “artist.”

Thomas had had success in England, and Americans were excited about his work and the tour. “Thomas had always wanted to travel to America because he’d grown up in Wales watching American cowboy movies and American cartoons,” The Writer’s Almanac recounts. “The man who arranged for the reading tour picked him up at the airport, and they drove toward Manhattan. When Thomas saw the skyline he said, ‘I knew America would be just like this.’”

He was intensely uncomfortable with the attention and university settings, having never finished college himself. When asked why he came to New York he’d say things like “To continue my lifelong search for naked women in wet mackintoshes,” and in his fear of academics he’d get roaring drunk at faculty parties, shout out obscenities and accost the women, shocking and horrifying his hosts and setting a template for rude, self-indulgent behavior which would be followed by infinitely lesser talented people posing as “artists” themselves.

But during readings later in the evening, despite having been nearly incapacitated with drink a few hours before, he would always amaze the audience with his performance. “He had a deep, sonorous voice, and audiences would hang on his every word,” Writer’s Almanac wrote. “He didn’t just read his own poetry. He recited a huge number of poems by other poets, and only finished the show with one or two poems of his own.”

…

The Corporate Office of the Government of Dubai has selected Oracle E-Business Suite to fully automate, integrate and streamline the business operations of Ports Customs Free Zone Corporation, DP World, Nakheel, Customs, Jebel Ali FreeZone and other group companies.

The project is aimed at improving operational efficiencies, enhancing financial reporting, maximizing the return on human talent and increasing the quality of customer service, according to Dubai officials.

The Oracle E-Business Suite project at The Corporate Office will cover financial management, property management, project development, human resources management and customer relationship management. Oracle Consulting was awarded the contract to manage and implement this vast project.

The Dubai officials are hoping the Oracle E-Business Suite will allow business managers within each business unit to have a clearer view of their operational and financial data. Executives at the group level will be able to view and analyze information about the whole group and be able to drill down to each operating unit’s data.

“One of the key reasons for going ahead with this project was to cope with our growth, both locally and internationally, and provide a solid and consistent solution for our businesses,” said Hamed Kazim, Group Chief Financial Officer at TCO.

…

Okay, the ten top are, in order, Malta, New Zealand, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Hong Kong, then Australia, the United States, Canada and Norway.

The question is, what is the question?

Internet users. Figures by the Internet World Stats website show that 78.1 percent of Malta’s population access the web, and 76.3 percent of New Zealanders, or 3.2 million people, use the Internet.

The percentages refer to the proportion of the country's population who have access to the Internet and know how to use it, according to a report from TVNZ.

Telecom New Zealand is promising faster and cheaper high-speed broadband Internet services, but the government keeps the pressure on the company with warnings regulation might still be needed.

Prime Minister Helen Clark, in her opening speech to parliament, called for initiatives to cut prices and improve unsatisfactory uptake rates for broadband, an area where the country lags other developed nations. Clark said current broadband services are too expensive, slow, and contain restrictions on the amount of data that can be downloaded.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is… you know how they say there’s something good in everything? Picking through the wreckage and detritus of mid-80s New Wave, over in the disco slag heap, one finds ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love album, and realizes that y’know, musically the ‘80s weren’t a total loss. Close, but not total, and this from a guy who can’t stand disco, New Wave or the ‘80s:

Advanced ID Corporation, an RFID vendor, has announced that it has been collaborating with Goodyear Vehicle Systems to develop and manufacture the RFID tags embedded in the tires used in the 2006 NASCAR season.

Didn’t know they did that, did you? We’ve come a long way from North Carolina moonshiners and Junior Johnson on the NASCAR circuit, folks.

This includes the Nextel Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck series races. The Daytona race on February 19 will feature the tires with the embedded RFID tag on all the cars.

Goodyear worked with Advanced ID to develop a RFID tag to meet the extremely harsh environment of NACAR racing. Advanced ID has a production contract with Goodyear to provide the tags for all NASCAR races throughout the 2006 season.

Advanced ID has been working with Goodyear on this program since the middle of 2005.

For about the past twelve years Advanced ID Corporation has offered a product line of over 100 items comprised of low frequency RFID microchips, identification scanners, and a proprietary pet recovery database to the companion animal and biological sciences markets. The company supplies over 3,000 organizations such as animal shelters, veterinarians, breeders, government agencies, universities, zoos, research labs and fisheries with LF RFID devices for companion animals, equines, bovines, llamas, alpacas, ostriches, aquatic species, reptiles, migratory and endangered species.

Advanced ID Corporation has implanted LF microchips in over 450,000 animals, currently tracks nearly one million animals in a proprietary pet recovery database, and reunites numerous lost pets with their families each month.

Since 2001 Advanced ID Corporation has been developing and commercializing its UHF line of food-animal and wildlife identification products and systems. It’s involved with government and industry livestock identification and trace-back projects and pilots in Australia, Canada, China, Argentina, Thailand, Taiwan and the United States.

Now if anybody has any idea why NASCAR needs RFID chips in its tires, please let me know.

…

Vocalscape Networks, Inc. has announced that it has executed a letter of intent to acquire 100 percent of Azatel Communications. Therefore, in connection with the transaction contemplated by the letter of intent, Vocalscape Networks Inc. will buy 100 percent of Azatel Communications Inc. by either an asset purchase agreement or a stock purchase agreement.

Mr. Ryan Gibson, Vice President of Vocalscape said the company has been “actively looking for an acquisition within the hardware business that enabled lower cost analogue telephone adapters and IP phones for clients and the VoIP marketplace in general.”

Having a physical product, he said, “will increase the presence of Vocalscape globally and complement our software and services.” Having Azatel will “enable our often one-time license fees for billing and turn-key systems to have a fantastic residual opportunity in hardware and support.”

Derek Herman, CEO and Founder of Azatel Communications Inc. said “this has been a long awaited strategic move for Azatel to find the right partner to expand globally with.”

…

BlueBean, LLC, is now offering what the company describes as “complete RFID development lab kits for anyone who needs a smaller-scale RFID portal product.”

The do-it-yourself RFID kits, company officials claim, “come complete with everything you need to set up your own RFID development lab including the portal, RFID reader, power supply, RFID antennas, cables and tags.”

It’s a way for companies to test RFID products on-site as well as for “colleges and universities that are setting up RFID labs for their students,” says BlueBean President Gregg Maggioli. “It’s also a great RFID product for sales presentations and trade shows.”

According to company claims, the RFID product kit arrives in a standard UPS package and needs only one simple hand tool to assemble. In a short period of time, users can have their RFID development lab kit set up and ready for use.

“The RFID portal requires no maintenance, is RFID hardware manufacturer agnostic, and uses T-slot technology for easy assembly and modifications,” adds Maggioli.

…

Bozeman, Montana-based RightNow Technologies has announced it has been awarded U.S. Patent No. 6,985,893, its fourth patent for optimization of customer self-service searches.

The patent, titled “Usage Based Strength between Related Help Topics and Context Based Mapping Thereof in a Help Information Retrieval System,” no doubt so named because “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was already taken, helps companies provide site visitors with the information item or items they’re most likely seeking based on the web page they’re on when they initiate their search.

So when Slim clicks on a “help” link from an ordering page, he might first be provided with information about shipping and return policies, while other customers clicking on that same link from a product description page might first be provided with more detailed technical specifications or answers to frequently asked questions about the product’s capabilities.

The award of this patent brings RightNow’s total patent portfolio to seven issued patents and 11 patents pending.

…

Janice Goh is reporting on a study which found that female rats that got their first shot of caffeine before mating were quicker than “uncaffeinated” females to scurry back to a male rat after sex.

The study, rather unimaginatively titled “Coffee, Tea and Me,” (rats, coffee, sex and that’s the best they can do? First Coffee^SM detects a distinct lack of imagination in naming in today’s society) was conducted by researcher Fay Guarraci, an assistant professor of psychology at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

The rats had never had caffeine before, so the study’s findings might be of particular interest to Mormons and Donald Trump.

The caffeinated females “would go and visit the males faster, and they would stay with the males until they received sexual stimulation before they left,” Guarraci found, adding that they specifically sought a male sex partner and weren’t particularly interested in socializing with another female rat.

“They seemed motivated to seek sex and not to burn extra energy from the caffeine,” the study said.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is U2’s “Beautiful Day:”

Watched the Olympics last night, the exhibition event some misguided folks consider a sport, figure skating. Oh I don’t have anything against it, skating’s entertaining but any time a bunch of “judges” decide who wins instead of the competitors themselves winning and losing among themselves according to clearly-understood rules it’s not a sport. Especially when the “judging” is so obviously corrupt and biased, as the Salt Lake City Olympics proved – Marie-Rene Le Gougnet, anyone?

Fun to watch, quite athletic, skillful and difficult, but about as much of a sport as ballroom dancing, ballet or cheerleading. Now if they had three or four skaters all do their routines at the same time, and allowed body-checking, especially on pairs, with a points system that’s a sport I could get into.

…

Disturbing news in Electronic Engineering Times for the RFID chip industry. It seems that Adi Shamir, professor of computer science at the Weizmann Institute, told a panel discussion at the RSA Conference that he can pretty easily hack the most popular RFID chip and steal all the information.

Saying all he and his associate needed was an ordinary cell phone, noting that they hadn’t tested all brands of RFID chip, “we did test the biggest brand and it is totally unprotected.”

A cell phone “has all the ingredients you need to conduct an attack and compromise all the RFID tags in the vicinity,” he concluded.

Shamir said the pressure to get tags down to five cents each has forced designers to eliminate any security features, a shortcoming that needs to be addressed in next-generation products.

In recent weeks, EET reports, “Shamir used a directional antenna and digital oscilloscope to monitor power use by RFID tags while they were being read. Patterns in power use could be analyzed to determine when the tag received correct and incorrect password bits, he said.”

The reflected signals contain a lot of information, Shamir observed: “We can see the point where the chip is unhappy if a wrong bit is sent and consumes more power from the environment, to write a note to RAM that it has received a bad bit and to ignore the rest of the string,” he added.

…

GlobeTel watch: It’s the middle of February and still no word on GlobeTel closing that eye-popping $600 million deal for Russian wi-fi with some mysterious Russian partner that took everyone by surprise. They were supposed to close January 31^st, that got pushed back for rather unspecified reasons, stock holders are looking to February 28^th with increasingly white knuckles on crossed fingers.

And hey, since it’s Friday, kind of a kick-back day, I’ll reprint an e-mail I got about GlobeTel. Oh heavens, not one from those unhinged penny-stockers who accuse me of having some sort of stake in this matter, as if I’d buy such a highly unstable stock in the first place [I own absolutely no financial interest in anything remotely to do with GlobeTel and I’ll do everything in my power to keep it that way], the tinfoil-hat brigade who immediately assume that Seth Jayson, myself and anyone who writes critically of such a overpromising and underdelivering company is in the pay of a cabal of stock market-fixers, those people are in severe need of a life. Severe.

No, I got this e-mail out of the blue from Vladimir Draitser, whom I have never met and do not know:

After reading your February 9 th article regarding GTE and its contract with Russian company Internafta, I have done some research on the Internet and found an article discussing current state of WiMax business in Russia.

This article was published on January 30, 2006 in Russian daily newspaper “Business.” Strangely enough there was no mentioning about neither Globe Tel nor Internafta, while talking about $150 million contract for providing WiMax based services basically to the same cities in Russia as the GTE’s “contract” specifies.

I would appreciate your comments on this subject, since GTE would not talk about it with me.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news on speech recognition technology as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Beggar’s Banquet by The Rolling Stones, the 1968 kickoff album to their great five-album run culminating with 1972’s Exile On Main Street:

We’ve been rather neglectful of speech technology here at First Coffee^SM, it’s recently been brought to our attention, and for this we apologize. So here’s a special edition dedicated solely to the news in speech technologies:

SoftMed Systems, a provider of healthcare information products, has announced the release of ChartScript ASP, a hosted product for transcription, speech recognition and computer-aided medical transcription.

ChartScript ASP lets healthcare facilities and transcription providers use transcription technology without incurring the resource expense and capital investment costs of maintaining a large transcription portal and speech recognition server, company officials claim.

And the fact that it’s a hosted product means the investment costs can be shared among multiple enterprises.

The problem is that healthcare facilities – what we used to call “hospitals,” I guess – today are faced with rising transcription costs, a shrinking labor pool of transcriptionists, and increased documentation demands. There’s your hot career for the ‘00s, kids – transcriptionist. Earn the big bucks, meet girls, avoid college loans, learn to drive the big rigs in the privacy of your own home, make money while you sleep, step right up, if you act before midnight tonight (slap) whew. Thanks.

ChartScript ASP is designed to help facilities maximize transcription productivity, reduce costs and turnaround time, and improve transcription quality and accuracy with deferred speech recognition.

The product is advertised as allowing hospitals to augment their transcription services without large upfront costs and the ongoing IT support costs associated with owning technology. It can be used by in-house transcriptionists or outsourced transcription services.

Company officials say SoftMed’s deferred speech recognition product requires no change in physicians’ preferred dictation habits. This is a good thing, because we all know how much doctors like changing their habits.

…

Interactive voice response and speech self-service vendors Gold Systems have announced an agreement to partner with LeadingC, a developer of speech recognition and Internet technologies.

Both Gold Systems and LeadingC create speech self-service applications using platforms from vendors like Avaya, IBM, Microsoft, and Nuance Communications. The partnership allows both companies to co-market packaged applications, expand service offerings, and share engineering resources across their offices in North America and Asia.

“Gold Systems has partnered with LeadingC for their technical expertise on specific projects in the past,” said Terry Gold, president and CEO of Gold Systems.

LeadingC has expertise with VoiceXML, computer telephony integration and hosted speech applications. With such additional technical capabilities, Gold Systems can offer customers an expanded set of products and professional services, officials say.

In turn, Gold officials believe LeadingC will benefit from Gold Systems’ business development capabilities, project management strengths, and Gold Systems’ client base of Global 1000 customers.

…

Beggar’s Banquet is over, so let’s keep the sequence going with the Stones’ 1969 album Let It Bleed, as much a leap forward from Beggar’s Banquet as that album was from the radio pop which preceded it.

…

One thing you have to watch out for with IVR is down time. Significant downtime affecting operations during a disaster can result in bankruptcy for a business, according to a recent Gartner Group survey. There are services to help businesses avoid complications from service-disrupting disasters, such as the one provided by Message Technologies, Inc., an international provider of speech IVR outsourcing services.

Disasters are quickly becoming no excuse for downtime. According to Frost & Sullivan, because of the high-probability of man-made and natural disasters, companies that outsource speech IVR and call center services immensely benefit by selecting a provider that offers redundant facilities in geographically distinct locations.

Bear in mind that while power protection assets may have been specified and paid for by the call center, according to Contact Center Disaster Recovery, “it is unlikely that support responsibility remains with your operation. More likely it is with the facilities department, the IT department or the site maintenance department.”

Physical access to the site may be controlled by an automated system maintained by building or physical security; call center management has control only over access to its own department. Human resources typically sets policy on the return of access control badges upon employment termination and change of privileges upon internal transfer.

“The year 2005 was a catalyst to make disaster recovery a primary concern of companies that outsource speech IVR and call center services,” said Krithi Rao, analyst with Frost & Sullivan. “Simply put, disaster recovery facilities are quickly becoming an industry standard in this market.”

A disaster recovery site would be located somewhere catering to bandwidth-intensive projects. MTI’s disaster recovery site in Dallas, for example, has twelve telecom switch companies and easy connectivity to any major carrier since MTI’s needs to make sure that any customer can connect using their existing telephone service provider. The highly redundant facility has dual municipal power grids, battery and generator backup, and redundant Internet connectivity.

Voice over Internet Protocol can help with this. VoIP can play a particularly important role in disaster recovery and risk mitigation, since with the latest, software-based distributed contact routing systems, according to Interwise, companies can ensure ongoing system availability, even during a crisis; support agents in provisional remote locations far from your ACD; redirect voice traffic in response to changing needs and resources; distribute calls to home-based workers and/or third-party contact centers and deploy redundant system capability at lower cost.

…

LumenVox, a Speech Recognition technology vendor, has announced that Incendonet’s SpeechBridge family of appliances now runs on their newest Speech Engine release v6.0, for Linux.

“We are excited to incorporate LumenVox’s Linux version of their Speech Engine into our SpeechBridge appliance,” said Tim Kruse, Vice President of Sales and Business Development. “This Linux release allows Incendonet to pursue an even broader range of end user customers by being able to support both Windows and Linux platforms.”

Kruse said the integration with the Linux platform “did not require us to change even a single line of code.”

The LumenVox Speech Engine is designed to provide developers with a flexible API that performs recognition on audio data from any audio source. The Speech Engine v6.0 includes server-side grammars, n-Best results, and MRCP support.

“We felt it was critical to respond to market demand and port our Speech Engine v6.0 to Linux, and are very pleased that Incendonet can now offer a platform choice to their SpeechBridge customers,” said Ed Miller, President of LumenVox.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Maurice Ravel’s orchestration of Modesto Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition:

Sorry there was no column yesterday, let’s just say the privatization of Turk Telecom can’t come too fast for me.

…

RightNow Technologies has announced that it’s decided to strengthen its focus on the public sector needs. Maybe they read the recent First Coffee^SM column on how the Department of Defense decided what the heck, let’s double this guy’s contract from $200-odd million to $400-odd million. Great kind of customer to have, government.

RightNow is already hitting the sector pretty hard, they have over 125 public-sector customers around the world already, including the Army Corps of Engineers, Canberra Connect ACT Government, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration… all the way down to the State of Colorado Department of Revenue, and Sydney Water.

Efficiencies do result. At the Environmental Protection Agency, RightNow quickly produced a 70-plus percent reduction in email volume in participating offices RightNow officials claim. They say they did it because their “intelligent workflow routing” makes it easier for EPA agents to route issues that are outside of their domain expertise.

“Public-sector organizations are driven by very different missions than their private-sector counterparts, and thus require their technology partners to be knowledgeable about their particular objectives and functional constraints,” Steven Nesenblatt, VP of RightNow’s government team.

…

Another win for the good folks over at Sage Software, who are announcing that Aspyra, a global provider of clinical and diagnostic information products for the healthcare industry, has deployed Sage CRM SalesLogix integrated with Sage MAS 90 ERP to equip its on-premises and mobile employees with real-time access to customer sales and support data (draw breath).

The combined Sage Software product has, according to Sage officials, “streamlined Aspyra’s sales prospecting efforts, improved day-to-day business administration and increased customer satisfaction.”

Since deploying Sage CRM SalesLogix with Sage MAS 90 ERP integration, Aspyra has seen full adoption by the more than 100 employees using the system, and Aspyra officials report improved sales forecasting accuracy and decreased resolution times for customer support inquiries. Additionally, a global update rollout feature eliminates the need for Aspyra’s system administrator to apply new CRM functionality and customizations to individual user desktops.

…

The pastor of my church in high school had a favorite saying that “Man’s solutions become his problems.” He would’ve laughed – probably is laughing – at Australia’s cane toad problem.

It’s a conviction of this column that everything is connected, no man is an island, blah blah blah, English majors with experience washing windows and playing guitar in Boston subways can rise in the world to become customer relationship management writers, lessons learned in one area of human endeavor can apply in others, meaningless sports clichés serve admirably as meaningless business motivation seminars clichés, pictures of mountains make nice backdrops for motivational slogans, a failed explorer named Shackleford can launch a thousand success in business management books, all of which manage to ignore the fact that he was most famous for failing, etc. The web of life.

Jesus and other religious leaders used a lot of parables about seemingly unrelated things like sheep and coins, pearls and dissolute sons to make great points about God. So draw up a chair, get a cup of coffee, make yourself comfortable and hear ye the parable of the cane toad:

In the early 20^th century Australia had a problem. One of its major crops, sugar cane, was being eaten by cane beetles. This was a Bad Thing. One reason the beetles thrived is they had no natural predators.

Australians searched around for someone else who had solved the problem of bugs eating their sugar cane and noticed that hey, Hawaii has a lot of sugar cane and not much problem with insect pests. Hawaiian officials said yeah, we have this toad, Bufo marinus, does a pretty good job keeping the bugs down.

Australian officials wanted to see if that would solve their problems, so they took a (no doubt government-paid) trip to Hawaii, went into a room, threw some of the cane beetles that had been destroying Australia’s sugar cane on the table in front of the toads, who ate them up. Great. Bring ‘em over.

Cane toads were brought to Australia, which had no native toad species – in other words, no natural predators, they could reproduce at will. All the better, wildlife officials thought. They took the boxes of toads to the sugar cane fields and released them, went back to the nearest pub and raised a beer to celebrate. Go get ‘em, toads.

What no Australian noticed, and what no Hawaiian thought to mention, however, is that in Hawaii the bugs the cane toads ate lived at the bottom of the sugar cane plant, on the ground. The beetles destroying the Australian sugar cane lived at the top of the plant. Cane toads can’t climb sugar cane plants.

So after a while the cane toads got hungry. Question: What else besides cane beetles do cane toads eat? Answer: Whatever they can find.

So the cane toads began foraging, eating the native insects and foliage and doing a fairly thorough job destroying whatever they could find. Oh, and one other fact about cane toads: They’re toxic. So not only did they have no natural predators in Australia, they didn’t develop any – all the snakes and lizard who tried to eat them died, throwing the ecological balance further out of whack.

This was now a Very Bad Thing. Australia managed to exchange the fairly serious problem of cane beetles chomping up their sugar cane crop for the even bigger one of cane beetles continuing to merrily eat the sugar cane while cane toads devoured anything they could find – except cane beetles.

So with no access to their usual diet and no predators to keep them down, cane toads have wrecked hundreds of square miles of Australia. And in the latest cheery news, reported yesterday, scientists found they’ve evolved longer legs. Thereby enabling them to cover of Australia to destroy even faster.

Professor Richard Shine, of Sydney University, and colleagues stationed themselves at the invasion front 37 miles east of Darwin, the Daily Telegraph reports, and waited for the toads, which can travel just over a mile a night. The first to arrive had longer legs, showing that evolution is favoring those leading the charge into new territory: “The toads in the vanguard had hind legs about 45 per cent of their body length,’’ Prof .Shine said. “Later arrivals had progressively shorter legs. When we looked at museum specimens gathered over a 60-year period from long-colonized areas, the relative leg length just kept dropping.”

Prof. Shine told The Daily Telegraph “I find it absolutely staggering that a small dumpy creature like a cane toad can travel over a mile a night – night after night.” No doubt soon Aussies will get serious about the problem and import another species to wipe out the cane toad, which will then run wild, causing more damage than the cane toad ever could.

America had a problem with needing to fill in a little ground cover here and there so they imported this vine called kudzu from Japan, and watched helplessly as it took over untold thousands of acres of the South, destroying whatever native flora it touched. Some early New Zealander just over from Britain had a problem with no native mammal species to hunt on weekends, so he brought a shipment of rabbits over and released them, and with no natural predators now they’re a much-detested pest costing the country many hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in destroyed farm land. The entire history of the Soviet Union is the story of solutions becoming even bigger problems.

Man’s solutions = even bigger problems. Sound like anything you’ve been dealing with at your company recently? Okay, sermon over, amen.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a Tom Waits gem I’d overlooked for years, the album Alice:

Salesforce.com, an on-demand CRM vendor, is announcing that Dexterra, Inc., a vendor of mobile business software, has selected salesforce.com CRM and is using applications from salesforce.com’s AppExchange for its data management needs.

Salesforce.com officials say AppExchange “unites all of Dexterra’s on-demand applications, including CRM, Project Management, Time Tracking, Professional Services, Bug Tracking and Product Management,” with a single data model, single security model and a single user interface.

18,700 companies comprise salesforce.com’s customer base as of October 31, 2005.

…

Dublin-based report vendors Research & Markets have issued yet another report, this one on the global market for consumer VoIP services.

It counts total VoIP subscribers worldwide to date at 16 million, and projects the market will grow to over 55 million in 2009. “But despite an impressive 62 percent year-over-year subscriber growth rate in 2005, few consumers have ever heard of the term ‘VoIP’,” they write. “This indicates providers have to continue to educate the public, and that there is considerable room for market growth.”

They find “competition in broadband access services” as the “key driving force behind VoIP market development. In addition, multiple waves of new entrants, ranging from broadband ISPs and cable MSOs, to Google and eBay will play significant roles.”

The report, “Global VOIP Has Arrived; Just Not As Expected!” finds that 73 percent of all VoIP subscribers worldwide have migrated to VoIP without making a conscious buying decision to adopt the new technology. It also says in North America and Canada, cable operators are aggressively expanding their VoIP footprint, but are marketing VoIP as plain old telephone service.

In Asia, they find, South Korea will have the highest VoIP growth rate, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore. In Europe, broadband ISPs, such as Free Telecom (France) and FastWeb (Italy) are leading the way with triple-play service bundles.

…

There’s a reason this column is called First Coffee^SM, and in honor of the company which has contributed so much to the successful production of this column we’d like to note that Starbucks has entered into an agreement with the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation to provide $1.5 million to support a program aimed at helping students in need – and their teachers – in rural China.

Starbucks and China Soong Ching Ling Foundation have actually signed a formal agreement which establishes a program described as “to help improve access to education for disadvantaged youth and provide quality training for women teachers in rural areas.” China Soong Ching Ling Foundation anticipates reaching approximately 3,000 teachers and thousands of students by the year 2010.

Many teachers in rural schools have little or no formal training in how to teach. Three thousand female teachers from 1,000 primary and middle school in five Western provinces will be given training during summer and winter holidays to improve their teaching skills and provide them with updated techniques to help their students learn.

In addition, three hundred schools will be outfitted with books, computers, teaching tools and upgraded sports facilities.

This is the first effort funded under the auspices of the $5 million China Education Project, which Starbucks established in September 2005 with Give2Asia, a US nonprofit organization founded by The Asia Foundation to promote philanthropy in Asia, which will administer the Project grants.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz noted that the company opened its first store in China in 1999 and now has 220 outlets in 18 cities. “No market to date potentially has the opportunities for us that China ultimately will,” Schultz said, according to the Associated Press. “We have significantly moved China up to the No. 1 priority in our company.”

…

Another happy beneficiary from the sort of customer relationship management Caiman.com practices writes in to share:

I have been going back and forth with them for the past month! Always the same 4 template e-mail responses from the infamous Claire. Finally I contacted Amazon, who seems to be aware of the trouble with this seller (yet not doing much about it). I had ordered a text book for a psychology course – have still not received it (nor have the other 3 people in the class who also ordered from Caiman and are getting the same runaround). Here is the current # for Caiman.com – (305) 262-4973. Address is: 6701 NW 7 ST Suite 125 Miami, FL 33126 and the Attorney General’s office of Florida is: http://www.800helpfla.com/ccform.html

I finally talked to “Claire” on the phone (after about 9 calls) and got the runaround from her. Once I mentioned the Attorney General’s office she offered me a refund… the e-mail I just received for the refund stated the reason as “lost in the mail,” somehow I doubt it was ever shipped. I contacted the USPS and inquired about the shipping time I was quoted by Caiman.com, and was told that for this time of year there is next to no reason why it would take that long!

Bottom line, stay away from them! If it’s too late for you, use the above information to get some resolution, and I advise EVERYONE who experiences this with them to file a complaint with both Amazon and the Florida Attorney General’s office… maybe we can get something done.

This is CRM in real-life, folks, what we’ve seen with Caiman.com ever since First Coffee^SM started tracking the issue last year is what happens when a company relegates customer care to a low priority. They lose customers. Hopefully, anyway.

…

Well, I guess there’s a new wordoid we all have to endure: infotainment. Me, I’d say this applies to the nutty guff you get from the MainStream Media, as its total disconnect with reality, especially as it concerns anything actually happening in Iraq, is pretty hilarious, but evidently it refers to what you get through mobile technology. I think. As far as I can tell.

There’s a new report from Frost & Sullivan saying how “previously,” the lack of product differentiation plagued the European Telematics and infotainment industry. But now, in the glorious new dispensation, “the opening of the aftermarket has brought in products from the consumer electronics industry, thereby making differentiation more pronounced and has caused traditional suppliers to face intensifying competition.”

“Portable navigation systems have caused a major shake down in the European aftermarket with almost half of the total unit sales among all applications in the infotainment industry,” Frost & Sullivan Transportation Analyst Shyamsundar Anandhan says in the report titled “Analysis of the European Aftermarket for Telematics and Infotainment Systems - Market Size and Forecasts.” The popularity of hands-free telephony and media streaming, he says, “will cause wireless technologies such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to increasingly penetrate the market especially since Bluetooth and the iPod are worthy marketing tools for in-car entertainment systems.”

The European Telematics and Infotainment systems market earned revenues of EUR 7.93 billion in 2005 and is estimated to reach EUR 23.02 billion in 2011, Frost & Sullivan report. Of all the segments in the infotainment industry – integrated systems, navigation systems, rear-seat entertainment systems (probably different from the rear-seat entertainment we used to enjoy in high school if they’re making an industry of it) and in-vehicle Bluetooth interface systems – integrated systems are most likely to meet consumer demands.

Factors the report finds that could adversely impact the Telematics and Infotainment systems market include high prices, low levels of customer awareness and the burgeoning consumer electronics market.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version. First Coffee^SM accepts no sponsored content.