The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is going to be another Dexter Gordon day. As we've noted before, we're not jazzheads here at First Coffee, but we know what we like, and while saxophonist Gordon may not have hit the high points John Coltrane or Charlie Parker did, we find him, like Frank Sinatra, top-quality work music:

 

Appian, a vendor of business process management technology, has unveiled Appian Enterprise 5.7, the latest version of its BPM Suite, and Appian ShareBase, described by company officials as "a repository of BPM content contributed by customers, partners and Appian staff. "

 

Appian Enterprise 5.7 introduces features to help users "design, execute, manage and optimize key business processes," company officials say: "These features are centered on enabling users to rapidly build process based applications that seamlessly integrate people and systems.

 

Expanded support for custom data types in Appian Process Models is one of the offerings of the product. "Complex data types can be used to define process variables, which are available for use in process nodes, forms, and reports," company officials say.

 

There's also enhanced Web services support across a wide range of services and the latest standards. The product's automatic creation of complex data types allows for more flexible mapping of Web Service inputs and outputs, company officials say.

 

The Web services for remote portlets supports WSRP 1.0 consumption, and easy publication of third-party WSRP content into Appian Portal Pages.

 

Appian Enterprise 5.7 will be generally available on December 19. The Appian ShareBase repository is immediately available, and is free to use with an Appian product license. All content in the repository is contributed by the members of the Appian community, and includes Process Models, Smart Services, Form Libraries, Rules, enhancements and other extensions.

 

Appian has loaded Appian ShareBase with content, and will continue to add to it regularly, company officials say, adding that Appian ShareBase lets partners and customers of Appian "upload, review, and discuss content. Appian ShareBase can be accessed via Appian Access, the online collaborative network for Appian Enterprise users."

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DPS Sporting Club Development, developers of residential sporting communities nationwide and in the Caribbean, has chosen Oracle CRM On Demand and Oracle Call Center On Demand to personalize and manage client relationships.

 

Oracle's Customer Relationship Management services supports DPS Sporting Club Development's efforts in marketing support through workflow, built-in analytics and communication, Oracle officials say.

 

Selecting Oracle will assist DPS in annual goals of "increased sales and revenue, 360-degree holistic customer view, contact and campaign management, a fast ROI, better reporting of sales and marketing efforts, lead tracking and sales revenue forecasting,; pipeline management and reduction of manual processes," DPS officials say.

 

The Oraclians say their product will "extend professional capabilities to DPS through little to no in-house IT management, enhanced data integration and data integrity of customers, built-in analytics tools and abilities to integrate with open source... the relationship with Oracle will allow DPS to record specifics with clients and increase target marketing aimed at the specific interests of prospects and current clients."

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CEO and Chairman Jim Walker of Octagon Research Solutions, a vendor of software and services to the life sciences industry, has announced the release of StartingPoint 3.2. The product is a global document authoring template suite intended for organizations seeking to standardize their authoring processes in support of electronic submissions.

           

Some of the enhancements to StartingPoint 3.2 include Global Configuration File for Document Information Fields, where global settings can be configured to minimize manual entry and ensure consistent naming conventions across multiple documents. 

 

There's also functionality to format full prescribing information into a one or two column format, "allowing authors to edit in a single column, but produce two column format for final deliverable," company officials say.

 

The product has templates to support ANDA submissions, as well as table and figure numbering per section - the option to number tables and figures either by document or section.

 

John Lawrie, vice president, Process Solutions at Octagon, said "evolving global submission standards are adding complexity to the already challenging submission authoring process." To see a demonstration of StartingPoint 3.2 contact Octagon at (610)-535-6500 or hit the Web site.

 

Octagon's eCTD and CDISC products focus on "the people, process and technology required to optimize drug development from data collection to submission," company officials say.

 

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Industry observer Edward J Correia had a nice piece recently on SugarCRM, specifically on the ability to track Gmail messages about specific features and bugs from within your defect tracking system. You can do that "if you're using the open-source SugarCRM," he writes, "thanks to a team of Italian developers that launched DolceGmail."

 

The new plug-in for Firefox, Correia writes, links Google's browser-based e-mail system with SugarCRM, "allowing users to add contacts, e-mail messages and attachments from Gmail directly to their SugarCRM system."

"SugarCRM is a business application framework with a CRM app on top," Clint Oram, vice president and co-founder of SugarCRM told Correia. "We have tools for building new modules on top, and you might not even use the CRM aspect. Customers can build new objects specific to their business."

Oram told Correia the system is most commonly used for keeping track of bugs and feature requests, but can be used in lots of other ways. "Let's say they need to do asset management...you have hardware you keep track of in Excel and have trouble tickets for those assets," he said. Such a system could be built on Sugar in about a day, Correia says Oram claimed.

 

DolceGmail, the article says, was built by developers at OpenLiven, a small IT services and development company in Italy that tracks customer contact using SugarCRM. "OpenLiven had lots of customers using Gmail, so they built a plug-in connecting Firefox and Gmail APIs to ours," said Oram. "Now they can keep track of all e-mails from a specific customers and relating to specific projects."

 

Correia notes the project was named "Project of the Month" by SugarCRM.

SugarCRM is available in several editions ranging from the free Community edition to an Enterprise edition costing $480 per user per year. Correia notes that the English-language plug-in is written in JavaScript, licensed under the Mozilla Public License 1.1, and works with SugarCRM Community, Professional and Enterprise editions versions 4.5.1, 5.0 and 5.1.

 

By the way, not to spread scurrilous gossip or anything, but industry observer Eric Krangel, citing comments by SugarCRM John Roberts, has reported that at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco last week, when Marc Benioff "heard that open source rival SugarCRM was setting up its own conference just down the street from the Dreamforce event at the Moscone Center," he pressured the hotel to move the SugarCRM team out.

 

Krangel referred to SugarCRM as "a small, but persistent thorn in Marc's side.  The smaller company has over 4,000 CRM customers, compared to 47,400 for Salesforce."

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Convio, which sells on-demand constituent relationship management software and services to nonprofit organizations, has announced what company officials characterize as "record" revenues of $14.9 million for the third quarter of 2008, a 26 percent increase over the same period last year.

 

Generating $1.1 million in operating cash flow, the company produced positive cash flow from operations for the fourth time in the last five quarters and again achieved profitability on a non-GAAP basis.
 
Crediting a "combination of new clients, addition of new events and organic growth in the existing client base," Convio officials say the company processed $565 million in online donations on behalf of clients during the first nine months of 2008, a 91 percent increase over the same period a year ago.
 
Convio's non-GAAP income from operations for the quarter ended September 30, 2008, which excludes stock-based compensation expense and amortization of intangibles arising from the acquisition of GetActive Software, Inc., was $751,000.

 

This compares with non-GAAP loss from operations of $722,000 in the same period last year.
 
In Q3 2008, Convio announced general availability for Convio Common Ground, offering a free trial of a donor management system described by company officials as "an open, Web-based constituent relationship management (CRM) system for tracking all constituent interactions across all channels, online and offline, built on salesforce.com's Force.com Platform."

 

Sage Software announced today the availability of Sage BusinessWorks 50 Accounting 2009, the latest version of one of the company's popular business-management products for small to medium-sized businesses. Sage BusinessWorks 2009 includes many new time-saving features and enhancements, and is even simpler and easier to use than ever. The 2009 edition offers customer-specific pricing, detailed open credits and deposit tracking, unlimited line items on transactions, and increased sales account entry capacity, in addition to check printing efficiencies, and other time-saving and technical enhancements.

 

"Sage BusinessWorks 2009 exemplifies the ongoing commitment and focus Sage Software has for producing a superior product," says Stan Stankowski of Apex Software Group, a Sage BusinessWorks business partner located in Orlando, FL. "I'm especially impressed with the new open credits and deposits functionality, and the new customer-specific pricing feature, which allows you to easily assign different part prices for individual customers. I believe these and the many other new features and enhancements included in Sage BusinessWorks 2009 make it a significant, worthwhile upgrade for existing clients, and a smart choice for new ones."

 

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Call it Weather Wars. The Weather Channel Mobile introduces its latest weather application for Blackberry devices, The Weather Channel 2.0 for Blackberry.  The new application includes enhancements such as GPS Location Tracker, interactive maps with user-controlled weather layers, and a convenient home screen temperature indicator that turns red when severe weather threatens.

 

The new weather application provides consumers with accurate, localized weather data with enhanced features such as metro traffic maps, the ability to nickname and save favorite locations (i.e. Mom's house), and the ability to e-mail or text weather information straight to friends and family.

Using GPS, The Weather Channel can pinpoint a user's location and provide detailed conditions within 2 kilometers with proprietary technology from The Weather Channel.  This type of technology - combined with a fresh new look, navigation model, and personalization features - sets The Weather Channel 2.0 apart as the most precise weather application available for Blackberry.