By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Elemeno P’s 2003 album Love and Disrespect:

Israel-based ECI Telecom has announced that it has been awarded a five-year frame agreement with an estimated value of over $75 million by British Telecom for its broadband products.

ECI’s product enables BT to provide over 150,000 business customers with dedicated, high capacity Digital Private Circuits.

BT’s service programs, known as “Customer Wideband Serving Section,” include high performance voice and data communications services such as MegaStream and ISDN30.

“ECI has been a very good supplier to us for many years now,” said Bob Watson, Access Electronics Programme / Plant Manager, BT Wholesale.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the, oh, second or third coffee, and the music is The Rolling Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet:

News from…

Bridgeport, Connecticut: GoECart.com, a vendor of on-demand ecommerce products, has announced the release and general availability of GoECart 6.0, with integrated CRM tools.

This latest version of GoECart delivers web merchants “the total package for their ecommerce needs – a fully managed, flexible, and robust online store product that includes a slew of features and tier 1 on demand data center hosting,” according to company officials.

Manish Chowdhary, CEO of GoECart.com calls GoECart 6 “a more effective, complete, and hassle-free alternative for managing their ecommerce sites.”

GoECart 6 provides online store owners with technology and infrastructure needed to set up, manage and grow a web-based business. In addition to user-friendly ecommerce site administration tools, sales-friendly marketing and customer service tools, a search engine friendly software architecture and true tier-1 ecommerce hosting, GoECart also provides a complete online store website that is simple to customize – with absolutely no HTML or programming experience required.

The product is being released to what GoECart officials hope is a fertile market – according to market research firm Forrester, online retail sales will grow from $172 billion in 2005 to $329 billion in 2010, which is 14 percent compounded annual growth rate over the next five years.

GoECart 6.0 is billed as having “more than 200 features,” but the major ones are a fully managed shopping cart with tier 1 ecommerce hosting, easy-to-customize ecommerce storefront not requiring HTML knowledge, an Intuitive Administration Panel with customizable “My Favorites” navigation, a “search engine friendly architecture,” marketing and merchandising features include coupons and gift certificates, tell-a-friend functionality, and affiliate programs and integrated customer service and customer relationship management (CRM) tools.

…

Russia: Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation has announced that Russian Standard Bank, a retail lending private bank, is reporting significant and positive results after its first-phase implementation of Teradata Customer Relationship Management (CRM) product running on a Teradata Warehouse.

RSB holds one of the largest in-house consumer databases in Russia and is using the Teradata product to “better analyze, understand and serve its 14 million customers,” according to company officials.

“We selected and implemented Teradata based on the vendor’s expertise in data management, proven references, and products specific to retail banking and consumer finance,” said George Gorshkov, senior vice president and head of marketing for RSB, who added that the bank “expects to continue to improve our target marketing with reduced costs in customer acquisition, reduced customer attrition, and better customer value management.”

According to RSB, implementation of a clearly-focused business strategy, high-quality bank products and information technologies have enabled the bank to create a new consumer lending market in Russia.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is JibJab’s “This Land” parody from the last presidential election:

Bellevue, Washington-based Avidian Technologies has announced that it now provides support for Terminal Server and more advanced User Permissions in Prophet 3.0, its Outlook-based sales software.

Both features are available to existing customers as an update and will ship with all subsequent Prophet purchases.

These added features are designed to give companies using Prophet “greater control over their sales data and easier access for all users,” according to James Wong, CEO and co-founder of Avidian Technologies.

“This update to Prophet answers the call from our customers for an easy way to maintain better control and security over their sales data,” said Wong. “With support for Terminal Server we’ve broadened the options for accessing sales information.”

According to company officials, support for Terminal Server allows users access to their Prophet data through a Terminal Server session, providing ease of access and mobility, as users can access their Prophet data from any computer with the Terminal Server interface.

Terminal Server also permits installation from the central server, eliminating the need for IT to touch each computer.

User Permissions give companies the ability to create a hierarchy within Prophet so they can divide their customer information into teams, regions, territories, or any groupings they wish to create.

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:”

On-demand customer relationship management (CRM) vendor RightNow Technologies, Inc. has announced the acquisition of Salesnet, Inc., an on-demand software firm focused on sales workflow automation. 

Initial integrations between the Salesnet application and RightNow applications will be completed this summer with all major features expected to be included by summer of 2007.

Under the terms of the acquisition, RightNow has acquired Salesnet through an all-cash merger. RightNow expects the transaction to be neutral to cash flow from operations and dilutive to GAAP EPS in 2006.  

Salesnet’s corporate office in Boston will become RightNow’s Boston office and will continue to include development, sales, marketing and support functions.

Salesnet was acquired to “accelerate RightNow’s customer experience management development efforts by combining RightNow’s knowledge foundation with Salesnet’s workflow engine,” according to company officials.

With the acquisition, RightNow adds 26 employees and a dozen off-shore development contractors with experience in sales automation products to mid-market and enterprise customers.

“Our acquisition of Salesnet brings substantial sales workflow domain expertise to our business, accelerates our roadmap by more than a year and adds hundreds of customers to our client base,” Greg Gianforte, founder and chief executive officer at RightNow, said. 

Jonathan Tang, president and co-founder of Salesnet, will become vice president of sales products at RightNow.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Kinks’ “Bernadette:”

Let’s see what’s going on at SAPFest ‘06 in Orlando, or SAPPHIRE, as it’s probably more properly known.

In front of 15,000 customers and partners at the combined conferences for SAP customers and the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group, SAP execs described how the company will “transform the business landscape during the next decade,” according to company officials, by “addressing the growing data and information needs of both knowledge and information workers.”

In his speech, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann focused on the new role of IT in supporting growth, a departure from the formerly prevalent view of IT as a driver of cost efficiency. Kagermann characterized IT as an “enabler of accelerated business innovation and operational excellence.”

He said enterprise software must address three key business requirements: the need to automate processes for speed and flexibility; the need to enable collaboration by integrating automated processes beyond the firewall with those of customers, partners and suppliers; and the need to harness and “amplify” the value of the knowledge worker.

Key Kagermann Quote: “In a new era where IT is critical to executing on a growth agenda, companies have to know their IT vendor has a clear road map with specific milestones and deliverables… enterprise software vendors must provide an evolutionary path to new technology adoption, not ‘rip and replace.’”  

Executive Board Member Leo Apotheker, president, Customer Products and Operations, used his keynote to explain why companies need to embrace enterprise service-oriented architecture. The “globalization of markets, the consolidation and specialization of companies within and across industries and the rise of business model innovation” are forcing companies to “adapt their business models in a fast and flexible fashion,” he said.

Apotheker said mySAP Business Suite applications such as mySAP ERP bring customers to the era of enterprise SOA, “providing the efficiency of an integrated architecture while at the same time allowing companies to evolve and extend their products flexibly.”

Key Apotheker Quote: “Enterprise SOA is a reality and companies can no longer afford to wait on the sidelines… this is a matter of being a best-run business versus an ‘also-ran’ business.’”

Executive Board Member Shai Agassi, president of the Product and Technology Group touched on a number of topics in his keynote, specifically highlighting the move toward IT being embedded in business today.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tony Bennett’s “Mood Indigo:”

European marketers do use business intelligence in hopes of better performance and return on investment from their strategies, according to a survey of executives at 350 companies in seven countries and across four industries.

The top benefit, according to the survey’s findings, is “being able to optimize customer communications,” followed by “generating action-ready insight based on customer value metrics.”

“Marketing leaders use BI… across the EMEA region, and across the industries examined, BI helps marketing divisions align themselves with business strategy,” said Phil Winters, Vice President of Customer Intelligence at SAS, who sponsored the study.

The study was carried out by IDC’s CMO Advisory Research area, examined marketing’s use of BI tools for improving planning and execution and how BI can lead to better organizational performance.

Two trends were identified in this process: the proliferation of more niche segments, and the fragmentation of media and content – and thus the channels – to reach the intended audiences.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bix Beiderbecke’s 1927 recording “Singin’ The Blues,” generally regarded as the first jazz ballad, featuring Beiderbecke playing what jazz historian Benny Green has called “the most plagiarized and frankly imitated solo in all jazz history:”

Verizon’s certainly been busy recently, let’s check in:

Verizon Business today announced the availability of a global VoIP Gateway Service for the wholesale market. The service, provided through Verizon Business’ International Partner Products business unit, enables wholesale customers to offer full IP Telephony to PSTN trunking services and global termination of calls through one single, scaleable product.

The resulting benefits, Verizon officials claim, are “lower operational costs, reduced cost of ownership, competitive wholesale pricing and access to Verizon’s network and partner relationships.”

With network gateways planned in 12 European countries (and USA gateways in 45 metro areas), the VoIP Gateway Service is being marketed as offering “global capabilities to wholesale customers, providing them a competitive advantage regardless of their level of core expertise.”

In other words, whether customers are network-based or network-independent VoIP service providers, they can use both their own capital investments in VoIP-enabled network equipment and Verizon Business’ network to sell voice and other IP-based products.

The service is based on Session Initiation Protocol, generally considered the superior standard in the industry.

Henrik Liungman, marketing director, Verizon Business IPS says the launch of the global VoIP gateway service is an effort to strengthen their play within the wholesale market.    

Verizon Business is also announcing the launch of Hosted IP Centrex in Europe, which they consider “a key component of the new Verizon VoIP portfolio” recently unveiled.

Verizon Hosted IP Centrex is being marketed as a product allowing enterprises to tap into enhanced voice and data applications, described by company officials as “an IP telephony product that offers enterprises a robust, flexibly scalable voice service, including features such as remote working, click-to-dial, auto attendant and Web-based receptionist services.”

Delivered in a consolidated package hosted and managed by Verizon Business, it does eliminate the requirement for businesses to invest in, and cope with, the hardware and software maintenance of PBX or IPBX equipment by taking the call control and end-user applications into the provider network.

The Hosted IP Centrex product is aimed at businesses “opening up new locations or looking for alternatives to IP PBX products,” said Roberta Mackintosh, director of international products for Verizon Business.

It’s true, as she says, that a lot of expanding businesses struggle with the decision to invest in new voice communications infrastructure for their new sites and growing user populations, mainly because they don’t want to end up with a sizeable investment in an IPBX and then conclude soon after installation it has already reached its limits.

For such a customer Verizon Hosted IP Centrex is being pushed as a product where the investment requirements are minimal, and the amount of users that can be connected can be expanded flexibly on any given moment without additional investments.

And thirdly, Verizon Business has announced the launch of Verizon IP Trunking, designed for organizations that have already deployed an IP PBX VoIP product.

The product connects to the Verizon VoIP network and offers a package of services, so customers don’t need to purchase and manage multiple facilities.

IP Trunking connects an IP PBX platform to the enterprise data network and to the public voice network using a single IP connection. It’s delivered from the same VoIP architecture as Verizon IP Integrated Access and Verizon Hosted IP Centrex.

Verizon IP Trunking is currently available for customer trials in the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and the US, and Verizon officials say it will be further expanded in the second half of 2006 to Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

It will initially be available with Cisco Call Manager 4.1.3, to be followed by additional platforms including Call Manager Express and Avaya Communication Manager 3 in the third quarter of 2006.
…

D2 Technologies has announced that its vPort VoIP software has been implemented on the ARM926e RISC processor embedded within the Texas Instruments OMAP 1710 and OMAP 850 SoC (system on a chip).

This allows fully-featured VoIP applications to be offered with or without the need for DSP hardware, resulting in a flexible virtual DSP design that can address a wide variety of applications.

D2’s integrated software product, called vPort, includes audio drivers, voice processing functions (like compression, echo cancellation, Caller ID, DTMF, packet loss concealment), RTP packetization, Jitter Buffer, SIP signaling and application layer.

For dual mode wireless applications on the OMAP850, where the DSP is committed to other baseband signal processing functions, vPORT can execute entirely on the ARM CPU. In other applications where the ARM processor is needed for high level functions, the voice signal processing subsystem of vPORT can be executed on the attached DSP on the OMAP1710.

Introduced three years ago, D2’s vPort software is deployed in residential end-point products, and is designed for CPE end-point products such as wired/wireless Voice-enabled Terminal Adapters, routers and gateways, as well VoIP phones and handsets.

D2 President, David Wong said the ARM processors make “efficient use of silicon and memory,” which allows semiconductor companies to make “economical semiconductor devices with the low power consumption required of wireless or portable devices.”

This, coupled with efficient signal processing instructions useful for voice algorithms, Wong contends, make the ARM “an ideal platform for running D2’s VoIP software.”
…

Microsoft has announced that Elisa Corp., Finland’s leading telecom company (but you knew that), has chosen the Microsoft Customer Care Framework 2005 communications platform to improve its contact center.

Elisa, if I may presume a first-name basis, says the new product will “improve the usability and support of customer processes, make customer service more efficient, and facilitate integration with existing business applications.”

Microsoft Customer Care Framework is designed to guide customer inquiries from multiple channels such as Elisa’s web portal, e-mail and phone, and is flexible in allowing Elisa to adapt easily to different customer relationship management (CRM) products. It offers self-service products and automated support.

The new platform will be used by over 2,500 customer service representatives in both Elisa’s own contact centers and those of its enterprise customers.

“Our previous contact centre product did not offer us a suitably effective way to integrate systems, and our aim was to make agents work more efficiently,” said Sanna Korppoo, business manager at Elisa.

If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/ for the fully-linked version.

By David Sims
david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is John Mellencamp’s Dance Naked:

ELoyalty Corporation, a vendor of enterprise CRM services and products, has posted first quarter financial results for the period ended April 1, 2006.

For the first quarter of 2006, total revenue was $19.6 million and, on a GAAP basis, the net loss was $3.4 million. The net loss available to common shareholders was $0.58 per share.

On a non-GAAP basis, eLoyalty realized an “Adjusted Earnings” loss of $1.9 million for the first quarter of 2006.

Company officials say that in addition to “exceeding the high end of our revenue estimates and our Q1 Managed services bookings target,” eLoyalty achieved a number of other milestones in the first quarter of 2006, including signing a multi-year enterprise license and support contract to provide the BA product to Uniprise, a UnitedHealth Group company and entering into a joint marketing agreement with Uniprise to provide the BA product to the healthcare market.

Officials also pointed to finalizing the contracts at another large healthcare client for the deployment and multi-year operation and support of the BA product, including the initial enterprise deployment of Self-Service Analytics application; and booking what officials called a “record $23.4 million of new and renewal managed services contracts.”

During the quarter eLoyalty also increased managed services backlog 68 percent sequentially and approximately 300 percent from one year ago to approximately $44.9 million, and sold $1.1 million of third-party software, a step company official say is “the first component of a $3.5 million implementation of an advanced speech application.”

In addition to the revenue reported under GAAP, eLoyalty generated and deferred $1.4 million of BA deployment and subscription revenue during the first quarter of 2006.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz
The news as of the first coffee this morning, the morning of Blake Charles Sims’s 7th birthday, in honor of which the music is The Beatles’ “Birthday” from the White Album:

An op-ed piece by Michael Socolow, assistant professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine, printed in the Baltimore Sun talks about something First Coffee hasn’t seen discussed much on any other major media outlet, just Little Green Footballs, itself worth more than 90% of the MainStream Media.

Socolow starts off with the punch line: “Congress wants to change the Internet.”

According to Socolow, “both the House and Senate commerce committees are promoting new rules governing the manner by which most Americans receive the Web. Congressional passage of new rules is widely anticipated… once this happens, the Internet will change before your eyes.” And won’t that be fun!

Somebody else on the story is columnist Cari Hennessy, shaming the MSM by writing for the University of Virginia’s Cavalier Daily, who explains that currently, the Internet operates on the principle of “network neutrality,” which means that “service providers don’t discriminate when they transmit content to users. Because of network neutrality, whitehouse.gov and anarchy.org reach users with equal reliability and speed. You control the content that you see, not your service provider.”

Network neutrality isn’t mandated by law, it’s just been standard practice.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

 
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Alison Krauss’s “Down To The River To Pray:”

You have to admire a king with this kind of a sense of humor:

On this night in 1671, Captain Thomas Blood tried to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. According to Writer’s Almanac, he was disguised as a priest and managed to convince the Jewel House keeper to hand over his pistols. Having done so one of Captain Blood’s accomplices shoved the Royal Orb down his breeches, and Blood himself flattened the crown with a mallet and tried to run off with it.

He and his partners in crime were caught in the act and haled before King Charles, who was so impressed with Blood’s audacity that he pardoned him, restored his estates in Ireland, and gave him an annual pension of five hundred pounds.
…

Business Objects, a vendor of business intelligence products, has announced that the University of Michigan has standardized on Business Objects.

The University of Michigan, a Business Objects customer since 1998, plans to expand its existing deployment and migrate to BusinessObjects XI Release 2. By using the Business Objects BI platform, administrators and faculty “hope to be able to predict course demand, forecast future state and federal aid, and improve decision making,” according to university officials.

The university has selected BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager to help executives and other non-technical users analyze data and manage performance.

“We hope that upgrading to BusinessObjects XI Release 2 will help us gain greater visibility and control over key performance indicators,” said Laura Patterson, associate vice president for Administrative Information Services at the University of Michigan.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

 
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Neil Young’s version of “All Along the Watchtower,” one of Bobby Zimmerman’s more covered songs:

Firstwave Technologies, Inc., a web-based CRM vendor, has announced that it has completed an Intellectual Property Assignment Agreement with Galactus Software LLP that will expand the use of the .Net Integrated Development Environment that Firstwave developed to use in writing applications for the CRM Market.

Richard Brock, CEO of Firstwave said that under the terms of the agreement, Firstwave will have exclusive rights to continue to use the IDE in the CRM Market, and Galactus “intends to take it to a much broader market. Both companies are expected to benefit from the potential exchange of future enhancements to this technology.”

Brock said Firstwave is moving away from developing tools such as the IDE and toward building applications in markets “where we can gain competitive advantage.”

Since Galactus agrees that the rights granted in this agreement will not diminish any rights granted to First Sports International or M1 Global in the agreements we reached with them, and agrees that we can still use the IDE without restriction to develop our CRM applications, “we expect this to be a win-win for Galactus, Firstwave, our customers, and our partners,” said Brock.

For his part, Greg Lenox, President and CEO of Galactus said for them, the strategic value of the IDE “can’t be overstated.” Lenox is expecting the IDE to help expedite their time- to-market and “provide thought leadership products for our clients because of the IDE’s superior functionality, unique capabilities, and ease of use through the drag-and-drop application development engine.”

Galactus Software is based in Cape Coral, Florida and works in platform conversion. Basically they take proprietary, home- grown or legacy applications based on closed or outdated platforms and converts them to more open technologies, such as C# and Java, “with a touch of a button.”
…

S1 Corporation, a vendor of customer interaction software products for financial and payment services, has introduced S1 Marketing Center for MISER, a software tool that company officials say helps financial institutions to improve cross selling in all channels.

The new product is a new component of S1’s Full Service Banking Application for MISER branch software and is integrated with the Fidelity National Information Services, Inc. MISER core processing system.

S1 Marketing Center for MISER profiles an institution’s customers, segments them according to a user’s qualification criteria for a particular promotion, and identifies cross-selling opportunities at the time of service for tellers and customer service representatives.

“Now MISER users can be much more proactive and effective in cross selling to existing customers,” said Matt Hale, group president of S1 Corporation.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz  
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is… there isn’t any music, let’s put something on, how about… Traffic’s grossly underrated live album, Welcome To The Canteen. This is one of those albums that’s simply a Good Work Album:

Looks like my wife’s house in Auckland won’t be swamped with a tsunami after all. Good news all around.
…

Intelliworks, Inc., a vendor of CRM for higher education, has announced that it is launching a new version of its enterprise product specifically designed to meet the CRM needs of small to midsize schools as well as individual programs, and departments.

The new iRM Essentials product is being billed as providing the ability to set up and operate a full-fledged CRM system at a lower price point, in a shorter amount of time, and in a hosted environment.

“CRM is being embraced across all market segments of higher education,” said Dev Ganesan, President & CEO of Intelliworks, Inc., calling iRM Essentials “a 100 percent web based CRM solution for small to midsize organizations.”

According to Intelliworks officials, the key value proposition of the iRM Essentials product includes rapid deployment of CRM, speed to the point of value creation, a predictable budget via fixed-price acquisition, deployment, and support as well as reduced implementation complexity and hassle free hosting.

Advertised as having a zero footprint as a 100 percent web-based product, iRM Essentials provides such features as a common database with a 360° view, inbound and outbound communications, marketing and campaign automation and event management as well as program and marketing dashboards and other features.

Intelliworks builds and sells the ‘Intelliworks Relationship Manager (iRM)’ as its flagship CRM technology suite. iRM has two distinct product offerings -- iRM Essentials for the small to midsize organization, whether a school, a department or even a group of programs, and iRM Enterprise for larger university implementations that require greater performance, configuration, and scalability.

“Now more than ever, every type of institution in higher education can take advantage of what CRM provides as a technology platform,” said John Pearson, Database Architectural Manager, Clark University.
…

IKnowWare, a business management product billed by company officials as giving companies “all they need to know – anytime, anywhere,” has announced the “growth” of two Internet Service Providers and data centers to host iKnowWare for its growing small to medium business subscriber base.

With software as a service (SaaS), iKnowWare claims to now be “viable” for large and small businesses with its scalability to Savvis Corporations’ 31 data centers and iKnowWare’s newest ISPs provided by Layered Technologies of Dallas and LasVegas.Net.

“We understand SMBs use VARs because VARs understand businesses such as insurance, health care, logistics, and advertising companies – both large and small – and are able to use their domain knowledge to package a set of services into a one-stop product,” said Marty Mizrahi, president of LasVegas.NET.

IKnowWare says they’re building a “standard model for the integration of hundreds of different” SaaS products with one another.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz  

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a complete library iTunes shuffle, current song “I Can’t Get Started” by Frank Sinatra:

Picis, a vendor of information systems for surgery, and intensive care units across the hospital enterprise, has announced implementation of ClearPeaks’ FastTrack Business Intelligence for Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

FastTrack BI is an end-user reporting environment based on the Business Objects platform, which allows Picis to tap customer information stored in their CRM system from Siebel.

“We have recently implemented a best-of-class CRM system allowing us to track all customer interactions with the objective to better serve our customers with an even more focused approach,” says Kevin Pettet, executive vice president of client operations, Picis.

Pettet said that ClearPeaks’ FastTrack BI lets Picis “better analyze our data, segment our customers, measure the ROI of our marketing initiatives and provide an automated and rolled-up sales forecast.”

ClearPeaks touts FastTrack BI as being “easy to deploy, flexible, user-friendly” and allowing business users to “report and analyze Siebel Systems CRM data in a language they can easily understand in real-time and without the need for a costly data warehouse.”

CRM systems can be a source of fertile information, but frequently this dimension of CRM systems is overlooked in most companies.

(Current iTunes selection: Todd Snider’s “The Ballad of the Devil’s Backbone Tavern.”)

…

SmartCode Corp., a vendor of low cost RFID hardware products, has announced that it will offer the world's first 5 cent RFID tags, available in quantities of 100 million.

SmartCode officials claim to be the “first ever company in the world to reach the 5 cent tag.” Since the formation of the EPC standard in 1999, the target tag price for a sustainable, ROI driven RFID market was greatly depended on the availability of the 5 cent RFID tags.

(Current iTunes selection: Johnny Cash’s “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry.”)

…

GlobeTel Communications finally threw in its hand on its highly self-hyped Russian Wi-Max deal, issuing a press release yesterday saying that “on Tuesday, April 25, it instructed its lawyers in Moscow, Cleary, Gottleib, Steen & Hamiliton [sic], to prepare and subsequently to deliver to LLC Internafta a formal Default Notice relating to the Agreement signed between GlobeTel and Internafta on December 29, 2005.”

In accordance with the terms of that Agreement, GlobeTel says, “Interafta [sic] was obligated to pay to GlobeTel, in January 2006, the first $150 million installment as called for in the Agreement. No payment was forthcoming from Internafta, at which point Internafta requested additional time to deliver funds and GlobeTel granted an extension.”

And here’s the interesting part: “Internafta subsequently delivered to GlobeTel terms of a $300 million Letter-of-Credit on Banco do Brazil letterhead. It was thereafter determined by GlobeTel that the terms were not acceptable to any of GlobeTel’s bankers.”

As Motley Fool says, “It was thereafter determined that the terms were not acceptable? Why not? Are we talking about funny money here? Fake credit? Insufficient funds? What? Or, more to the point, why release all the sunny PR beforehand if the financing – as well as the detailed business plan, according to this latest release – was still up in the air?”

(Current iTunes selection: Bessie Smith’s “Boweavil Blues.”)

First Coffee has spent a lot of time on this company and their too-good-to-be-true claims (see yesterday’s edition for a rundown), and is now officially glad to be done with the whole thing. Evidently Wall Street is as well; the company’s share price was bucketing along at $4 upon the announcement of the Russian “deal.” It closed yesterday at $1.47.

Sorry, investors, but hey, know that GlobeTel management appreciates you: As Motley Fool notes, the company declared gross earnings last year of $413,729 and management compensation of $12 million.

First Coffee does not want to pile on to anyone’s distress, it’s bad enough the deal fell through, but there were many voices along the way saying that it’s already hard enough attracting honest investment in Russian Wi-Max, which needs it desperately, and even the perception that a company like GlobeTel might be playing fast and loose hurts the overall credibility of such investments, which is the real shame here.

(Current iTunes selection: Bob Dylan’s “Pressing On.”)

…

Advent Software, Inc., a vendor of software and services to the investment management industry, has announced that Tower Asset Management, a Beverly Hills-based asset management firm, implemented Advent Portfolio Exchange for enhanced reporting, client service and global contact management capabilities.

Advent Portfolio Exchange is a browser-based end-to-end portfolio management platform that integrates portfolio management with front-office marketing and CRM functions, as well as back-office portfolio accounting and reporting operations.

“With Advent Portfolio Exchange, the big advantage lies in having open access to all our data.