By David Sims
David at firstcoffee d*t biz
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s highly underrated Works, Vol. II:
It's amazing that Rudy Giuliani, the guy who led all the national Republican polls for most of 2007, is out of the race. Maybe his not actually running in any of the early primaries led people to figure the man doesn't want to be President all that badly.
Hard to fault that logic. Had Rudy at least competed in easy pickoff states, like Wyoming or Nevada, it would have kept his name in circulation. But he confirmed, once again, America's suspicion that creatures of New York City — and Rudy's World is exactly that of Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker "View of the World From 9th Avenue" cover, where everything beyond the Hudson River is wogs — really don't give a functional damn about much outside Gotham, except maybe Florida.
He squandered unbeatable name recognition and top place in all Republican preference polls and is now out on the street. Maybe he really didn't want to be President all that badly. Guess I can peel the "Rudy Giuliani '08" bumper sticker off my laptop now.
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Graham Technology, which sells business software and services, has announced it has delivered the underlying technology platform that drives MoveMachine, the online portal from property firm ESPC, designed to be a one-stop-shop for buying and selling homes.
With a membership of around 250 solicitor estate agents, ESPC has helped to sell over £3.5billion of residential property in the UK over the last 12 months.
Since 14 December 2007, every home put on the market in England and Wales, no matter what size, must have a Home Information Pack. A similar scheme will be introduced in Scotland in late 2008.
MoveMachine is a Web site designed to help guide users through the new property selling process, from information on HIPs and their benefits to ordering a HIP itself. MoveMachine also has a corporate member portal, which is used by member estate agents and solicitors in the production of HIPs.
In addition to MoveMachine, Graham Technology has also delivered a contact center platform based on ciboodle, the company's flagship software product. The contact center incorporates a number of case and contact management features, along with workflow and reporting functionality.
Headquartered in Scotland, Graham Technology has seven global offices.
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Talisma Corporation, which describes itself as a Customer Interaction Management (CIM) software product vendor, has announced a partnership with ClickFox, which sells Customer Experience Analytics software and services. The firms will sell an integrated product with the Talisma CIM Suite and the ClickFox CBI software.
"The partnership of ClickFox and Talisma has the power to provide businesses with a 'Total View' of the customer experience," said Marco Pacelli, CEO of ClickFox.
ClickFox software maps customer interactions to a business-relevant model of the system, offering some insight into how customers are interacting with a business. Using the ClickFox Customer Experience Analytics system, company officials say, firms can reduce operational costs and improve customer satisfaction.
The ClickFox – Talisma product will put interactions into an intuitive, visual map, "revealing what customers actually do and why, so that companies can align customer needs with their business objectives," officials from both firms say. For example, an agent using Talisma Chat can determine the best proactive offer for a customer based on the customer's history and behavioral patterns while on the Web site.
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The Open Solutions Alliance, a nonprofit, vendor-neutral consortium dedicated to driving interoperability and adoption of comprehensive open products, has announced plans to expand the organization's global footprint.
The OSA will function under a chapter structure with its first new regional chapter planned to address the European open products market.
The OSA, which celebrates its one-year anniversary in February, expects to announce several new European members in the coming months. Current members headquartered in Europe include Onepoint, Openbravo, Redmayne-Bentley Stockbrokers and Talend. Many other OSA members also run operations in Europe.
"More open source projects have originated in Europe than anywhere else in the world, which gives the region a unique foundation for building business value for users," said Bertrand Diard, chief executive officer of Talend, a founding member of the OSA.
Pierre Audoin Conseil, a Paris-based analyst firm, announced this month that the French market for open-source software reached 730 million euros in 2007, a leap of 66 percent from the previous year, and Gartner Research is forecasting that open-source software adoption rates will continue to increase across Europe at the expense of proprietary software.
Its new chapter structure will "better enable the OSA to address the needs of ISVs, systems integrators and users who are deploying open products all over the world," according to OSA officials, but with "a regional focus that is tailored for regional differences in culture, business practices, regulatory environments and open source adoption patterns."
In Europe as in other regions, the OSA will "continue to focus its efforts on defining and promoting tools, frameworks and best practices that facilitate easy deployment and interoperability between applications," OSA officials say.
Dominic Sartorio, OSA's president, said by this time next year he expects to have chapters "up and running in other regions enjoying strong open source adoption, including Asia and Latin America."
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EXpresso, the SaaS offering that hosts Excel business communities, has become an AppExchange partner. A fully certified version of eXpresso with full Salesforce integration will officially launch in February.
The eXpresso service is designed specifically for the Excel business user who can store, edit, or instantly collaborate on spreadsheets in real time. The Salesforce relationship will "expose eXpresso to thousands of customers," eXpresso officials say.
Hey, by the way, the name of the Italian coffee drink is "espresso," okay? I mean, it's fine for this company to call themselves whatever they want, but when writing about what you drink it's "espresso," not "expresso," okay? Thanks.
EXpresso will be fully integrated with Salesforce. Users can edit spreadsheets, set and receive alerts, or collaborate on-the-fly with colleagues from within Salesforce.
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And in case you were wondering, SAP had another good year. SAP AG has announced preliminary financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2007. For FY 2007 software and software related service revenues for 2007 were €7.43 billion, as opposed to 2006's €6.60 billion.
Software revenues for 2007 were €3.41 billion, in 2006 they were €3.00 billion. Total revenues were €10.25 billion for 2007, up from 2006's €9.39 billion. Operating income for 2007 was €2.74 billion (€2.58 billion in 2006), but the operating margin for 2007 was 26.7 percent, compared to 27.4 percent for 2006.
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