By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Joe Jackson's Night and Day album:

First Coffee's 30 June piece on net neutrality generated a bit of reaction, we'll take the good, the bad and the ugly here. It really needs all the italics and bold text, so hit the link at the bottom if you're reading this off the First Coffee blog page.

From Ron:

I really enjoyed your TMCnet article on Net Neutrality. Two observations:

["Anyway, UPI quotes Cleland as saying that Net-neutrality legislation would hinder broadband access providers' ability to offer more than one service. "How does a new entrant succeed? You differentiate and you innovate," he said.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Jim White's (The Mysterious Tale Of How I Shouted) Wrong-Eyed Jesus, First Coffee's favorite American album made since Tom Waits' Rain Dogs:

Is First Coffee shocked that Net neutrality failed in Congress? Not really. It's not the absolute stupidest thing Congress has ever done -- there's way too much competition for that title -- but since ensuring it would have required adherence to principles other than kowtowing to contributors it's not particularly surprising that it got toasted.

We'll look at it for a couple days and have more to say about it Saturday, once all the shakin' and hollerin's over.

…

Children International, an international nonprofit humanitarian organization which runs a sponsorship program uniting children and sponsors, has gone live with Aptify CRM on an enterprise-wide basis. Aptify, a vendor of customer and member relationship management, e-Business, education management and other applications, will enable CI to provide what CI officials hope will be "responsive and personalized service for its sponsors, donors, and field offices worldwide."

Established in 1936, Children International aids needy children in 11 countries including Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Mexico, the Philippines, the United States and Zambia. Sponsors' contributions help provide poverty-stricken children and families with necessities such as health and dental care, educational assistance, decent clothing and nutritional assistance.

CI officials say their operational goal was to "select a product that would unify its departments under one data source to provide a more streamlined process in responding to sponsors and donors," one that could address their unique system requirements for one-to-one child sponsorship.

Basically, the charity will use the technology to track marketing campaigns for sponsorships and donations, provide a robust reporting tool set and employ fundraising management to handle donations and in-kind gifts.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Elvis's "Kentucky Rain:"

That does it. First Coffee is officially Disgusted And Finished with taking World Cup soccer seriously. If I want pre-fixed matches I'll watch Italian league soccer.

Italy-Australia yesterday. Slow match, the ref wants to liven things up, thinks "Hey, I'd like to see Italy play a man down," throws a red card on an Italian player for an ordinary foul that might -- might -- have elicited a yellow card from a Premiership or Bundesliga referee.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is "One Bud Wiser" by John Rich:

It's Saturday, but that doesn't mean there's nothing happening, or that there's nothing you might have missed, CRM-wise, this past week, but it does mean you might get the news confused with those game shows on TV:

Talisma Corporation, which styles itself a vendor in the "enterprise Customer Interaction Management" space, has announced a joint partnership with Japanese reseller Vital to sell Talisma's newly released Japanese products, Talisma CIM 7.0j, and CRM 7.0j.

In addition to releasing the new products, Talisma is also announcing the launch of the company's first Web site localized in Japanese. The announcement was made during a press conference with Vital at IBM Japan affiliate, LBS. Now let's take a commercial break and come back and visit with our contestants.

The partnership allows Vital to sell Talisma's products in Japan to companies such as Canon, Toyota, Epson, Sony, and Sharp, who are already using Talisma's products in other markets.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the most casual, breezy, fun album Frank Sinatra recorded, Come Fly With Me:

A recent survey by Reader’s Digest finds New York to be “the world’s most polite major city,” beating out large cities in 35 countries. “Coming in a close second was Zurich at 77 percent, Toronto at 70 percent, and Berlin, Sao Paulo and Zagreb, Croatia, all with 68 percent,” according to a Reuters report on the findings.

Rounding out the top ten were Auckland, Warsaw and Mexico City. Politeness was measured with door-opening tests, “dropped- document” tests and seeing if service personnel would say “thank you” for a purchase.

“The more than 2,000 tests of behavior showed that people under 40 were more courteous than those over 40, men were more polite to other men and women were more polite to other women,” Reuters said, adding that “People around the world tended to offer the same explanation for their polite behavior – they were polite because they had been brought up to be that way.”

Got that? New Yorkers are the most polite big city people in the world, and under-40 New Yorkers are more polite than the over-40 crowd because they were raised right.

Now somebody named Sharon Jayson at USA Today, vendor of bite-size News McNuggets, comes along with a much more thinly-researched article, cherry picking quotes, sources and experts in an effort to try to convince you the reader that those durn kids today are just in their own world and don’t respect anyone, which besides being the most boringly oft-repeated claim every generation has ever made about the generation immediately following it, would seem to be blown out of the water by the more real-world Reader’s Digest findings.

Jayson’s bogeyman? Three guesses and the first two don’t count.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Randy Crawford’s great cover of “Rainy Night In Georgia:”

You know, folks, not every idea is a good one, and not every product dreamed up in big-money conference rooms and backed by smart Silicon Valley venture capital is going to be wildly snapped up by millions. Gruesome horror stories abound, but First Coffee is thinking specifically of TV and other “premium” services on cell phones.

It’s one of those “why not?” ideas, instead of a “here’s how” idea, a shaky foundation right there.

“Why not?” ideas are New Coke, putting books on CD-ROM, France or letting Magic Johnson host a TV talk show. They don’t fill any need, nobody was standing in line for them, there aren’t any problems they solve, “why not?” ideas hope demand spontaneously generates around the product. It might work, never know until you try, cf.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz  

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya-Yas Out, a recording from a concert in Madison Square Garden on a night when, as one critic wrote, they just might have been The Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band in the world:

CRM: It’s not just for business anymore.

Scott Miyake Geron, MSW, Ph.D., the director of the Institute for Geriatric Social Work, recognized a need for work-based training products that meet a wide variety of demands in the field of aging and social work, so he turned to CRM vendor Agileview for help.

IGSW has created an innovative series of online training courses that offer social workers and other social service professional’s vital training in aging and also provide Continuing Education Credits (CEUs) and an optional Certificate in Aging from Boston University.

Individuals or agencies may buy licenses to IGSW’s packages with either a credit card or Purchase Order. The SmartView Learning Management System automates the delivery and tracking of all content and training.

“Agileview, and the people managing SmartView, in particular, have given us an outstanding partnership that allows us to deliver a user-friendly experience to all of our clients,” says Geron.

By David Sims

david@firstcoffee.biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the musical theme for today is Good Stuff I Don’t Listen To Nearly As Much As I Should, so we have Donovan’s Troubadour, kicking off with “London Town:”

SSA Global, a vendor of enterprise business software and services, has announced the general availability of SSA Sales 7.0 and SSA Service 7.0, what company officials call “a major enhancement to the company’s suite of customer relationship management products, SSA CRM, powered by E.piphany.”

The enhanced product provides companies with a tactical and strategic solution to improve current and future sales, service and marketing technology deployments, according to company officials, providing “a comprehensive 360 degree view of each customer by providing a shared customer and product list that streamlines the sales quotation, order creation and service processes.”

“SSA Sales 7.0 and SSA Service 7.0 were developed in direct response to our customers’ demands for enhanced technology that helps improve their ability to measure, predict and increase sales and service performance,” according to Cory A. Eaves, chief technology officer, SSA Global. “SSA Sales 7.0 and SSA Service 7.0 leverage SSA Open Architecture, the SSA Global services-oriented architecture to enable integration with existing and future systems.”

…

Chicago-based CRM consultants West Monroe Partners, a full-service business and technology consultancy, has been named one of Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For by the National Association of Business Resources. The award was presented June 9th at the NABR’s symposium and awards luncheon at the Chicago Marriott Oak Brook, an event to which, inexplicably, First Coffee was not invited, despite having gone to college near Chicago and spent a great amount of time in Chicago blues clubs, as well as having eaten at both Gino’s and Giordano’s.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the musical theme for today is Good Stuff I Don’t Listen To Nearly As Much As I Should, so we have Donovan’s Troubadour, kicking off with “London Town:”

SSA Global, a vendor of enterprise business software and services, has announced the general availability of SSA Sales 7.0 and SSA Service 7.0, what company officials call “a major enhancement to the company’s suite of customer relationship management products, SSA CRM, powered by E.piphany.”

The enhanced product provides companies with a tactical and strategic solution to improve current and future sales, service and marketing technology deployments, according to company officials, providing “a comprehensive 360 degree view of each customer by providing a shared customer and product list that streamlines the sales quotation, order creation and service processes.”

“SSA Sales 7.0 and SSA Service 7.0 were developed in direct response to our customers’ demands for enhanced technology that helps improve their ability to measure, predict and increase sales and service performance,” according to Cory A. Eaves, chief technology officer, SSA Global. “SSA Sales 7.0 and SSA Service 7.0 leverage SSA Open Architecture, the SSA Global services-oriented architecture to enable integration with existing and future systems.”

…

Chicago-based CRM consultants West Monroe Partners, a full-service business and technology consultancy, has been named one of Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For by the National Association of Business Resources. The award was presented June 9th at the NABR’s symposium and awards luncheon at the Chicago Marriott Oak Brook, an event to which, inexplicably, First Coffee was not invited, despite having gone to college near Chicago and spent a great amount of time in Chicago blues clubs, as well as having eaten at both Gino’s and Giordano’s.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz  

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction:

Let’s see, important sports news wrap-up from around the world… Rafael Nadal proves that not only is Roger Federer not really the greatest tennis player of all time, as the insane are hyping him, he’s not even the best player of his generation… Ben Roethlisberger wins the highly coveted First Coffee Idiot Of The Week award, he said he’s on his way to the awards banquet … the NBA season mercifully draws to a close as Pat Riley proves what a great coach people will think any schlump off the street is if aforesaid schlump has Magic Johnson, Kareem and such talent on his roster… sources indicate that two NHL teams, one from the traditional hockey hotbed of North Carolina, are playing for something called a Stanley Cup… anything else? Vijay Singh’s got his mojo working again, another Korean wins another LPGA event… bikini-clad girls running onto New Zealand rugby games… Nothing else going on? Some tournament of some sort in Germany… nah, okay, on to the CRM.

…

Driven by “significant gains in license and maintenance revenue,” worldwide customer relationship management (CRM) total software revenue totaled $5.7 billion in 2005, a 13.7 percent increase from 2004, according to recently-released figures from Gartner, Inc.

“As business confidence returned in a strong commercial economy, buyers focused on products that drive revenue and expand business opportunities,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. “Robust gains resulted from strong vendor performance across the market, continued rapid adoption of on-demand products, increasing penetration of emerging markets, and buyer recognition of CRM applications as key drivers of customer acquisition and retention.”

SAP was the No. 1 CRM vendor based on total software revenue, with a 25.9 percent market share in 2005. Increased midmarket opportunity drove growth across the CRM market for both the large suite vendors and on-demand providers, such as salesforce.com.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz  
The news as of the first coffee – but friends, a tall iced coffee, one of the greatest inventions of modern man as it double-times the inflow of caffeine – drink it like water! Ice cubes? Smoke ‘em, dude, we use coffee cubes here and the music is the Official Theme Song of Radio KCRM, Adam Carroll’s “Ol’ Milwaukee’s Best:”

That’s right, it’s Fry In Wendy’s Healthier Oil Day, welcome to Radio KCRM, 98.6 on your digital dial, brought to you by the Democratic Party – a chicken in every pot and $90,000 in every freezer. Door-to-door delivery courtesy of the Louisiana National Guard rain or shine – nah, they don’t have anything better to do during Hurricane Katrina.

A big shout-out for good aim to the great folks in the United States military this morning, for showing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (R.I.H.) that for sewer rats, Hibhib safe houses ain’t so safe. The air is noticeably cleaner this morning, thank you, those who serve.

We got a thirty-minute block of classic CRM here at the top of the hour, kicking off with another cross-cultural marriage: EDS has wooed a majority stake of MphasiS BFL Limited, an applications and BPO based in Bangalore.

As dowry the lovely bride tendered even more than the required 83 million shares of MphasiS, in response to the lovestruck suitor’s conditional open offer of rupees 204.5 per share ($4.50 in walking around folding green), which closed on June 5. Total consideration for the transaction that gives EDS a majority stake in MphasiS is $380 million cash, a color TV, gold necklaces for the mother-in-law and six llamas.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is nice, light, unobtrusive, totally backgroundy, inoffensive, anonymous wallpaper cocktail jazz, and some mornings that is just what you need:

CRM vendor Onyx Software Corporation has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by privately-held M2M Holdings Inc., the holding company that is jointly owned by Battery Ventures VI, L.P. and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners and whose primary asset is Made2Manage Systems Inc., an enterprise software and services company.

It’s an all-cash transaction valued at $4.80 per share, or approximately $92 million. The parties anticipate closing the transaction in the third calendar quarter of 2006.

The closing is subject to approval by holders of a majority of Onyx’s outstanding common stock and other customary regulatory and documentation closing conditions.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is “Au Fond Du Temple Saint Redux,” by the East Village Opera Company:

The Times of Central Asia has a worthwhile article on the deregulation of the Kazakh telecommunications market, well worth a read. We’ll summarize it and hit the highlights here:

The government of Kazakhstan met on May 18 to discuss liberalizing the telecommunications market. Prime Minister Danial Akhmetov criticized Kazakhtelecom, which, he said, was obstructing alternative telecom operators, and gave a three-week period for de-monopolization measures to be drawn up.

The government plans to de-monopolize the industry in August 2006.

By David Sims david@firstcoffee.biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning here on Radio KCRM, where we’re groovin’ to one of the greatest albums in living memory, no not Oasis’s Definitely Maybe, more like Cornel West’s Sketches Of My Culture… uh, sorry, seems we’re getting a bleed through the studio walls here, hey you wanna hold it down over there, at least put the Bob Marley back on… hey, HEY! We’re tryin’ to do a SHOW here! Load the ol’ peace pipe back up whyncha, some animals are better tranquilized.

As we said before we so rudely interrupted ourselves, we got the Stones on to Sway, Sway, Sway, slamming heavy blues how else are you gonna get going on a Friday without overloading the triple espressos? Fall out of a coconut tree in Fiji or something?

Kicking off the money part of the patter let’s peek in on Parature, provider of perfectly profitable products on demand customer support software, who would like you, Gentle Reader, to know that Capitol College [Favorite Superlative: “The only independent college in Maryland dedicated to engineering, computer sciences, information technologies and business,” and propellerheads, if that don’t scream “throw that acceptance letter from M.I.T. in the trash already!” I don’t know what do], has implemented Parature’s Campus Support Solution to increase the efficiency and quality of support it provides its students and faculty.

“We selected Parature due to its easy customization tools, the fact that it is a Web-based help desk software product, its high cost effectiveness, and great staff. Overall, we’ve been very pleased,” said Danielle Faison, Director, Distance Learning Services, Capitol College, whose word processing program could probably stand to audit the Capitol College course where they explain that tricky subject-object agreement.

Capitol College provides all graduate level courses completely via the Internet, therefore many of their students work full-time, study at night, or are located in other countries in different time zones, so providing support 24 hours a day, seven days a week is important.