By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama's There Will Be A Light:

Tel Aviv-based Algorithmic Research, which sells standards-based electronic signatures (digital signatures) and data security products, and Top Image Systems Ltd., which sells data capture products, have announced what ARX officials call "an extended worldwide technology and sales alliance that will help customers manage information more efficiently."

Through this partnership, the companies hope to sell products for customers to "expedite data capture processes, improve internal controls and enhance compliance with regulations," ARX officials say.

Top Image Systems' eFLOW is a single end-to-end product designed to process information from different sources and through a business's applications, including document and content management applications, ERP or CRM.

The product can handle invoices, checks, purchase orders and other information. EFLOW allows access to financial information at any time, thus facilitating compliance reporting for regulations governing business and financial information.

ARX’s CoSign is described by company officials as "a non-forgeable, standards-based electronic-signature solution" integrated with eFLOW. CoSign provides users with a way to affix legally-binding electronic signatures to documents, records, files, forms, and other electronic transactions. Users can sign multiple document-format types, including those from Adobe, Microsoft, IBM, and others.

"The combination of these complimentary technologies offers a compelling solution for any financial, commercial and governmental organization wishing to comply with the growing number of compliance reports required by federal and state government regulatory organizations," said Gadi Aharoni, CEO of ARX.

…

HitachiSoft will begin offering the SaaSWare SynchroMax service, linking scheduler functions from Hitachi, Ltd.'s Groupmax groupware software with Salesforce, the on-demand CRM application from salesforce.com, Inc.

The launch of this service, Hitachi officials say, marks the company's first foray into integrating Salesforce with various applications using SaaSWare.

HitachiSoft has further plans to expand the service with SaaSWare, centered on linking Salesforce with software packages and services offered by HitachiSoft, software packages held by other Hitachi group companies and backbone systems such as ERP, generalizing HitachiSoft's in-house systems.

Before this partnership with salesforce.com, HitachiSoft was a reseller offering system integration services involving Salesforce.

SynchroMax is built using the Apex on-demand platform from salesforce.com. The product can synchronize the Groupmax scheduler with the Salesforce calendar and ToDo List functions, thereby eliminating the need to enter data in both applications.

HitachiSoft is also offering "Total Service Integration" with its SaaS business, combining SaaSWare with its consulting and integration services based on experience and know-how from installing Salesforce internally for several thousands of users," company officials say.

HitachiSoft plans to continue to integrate Salesforce with other existing services such as piX terra, a satellite image ASP, using SaaSWare, and also to apply it to business systems such as internal regulation, sales management, production management, and document management.

…

SoftwareProjects, an Internet marketing and Web development firm, has announced that it has completed integration with the UltraCart shopping cart. This lets merchants using UltraCart manage their UltraCart-powered stores from a single interface.

UltraCart technology is a customizable e-commerce service. SoftwareProjects Payment Center is a Web-based CRM and ERP system designed, company officials say, to "consolidate all information relating to a business including customer data, financial transactions, help desk and analytics into a single interface."

Supported shopping carts include: InstantEStore, XCart, Yahoo store, Ebay store, OSCommerce and now UltraCart.

The company is waiving all setup fees for existing UltraCart merchants, throughout April 30. The company was established in 1996 and is  headquartered in Atlanta.

…

Compact Solutions, a vendor of data management products, has announced that it is organizing its services around vertical industries. The first of its Industry Practices has been created to serve financial services companies.

Charles Leinbach will be Compact Solutions' Practice Director for Financial Services.

"Our goals are to help our financial services customers succeed in their large-scale data management initiatives, whether processing large transaction volumes, addressing data quality, or the analysis and storage of large datasets," said Pankaj Agrawal, Compact Solutions' chief executive officer and CTO.

The idea to organize around vertical industries "developed naturally," company officials say, noting that Compact Solutions began as an enterprise information integration vendor, specializing in Ab Initio technology. The idea behind EII is for corporations to use what Compact Solutions officials term the "massive amounts of data" usually residing in disparate silos throughout the enterprise.

…

Okay, we're in a good mood here at First Coffee, we'll give a tip of the coffee pot to SugarCRM for signing on as the Title Sponsor of the Los Gatos Bicycle Racing Club's Cat's Hill Classic bicycle race.

SugarCRM provides commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software in several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premise and appliance-based methods.

The Los Gatos Bicycle Racing Club has presented the Cat's Hill race continuously since 1974. The SugarCRM Cat's Hill Classic, totally a volunteer project of the Los Gatos Bicycle Racing Club, is one of the oldest grass roots cycling races in the US.

The Los Gatos Bicycle Racing Club has selected the Alex Smith Foundation and the Los Gatos Skateboard Park as the designated charities for 2007. The Alex Smith Foundation was established by Los Gatos resident and 49er quarterback Alex Smith to help foster care youth transition into adulthood, via developing and promoting programs in six basic areas: Mentoring, Education, Housing, Internships, Jobs and Advocacy.

For all registration information, race information and directions, please visit the race website at www.catshill.org.

…

Dealerskins, a division of Dominion Enterprises and vendor of automotive dealer Web products, has announced a partnership and integration with DealerCentric Solutions to incorporate the DCS "Get Pre-Approved in Seconds" program into its Web sites.

The program approves customers online based on dealer-defined credit criteria. The "Quick App" is customized to the look of the dealer's site and can be integrated into Lead Generation and CRM systems.

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