The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Nigel Kennedy's recording of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons:
Focusing specifically on small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), SAP AG has announced that it will introduce new e-commerce and Web-based capabilities to SAP Business One. The new functions will enable companies to "set up online stores easily and to deploy customer relationship management (CRM) software quickly and simply via the Internet," according to SAP officials.
Addressing increasing demand among SMEs to make e-commerce and CRM core parts of their businesses, SAP officials describe the new features as a way to provide a unified view of information across sales, financials, manufacturing, reporting and customer-facing activities in a single software product.
SAP is acquiring the new e-commerce and CRM capabilities through its recent acquisition of Praxis Software Solutions, a privately-held software company and long-term SAP Business One partner based in Minneapolis. The purchase gives SAP the acquired technology and Praxis employees to throw at the SAP Business One operations.
Why is nobody really very surprised that the French found a way to surrender the World Cup to Italy?
Having outplayed Italy, clearly the best team in the knockout phase of the tournament, for the past hour, Les Bleus found themselves in the precarious position of being in danger of winning. So in the fine French tradition of le grand gesture, the only activity France has always excelled in, team captain and undisputed leader Zinedine Zidane pulls the stupidest move in World Cup history, head-butting Italian player Marco Materazzi, getting red-carded and sent off to end a brilliant career in disgrace.
(For our American readers, this is the soccer equivalent of Bill Buckner's misplay in the 1986 World Series against the Mets. Just as no baseball fan can hear the name of the quite good player Bill Buckner without thinking of that one play, now Zidane's name will forever be associated with the single most classless, idiotic, destructive finale to the career of any world-class soccer player. Fairly or -- most likely -- not, Buckner was blamed for the Sox not winning the Series that year, much more fairly will Zidane be blamed for France losing this World Cup.)
Okay, Materazzi and Zidane had been jostling and jawing with each other (which language, one wonders idly) a bit, but earth to Zidane: THIS IS THE WORLD CUP FINAL. Someone calls your mother the easiest mark in Tijuana you smile and say nothing and be sure to shake his hand after you win. Burning coals on his head and all that.
But no. Zidane's always had an, ah, anger management issue, and it became unmanaged at the worst possible time. He lost his head, last seen being rammed into Materazzi's midsection, he's properly red-carded, and you could see the wind completely go out of the French sails, all momentum lost.
Even the penalty kicks, usually where the Azzuri lose important matches, were a formality at that point. When Zidane, France's most trusted shot for penalty kicks, trudged off the field, quietly dropping the captain's armband on the ground on his way to the locker room, he had let down his team in the worst possible way, Italy had won, and everyone in the stadium knew it.
(P.S. Spare a thought for Roger Federer, first for such a rare tennis talent to come along during the sport's decline, and then to win Wimbledon to the most perfunctory applause First Coffee's ever heard at the All England Club -- the brash punk version of John McEnroe got a warmer hand than this -- on a day when the sporting world's attention was riveted on the World Cup.)
Satuit Technologies, Inc., a vendor of customer relationship management (CRM) products for investment users, is announcing that Sands Capital Management, LLC has selected SatuitCRM On-Demand for its marketing, sales and client services team.
Sands Capital Management officials said they wanted a CRM system "way beyond contact management."
Dana McNamara, Director of Client Services for Sands Capital Management said key selection criteria leading to Satuit included "an On-Demand option, their simple and easy to understand interface and architecture, their ability to easily and cleanly integrate our existing data and systems and the ability to connect anywhere."
Sands Capital Management, based in Arlington, Virginia, began operations in February of 1992. The company claimed assets under management of $19 billion as of December 31, 2005. The firm sells sales force automation (SFA) and client relationship management (CRM) products, focusing on the professional investment market. The company's SatuitCRM system was designed for sale to asset management and hedge fund companies.
...Cogniview Ltd, a vendor of business data conversion products, has announced the release of Eudi (End User Data Integration), a software product designed to give information workers "easy access and retrieval to the data they need from the enterprise application to their desktop environment," according to company officials.
Eudi is being pitched at what Cogniview officials call "a critical gap in the information needs of professionals in organizations," namely "if users can print the data, they can extract the data."
Eudi is a fully-functional software Windows-based program for desktop users allowing users to print the data they see on the screen by selecting the Eudi virtual printer from the printer-list. The data is then captured by Cogniview's Eudi and converted to desktop analysis software. This, company officials explain, "gives users the ability to extract and pull data from any report, spreadsheet, invoice, and other data based programs that have printable data forms."
Eudi can extract any data available through the use of the virtual printer and export that data to popular programs, including MS Excel, MS Word and the clipboard.
"Too often companies are stricken by the tremendous gap between the data needs and the data supply, even at the most sophisticated organizations. The data resides in the organization databases, reports or application screens, but is inaccessible to the users," said Yinon Feldheim, CEO of Tel Aviv-based Cogniview.
"Until now, the common solution was the deployment of data conversion projects. And often those projects just address a fraction of the problem and come with a prohibitive price tag for long-term usage, " noted Feldheim.
In the future the company plans to add support for CSV (comma separated values files) so the exported data can be converted to database applications such as MS Access and others. Cogniview is introducing the new Cogniview Data Integrator in English, and is planning to introduce it in other major languages later this year, 2006.
A single user license runs $145, and for a limited time the launch price is $119 U.S. A fully functional trial evaluation copy is available on Cogniview's Web site – http://www.cogniview.com.
Cogniview claims customers from over 90 countries around the world, including 20 of the global fortune 100 companies, governments and not-for-profit organizations.
Thinking about it some more, how incredibly selfish of Zidane. Psychologists say suicide is the most selfish act a person can commit, and Zidane's choice to commit hari-kiri not only doomed his team, but robbed Italy as well, since this final will be remembered primarily for a French butthead's head-butt instead of as the crowning game in Italy's masterful tournament performance. Adieu et le bon riddance, Zidane.
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