July 2009 Archives

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the first song to come up on the iTunes shuffle of the thousands upon thousands of songs here on the official First Coffee playlist... it is... "The Equaliser" by The Clash from their glorious, sprawling freeway crash of an album, Sandinista!:

Worldwide revenue from open source software will grow at a 22.4 percent compound annual growth rate to reach $8.1 billion by 2013, according to a recent IDC study.

The attentive reader will notice that this forecast is "considerably higher" than 2008. IDC officials give three reasons for that: One, the bottom-up list used to calculate the revenue has expanded through an effort to include more projects in the forecast. Secondly, open source software "has had a much higher level of acceptance over the past 12 months than previously expected," IDC officials say, and finally, the economy accelerated the uptake and use of open source software in the closing months of 2008.

Translation: When the economy goes south, folks look for cheaper alternatives.

The study also finds that hybrid business models seem to be increasing. IDC officials say it is "likely" that this will end up as "the most prevalent business model, with on-premise vendors adding SaaS, SaaS vendors offering on premise, OSS vendors selling variants," as well as closed source vendors offering more OSS.

"The open source software market has seen a strong boost from the current economic crisis," agrees Michael Fauscette, group vice president, Software Business Solutions. Fauscette thinks if OSS vendors play their cards right they could turn a windfall situation into a permanent business advantage: "As the overall software industry continues to consolidate, it will be key for OSS vendors to reach scale if they plan to continue as a standalone business."

The study also finds large software vendors like IBM, Sun, Dell, HP, and Oracle making "significant amounts" of indirect revenue from their activities with and support of OSS: "This has greatly aided mainstream adoption and acceptance of OSS," IDC officials note.
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Smartphones represent the fastest growing mobile phone segment, as 38.1 million smartphones were sold worldwide in the first quarter of 2009 according to Gartner. And you don't need First Coffee to tell you the iPhone dominates the smart phone market, but guess how many iPhone apps there are? Yep -- well over 65,000.

Everybody's churning out iPhone apps, either as a way to turn a buck in tough times or just get their name out there. It may simply be coincidental timing, but the popularity of iPhone apps is at an all-time high in these here hard(er) times. And the market isn't drying up anytime soon -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced last quarter that 5.2 million iPhones were sold, a 626 percent increase from a year ago.

IPhoneAppQuotes.com ("where new apps are born every day," according to company officials) is on top of things, and according to their tallies, medical, education, business and book applications are the most popular development requests.

A bit surprisingly, to First Coffee anyway, requests for game iPhone application development dropped by roughly 10 percent and the development of new music applications are in "steep decline," the study finds. Less surprisingly "the initiation of new weather, sports and photography have slowed to a near standstill." Well, naturally -- how many sports score trackers do we really need?

Other tidbits:

In the first quarter of 2009, there was a 50 / 50 split between business versus consumer application request for development.

In the second quarter, business applications have increased by 30 percent, resulting in a 70/30 split.

Request for quotes to develop new iPhone applications are up 20 percent from May to June 2009.

Apple has announced there are now over 100,000 registered iPhone app developers.

"Business apps are proving to be the most popular category of apps as entrepreneurs and small businesses realize the marketing and additional revenue stream potential the iPhone creates," says Gregg Weiss, founder of iPhoneAppQuotes.com, adding that apps "are now available in 77 countries." But iPhoneAppQuotes.com is open to only U.S. based companies.
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Bango, a mobile payment and analytics company, has announced Wi-Fi enabled operator billing for smartphones.

It's Bango's contention that mobile operator payments deliver more successful transactions than traditional payment methods, but as company officials note, "mobile content revenues have been impacted by the increasing popularity of smartphones, such as Blackberry and iPhone." Until now smartphone users were redirected to credit card payment instead of placing charges on their phone bill, leading to lost sales and lower conversion rates.

Evidently the issue is that given these devices' ability to connect to the Web through Wi-Fi, operator billing that normally relies on traffic coming through operator gateways isn't available, making it a bit more difficult for consumers to buy content: Bango officials quote Satoshi Asari, Director of Product Marketing at Monotype Imaging, saying that last month, fully "36 percent of our FlipFont.mobi traffic was recorded as coming from Symbian Series 60 handsets via Wi-Fi and other non-operator connections."

So Bango's pushing technology for operator on-bill payment for mobile phones, "even when consumers connect through Wi-Fi."

"An increasing number of our customers are using smartphones and connect via Wi-Fi to access mobile content," says Mark Curtis, CEO of Flirtomatic. Yes, that's right, Flirtomatic. First Coffee doesn't know either, but will find out in the name of professional research soon enough.

Bear in mind, too, friends, the stat cited above: Smartphones represent the fastest growing mobile phone segment, as 38.1 million smartphones were sold worldwide in the first quarter of 2009.
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When New York City's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex (Motto: "Cleveland? How Did That Happen?") opened last November, Sennheiser's guidePORT was the chosen technology to deliver the audio experience.

Sennheiser officials said this was "only fitting." Really? Why? Did Mick Jagger used to work for them or something?

This summer Sennheiser is introducing the Sennheiser Sound Tour, described by company officials as "a highly creative, guerrilla-marketing campaign" designed to "increase the German manufacturer's brand awareness among consumers."

The Sennheiser Sound Tour uses a combination of "unconventional avenues and social media channels" to reach headphone consumers, a market which evidently includes "music enthusiasts, online gamers, multimedia artists and musicians," according to Sennheiser officials.

Sennheiser's microphones and audio products are evidently endorsed by "stars like Seal, Madonna, Sting and others," according to Sennheiser officials. The company will host two consumer engagement events at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex in NYC on July 31st and August 1st between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.

The events will include a first-hand look at the "technology behind the tour," a photo op with "the original, highly customized microphones used by the American Idol finalists and a chance to meet and "interact with" the Sennheiser Sound Tour "Girls Team," who will be on hand offering product demonstrations, rebates and what company officials describe as "incentives" on Sennheiser Headphones.
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Boomi, a vendor of on-demand integration technology, has announced the availability of integration Widgets for SaaS-to-SaaS and SaaS-to-On-premise integration of common business applications.

They're aimed at businesses "with application-specific integration needs," looking to deploy integration Widgets "without the burden of coding, data mapping or configuring for firewall issues." Once deployed, company officials say, Boomi Widgets update and synchronize applications every few minutes.

No, pre-built integration processes are not, in fact, a new concept in the industry, but Boomi officials say theirs can be customized by the end-user at the time of deployment -- by technophobe doofuses, no less: "Boomi Widgets allow non-technical end-users to customize and deploy these productized integrations in minutes via menu-driven wizards."

Laurie McCabe, Partner, Hurwitz and Associates, says business users with "limited or no technical skills" can connect common SaaS and on-premise applications "with just a few mouse clicks." Bob Moul, CEO of Boomi, modestly called the product "the Holy Grail of integration that people have been trying to solve for decades."

Boomi officials say that independent software vendors, system integrators and developers can also build and embed productized integration processes themselves without being dependent on an integration vendor for development and maintenance, "generating competitive advantage over applications that rely on separate, third-party integration products."

Boomi Widgets "allow us to essentially productize our intellectual property and enhance our competitive advantage," says Deborah Brook, CEO of WDCi, a systems integration consultancy based in Sydney.

Boomi officials say the company has added more than 100 customers from January to June 2009 and doubled its growth rate from 2008. The company created AtomSphere, an integration platform-as-a-service.
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Operating on what company officials say is "the major challenge facing small and medium-sized enterprise today," that of "remaining viable in an increasingly competitive marketplace," Britain's Tpad officials are pitching their hosted IP PBX service as a way to provide better customer satisfaction.

Tpad's hosted IP PBX services are "geared provide flexibility in the way companies can access and use communication services," company officials say, adding that this not only "reduces the response time to clients, but increases the level of productivity organization wide, whether the employees are stationary in the office or mobile, working from a remote location." The phone system is monitored with around the clock and supported by a server room.
 
New software features are added to call management software "the moment they become available," company officials say, "removing the anxiety of large capital equipment upgrades as the communication needs of your business evolves. There are no hidden charges or fees, you simply select the extensions you need to add to your current system and pay accordingly."

Steve Smart, Managing Director of Tpad, pointed out the "portability" of the system as another advantage: "With traditional PSTN numbers, if your company changed locations you would be unable to keep the same telephone number. The hosted IP/PBX system from Tpad provides you with a Personal Number or Extension that is not tied to your geographic location."

The system works with Wi-Fi mobile phones, soft phones and ATAs. The company is headquartered in the UK with offices in the United Arab Emirates.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Alan Jackson's fine, understated gospel album, Precious Memories. I have no idea what Mr. Jackson's personal beliefs are, but the vocal warmth on these recordings sure do sound like a guy walking past a Baptist church, going in, finding a hymnal and sitting down at the piano to fondly relive his days in the church choir:

 

A SugarCRM tutorial site, CRMStage.com, has been launched "to assist SugarCRM developers, partners and customers to speed up development time."

 

In the past SugarCRM developers "would have to spend hours in forums or going through code in order to make customizations," says Josh Sweeney, founder of CRMStage.com. 

 

The site offers "tutorials and articles" to provide steps for conquering what site officials say are "common and difficult SugarCRM customization tasks." CRMStage officials said they see their offering as complimentary for SugarCRM by offering not only articles and tutorials but "and pre-built custom modules" for SugarCRM: Users "can read a tutorial that will guide them through both basic and advanced customizations, saving time and money," Sweeney says.

SugarCRM, of course, is the open-source customer relations management (CRM) product popular among budget-conscious businesses. Its Web-based CRM allows employees to access customers' profiles whether they are working in the office, working from home or traveling. 

 

With a program like SugarCRM, while customers and their needs can be monitored and attended to, what's essential is a solid understanding of the SugarCRM structure. Saying "every aspect of SugarCRM can be customized to fit with any company's business processes," CRMStage officials say their product "helps business IT departments by taking hours off of training and development time."

 

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DecisionPoint Systems has announced its Field Mobility program, which company officials characterize as a way to "help customers identify and achieve faster Return on Investment in field-based workforce automation, while mitigating the risk of in-house deployment."

 

Brent Felker, Vice President of Field Mobility for DecisionPoint, said the product "takes the complexity and uncertainty out of the job of rolling out dozens or even thousands of mobile computers to field-based workforces." Company officials say wireless, mobility, and RFID technologies are used for delivery.

 

The product provides application software and tool sets from multiple ISV Partners in "virtually every application category," company officials say. It's supposed to design, deploy and integrate these, using widely-accepted industry methodology and best practices, while managing the rollout, including the support services and help desk functions.

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Revention, which sells restaurant management products, has announced the release of a Customer Communication Center application designed to "allow a call center team to enter orders via the HungerRush online portal," company officials say. 

 

Describing the offering, Revention officials say C3 is "designed to convert call center customers to online customers." How this works, they say, is if an e-mail address is entered, an online ordering account will be created and a message will be sent to the customer containing a temporary password: "C3 will verify whether the customer has ever ordered online. If they have not, an e-mail containing a customized promotional code will be sent to the customer."

 

The call center application may be used as a stand-alone module or in conjunction with Revention's HungerRush online ordering offering. Revention officials say they're offering special pricing packages "for customers who implement both the HungerRush and Customer Communication Center modules."

Revention CEO Jeff Doyle says C3 "results in increased efficiency and higher check averages than other ordering methods."

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Zayo Enterprise Networks, a division of Zayo Group and vendor of fiber-based telecommunications products, has announced the implementation of its new network infrastructure and migration of its existing customers to aforesaid network. 

 

According to company officials, "this completes the integration of customers included in an acquisition of five city markets from CenturyTel in July, 2008." Zayo will now be delivering Ethernet services to customers in these markets as well. Zayo is based in Louisville, Colorado.

The new network includes Akron and Toledo in Ohio, Ann Arbor and Lansing in Michigan and Ft. Wayne, Indiana. The customers in these markets, now transitioned to the Zayo network, will have access to advanced IP communications services including Voice Over IP, Hosted PBX, Internet Access and Private Data Networks.

Glenn Russo, President of Zayo Enterprise Networks, noted that this investment can be used by "our current and future customers."
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Ping Identity has integrated its PingConnect on-demand Single Sign-On service with Google Apps to deliver a universal Software as a Service login which, according to company officials, "ties together different SaaS environments by managing user access and authentication in the cloud."

 

The combined offering is based on the OpenID open authentication protocol with Google Apps acting as an OpenID provider and PingConnect acting as an OpenID relying party. Once a user's identity has reached PingConnect, it can then transfer to any SaaS providers who integrate with PingConnect via Security Assertion Markup Language.

 

Users can now log in to their Google Apps domain, then directly access their other SaaS applications, such as Salesforce CRM with no further authentication required, reducing the number of pesky passwords -- dog's name, birthday, boyfriend's dog's name, boyfriend's dog's birthday -- you need to keep taped to the bottom of your desk. This includes not only Salesforce but WebEx, Concur, SuccessFactors and "more than 60 other SaaS applications," company officials say. 

 

So if you're using Google Apps this gives you the option of managing all SaaS user accounts via your Google Apps domain instead of, say, site-based corporate directories -- Active Directory or LDAP. This appears to be the thing if you want a pure cloud-based product with the authentication mechanism and SSO to manage user access to applications in the cloud.

Ping Identity CEO Andre Durand pitched the product as a way to let users "take full advantage of the benefits of SaaS without the constraints that come with managing user passwords across any number of SaaS platforms."

Google Enterprise and cloud system integrator Appirio both see strong market demand for this type of solution.

Eric Sachs, Google Apps Security Team Product Manager, noted that successful integrations of multiple SaaS applications in a single environment "have been limited in the past."

Mike Epner, head of Appirio's cloud strategy consulting practice, noted that Appirio uses PingConnect within its organization to manage SSO across Salesforce and Google Apps, and is also offering PingConnect along with its products and services.

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It's nice to see somebody reducing debt these days: Numerex, a vendor of machine-to-machine network services and solutions, has announced that it has reduced its outstanding debt associated with the financings in May 2006 and December 2006. 

 

The company, which carries the ISO 27001 information security certification, repaid $2 million in cash on the secured non-convertible term note and converted $1 million of outstanding debt into equity under the secured convertible term note. It will issue an aggregate of 226,244 shares of Class A Common Stock in connection with this conversion on July 28, 2009. 

 

Numerex's total debt level stands at $6.0 million after the reduction. The company will also be writing off all unamortized financing costs related to the debt reduction. This non-cash expense is approximately $160,000.

Alan Catherall, Chief Financial Officer of Numerex, said "this is an accretive transaction. The savings in interest expense, which will be reduced by one third, will more than compensate for the newly issued shares and the negligible opportunity cost from forgiven interest income."

 

Catherall said neither financing included any pre-payment penalties, noting that he expects the company "to remain in a sound liquidity position to finance growth."

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music, since we don't want to get into an escalating situation here, is the iPod shuffle Mrs. First Coffee has playing. She's here today working on her university course, and she wants to listen to her song shuffle, so we say fine, dear, let it roll. I love the Dixie Chicks and James Taylor, yep. Can't get enough of 'em:

AT&T has announced the availability of AT&T U-verse Voice in parts of Miami-Dade and Broward counties "marking," company officials say, "the one-year anniversary of the launch of AT&T U-verse TV."

 

The U-verse Voice product is designed to bring together home phone, wireless, broadband and TV services on one bill. U-verse TV and Internet services are now available to more than one million living units across the state.

U-verse Voice is a managed IP-based service delivered over AT&T's network, giving customers "a single, combined voice mailbox for AT&T U-verse Voice and AT&T wireless messages," as well as access to "U-verse Central," described as "an online portal to manage call preferences and settings from any PC."

 

There's also an online voice mailbox, the ability to view call logs from a PC or recent incoming calls on a TV screen, the ability to initiate a call from a PC or TV using Click to Call and other features, including 911 service.

Rich Guidotti, vice president and general manager, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets South Florida, said that "just like U-verse TV has changed the way people watch television, U-verse Voice will change the way people use their home phone."

U-verse TV customers can choose from two U-verse Voice calling plans: U-verse Voice Unlimited includes unlimited nationwide minutes to any location in the U.S., Canada or U.S. territories for $30 a month, and U-verse Voice 250 includes 250 Call Anywhere minutes to any location in the U.S. or U.S. territories for $25 a month.

AT&T officials say U-verse has introduced free enhancements, such as the ability to watch and play back recordings from a single DVR on any connected TV in the house with Total Home DVR, and a Total Home DVR feature allowing them to schedule and delete recordings from any U-verse receiver in the home.

By the way, just so you know, AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

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The Radicati Group's latest study, "E-mail Security Market, 2009-2013," forecasts that the e-mail security market will grow from over $4.4 billion in 2009, to nearly $6.7 billion in 2013.

 

Group officials say the study shows that the growth in e-mail traffic means "that over the next four years, organizations will need increasingly better defenses against all types of spam and malware. Poorly protected organizations will face increased IT costs, loss of productivity, network downtime, spiraling bandwidth costs, and more."

 

It won't be cheap. As anybody who's tried to knows, battling spam alone is costly -- "in 2009, a typical 1,000-user organization spends over $1.8 million annually to manage spam," Radicati officials said.

 

While e-mail security software is currently the largest segment of the market, the study found that security appliances are "showing fastest growth at over 40 percent annually." The study looks at four segments of the e-mail security market, group officials say: E-mail Security Software, E-mail Security Appliances, Hosted E-mail Security Services, and E-mail Security for Service Providers. 

 

The report offers analysis of the market for E-mail Security, including such factors as market size, installed base and revenue market share by vendor. It includes four-year forecasts, e-mail traffic statistics, spam and virus statistics, cost of spam and viruses and more.

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Astoria Software, vendors of an enterprise product for SaaS/On-Demand XML Component Content Management, has completed a new financing round led by Astoria investors, including Goldman Sachs, Prism VentureWorks, Blueprint Ventures and Ticonderoga Capital. 

 

The funding, Astoria officials say, will be used to expand sales, marketing, customer service, SaaS operations and to target acquisitions of companies in the Content Management application arena. Michael Rosinski, President and Chief Executive Officer of Astoria, said the funding "allows us to expand the number of customers" for the company's products.

George Hoyem, Managing Director of Blueprint Ventures, said currently "investors are focused on backing their winners. It was an easy decision to continue our financial support of Astoria. We like its position as the dominant SaaS provider in its target market."

Astoria On-Demand's marketing pitch is that it reduces documentation costs ('up to 90 percent," company officials claim) and compresses product launch cycles "from months to weeks."

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Acteva, a vendor of on-demand event registration, ticketing and payment management services, has announced the launch of the ActevaRSVP Partner Program for Salesforce CRM Consultants, aimed at Salesforce consultants that have recommended ActevaRSVP to one or more of their clients.

The program is designed to allow the Salesforce user to take event registrations from their existing Web site or invite any combination of leads, contacts and campaign members to participate in an event, and then check their participation status in Salesforce.

One firm which no doubt qualifies for the program is Idealist Consulting, since it has recommended ActevaRSVP to over 150 of their active clients. Rob Jordan, President of Idealist Consulting, said aside for the association with the company, "we obtained a royalty-free license of their product, ActevaRSVP, which we gave to one of our clients to use as a showcase for prospective clients."


 

As a member of the program, Salesforce CRM consultants get a directory listing on ActevaRSVP.com, co-marketing opportunities -- including joint press releases, case studies and events -- and access to ActevaRSVP product management and Tier 2 technical support.

 

They also qualify for a royalty-free license to ActevaRSVP Unlimited Edition, estimated by Acteva at a $1,740 annual value. And as part of Salesforce.com Foundation's Power of Us program, ActevaRSVP will be donating an ActevaRSVP Nonprofit Enterprise license to any one qualified nonprofit of each partner's choosing.

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MultiFactor Corporation, a vendor of Single Sign-On 2-factor authentication and other Web application security products, has announced what company officials are calling an authentication and provisioning program for Salesforce.com. 

 

The product, SecureAuth, addresses "both the provisioning and authentication complexities associated with cloud-based solutions," company officials say: "Users are provisioned and authenticated while using the enterprise existing central user database, i.e., Active Directory."

 

"With this integration," MultiFactor officials say, SecureAuth for Salesforce.com "brings enterprise grade security to the cloud application," adding that SecureAuth is a browser based product "requiring no additional user hardware or thick client software to deploy and manage." The same platform can also be used to manage access into other cloud applications, enterprise Web applications, and corporate VPNs.

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Call Compliance, a wholly owned subsidiary of Compliance Systems Corporation and vendors of the TeleBlock System for "Do-Not-Call," has announced a Letter of Intent to enter into an exclusive licensing agreement to distribute the Execuserve Hire-Intelligence software program. 

 

The program, according to company officials, assesses prospective job seekers using such embedded features as artificial intelligence, and "calculates and assesses customizable job skills and behavioral characteristics required of prospective job seekers," in addition to providing applicant tracking features and customized interview guides. The assessments are then used to create job-specific profiles which serve as benchmarks for future hiring. 

 

The companies intend to create a contact center specific agent evaluation tool, according to officials of both firms: "The licensing agreement will require Call Compliance to generate minimum annual revenues of $1,000,000 from the sale of Hire-Intelligence." Bear in mind that this is just a letter of understanding, though, folks -- Call Compliance officials said that "no assurance can be given that the company will enter into a definitive distribution agreement with Execuserve or, if such an agreement is entered into, that the company will generate any revenue or profit to the company."

The idea is that using the product, "call centers will be able to screen agent applicants based upon specific skill sets and behaviors, against proven benchmarks," said Dean Garfinkel, CEO of Compliance Systems Corporation. 

 

Call Compliance's TeleBlock Call Blocking System helps teleservice workers ensure compliance in the highly regulated Do-Not-Call environment by automatically screening and blocking outbound calls against USA and Canadian Do-Not-Call lists. It's sold by telephone carriers such as AT&T, Verizon Business and Qwest Communications, and is evidently celebrating its 10th year anniversary "with a perfect record; over six billion error free calls since its commercial introduction. No TeleBlock Subscriber has been fined," company officials say.

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Mick Jagger's 1993 solo album Wandering Spirit. I bow to nobody in my appreciation of the Rolling Stones, which is why I refused to buy any of their solo albums, but I heard "Evening Gown" from this album in a 2006 duet between Jagger and Jerry Lee Lewis, thought hm, that sounds pretty good, listened to the clips from Wandering Spirit on iTunes and was impressed enough to give it a shot. 

Learn.com, a vendor of on-demand workforce development and productivity, has announced that the VivaKi Nerve Center, a core division of France's Publicis Groupe's VivaKi entity, chose the LearnCenter Platform for online training "to their global employees."

As opposed, presumably, to their extraterrestial employees. 

VivaKi officials say they're expecting the software to provide savings in administrative time, such as time spent on completing training registration, as well as savings in travel and "just-in-time" training.

"We selected Learn.com because it will provide us with all the tools we need," says Barbara Jobs, VP, Talent and Development, VivaKi Nerve Center, adding that the product offers "the opportunity for us to add new components at no charge" and that it lets them "create different sub groups that can be controlled by each group within our ecosystem, each with its own look and feel."

The VivaKi Nerve Center is a core Publicis Groupe resource within VivaKi. Learn.com's products include the LearnCenter learning and talent management suite, WebRoom Web conferencing suite, PeopleCenter Application Builder, FormFlow Custom Form Creation and other products.
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The results of the first eTravel Benchmark survey from online research firm eDigitalResearch are in. Evidently online travel industry as a whole "has some way to go in order to compete with 'best in breed' companies for Web site engagement and customer service." 

 

But we didn't have to tell you that, did we?

 

According to survey officials, that online travel sites "need to look beyond the 'wow' factor," and "work harder at improving the entire end to end Web site experience" if they are to build trusted, long-term relationships that encourage customers to buy from them time and time again.

The eTravel Benchmark survey uses eDigitalResearch's eMysteryShopper tool to measure the usability of 18 channel crossing, cruise and airline sites, comparing "seven key areas" ranging from first impressions to the search and booking process. 

 

"The recipe for a successful site is a simple one," the study's authors conclude. "What customers want is a clear step-by-step process. They want a site that is easy to purchase from but at the same time that has the inspirational 'wow' factor to keep them engaged. Add to that transparent pricing, great customer service, and of course a great trip and you've cracked it." 

 

Great. So there you are. Go thou and do likewise. I don't see the problem.

 

Not that it'll shake up American consumers' habits, but if you're a Brit looking for a weekend in France or a Frenchie eager to sample the joys of Birmingham, you'll be pleased to know that "channel crossing operators fared better in the survey with P&O Ferries emerging as the top performer and Stena Line second."

And this will shock nobody either: The study found that airlines advertising for business in Britian were "notably let down by poor first impressions and disappointing customer service." When measured on telephone customer service, just one airline, British Airways, made it into the top 10 rankings, rated seventh and just two airlines (Virgin Atlantic and British Airways) scored highly enough to make the top 10 for email customer service.

The study used something it called a "net promoter score" to find which sites are most likely to be recommended through word of mouth. The sector as a whole achieved score of +5, whereas the same metric returned scores for retail at +27, finance at +18 and car manufacturing at +7.

Derek Eccleston, Head of Research at eDigitalResearch, said in a sector whose customers are "particularly promiscuous, switching brands for a better deal, looking for recommendations and picking the purchase channel that most suits them at that particular time, failing to perform well across the board is more than a missed opportunity, it is commercial suicide." No doubt companies should use protection against the dangers of such promiscuity, and we'll stop with this metaphor right... now.
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The Jagger album's pretty good so far, standout cuts are "Evening Gown" and "Don't Tear Me Up," but "Sweet Thing?" Mick, I thought we'd discussed the falsetto deal after "Emotional Rescue." I'll overlook it this time, but why don't we not let it happen again, 'mkay?

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AT&T Business Solutions wants you to know that it ended an active second quarter, which saw the introduction of a utility-based, storage-as-a-service offer, a small business bundle for wired and wireless service starting at under $100.

 

Globally, the business unit announced a number of agreements with telecom service providers to "expand its worldwide reach." Other highlights include the introduction of AT&T Telepresence Solution offer with multi-point encryption features for greater security.

Officials of the unit say they remain committed to increasing their commitment to smart grid technology through a commitment with Cooper Power Systems to jointly market and sell to utility companies smart grid sensor devices certified on AT&T's wireless data network. The unit also launched an AT&T private content distribution service for the delivery of rich media content behind the corporate firewall.

As to the unit's global designs, they signed a "go-to-market" agreement to develop and deploy telecom projects with TDC, a communications vendor in Denmark and the wider Nordic business market. They also concluded a memorandum of understanding with Telkom South Africa, and in April opened a new regional headquarters office in Dubai Internet City to work the Africa and Middle East market.
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Vienna, Virginia-based TARGUSinfo, which sells On-Demand Insight, a product for higher education prospects and customers, will provide online lead verification, lead scoring and analytics to Grand Canyon Education. 

 

GCE is a "regionally accredited" provider of online and campus-based post-secondary education services. As "Grand Canyon University" -- contest to write the lyrics to their football fight song now open -- they offer education for teachers, health and business professionals.

Christel Mosby, senior vice president of marketing, Grand Canyon University. "After a comprehensive review of the services available on the market, we felt that TARGUSinfo not only has the most accurate data to verify prospective students, but has the analytical wherewithal to help us target, score and understand our ideal students better."

 

Founded in 1949, Phoenix-based Grand Canyon University describes itself as "a traditional regionally accredited, private, Christian university offering campus-based and online bachelor's and master's degree programs through the Ken Blanchard College of Business, College of Education, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, and College of Liberal Arts."

Evidently Grand Canyon officials believe that "at the moment a prospect student reaches out over the phone, in-person or on the Web, education marketers have a split second to convince them to enroll." First Coffee remembers taking a bit more time than that to choose a university, but the process seems to have been speeded up since the late Jurassic.

 

"Spend five minutes on the Internet and you'll see millions of dollars of online advertisements enticing prospective students to enroll in some online educational program," says David Wengel, general manager, TARGUSinfo. "We're right in the middle of this recruitment battle by helping leading schools like GCU verify, score and prioritize tens of millions of prospective students each year."

The ElementOne Analytics Platform from TARGUSinfo is designed to incorporate "a multitude of data that's custom to each clients' business," company officials say.
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Hyderabad, India's Callippus has released a hotel online booking product it calls CHOBS -- Callippus Hotel Online Booking System. Company officials say it comes with such features as Online Inventory availability "within minutes."

 

CHOBS is intended to be used by customers around the world to "see a hotel's room inventory and book instantly," as well as to provide agents, affiliates and corporate clients with an instant reservation facility "at different contractual rates." The CRM module is pitched as allowing hotels to "closely interact with," i.e. upsell and cross-sell, "its customers, and for providing them with loyalty or reward points."

Using the software's control panel, company officials say, a hotel can add and amend rates and sales criteria "at any time -- instantly -- thus maximizing Internet sales effectiveness." Here's hoping hotels are careful with that "amend rates at any time" feature, otherwise it might get called something other than "sales effectiveness."

The product lets hotels create customized offerings and packages based on room booking availability and post them online: "Using flexible tariff models in CHOBS, a hotel can virtually configure a different rate for each day." Company officials add that the system can be added onto an existing hotel Web site, and that the hotel can use its integrated Content Management System "to help create and manage new content and offerings on an ongoing basis without intervention from a third party, such as your Web designer."

A cost is charged per booking, and Callippus says the fees "includes all e-mail and fax notifications of booking confirmations, cancellations or amendments." In addition, hotels signing up for the online booking engine get a free listing on their aggregation portal.

...

 

From the growing high tech hub of Grand Forks, North Dakota comes news from Ntractive, as they have unveiled what company officials characterize as "a major release to its Customer Relationship Management Software -- Elements SBM will now be known as Elements CRM," and have in addition to a new name "a new look and new features."

Justin Bartak, Co-Founder, CTO and Chief Designer, says the overall interface has been improved with a new look and feel for "easier navigation, improved workflow and an enhanced user experience" for "a major leap forward in the evolution of the product... Ntractive continues to prove that a CRM product can be as easy to use and as visually appealing as iTunes."

The 2.0 version has such features as analytic charts, a set-up wizard, PayPal integration, increased international support, asset management and a panoramic sales overview since "we've listened to our customer's suggestions," according to Dale Jensen, Co-Founder and CEO.

In addition to its integration with AccountEdge, Elements CRM 2.0 now supports Acclivity's FirstEdge financial software as well. Elements CRM 2.0 is now available for the suggested retail price of $69.95 per user per month. Elements CRM requires Mac OS X version 10.4.11, 10.5, or the upcoming 10.6 (code named "Snow Leopard," First Coffee's favorite animal so it has to be good). Internet access is required.

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is PJ Harvey's Stories From The City - Stories From The Sea. Not exactly my kind of music, but I listened to it once to see if it could be. It didn't displace Exile On Main Street after the first listen, but it stayed in my mind and I'm listening to it again. At first listen in lacks the strong songwriting and melodies I like, but there's something about it that's interesting. Stay tuned.

NetSuite has announced a new program offering current Sage partners in the U.S. and U.K. the opportunity to add NetSuite products to their business practice at a revenue share of 50 percent for the first twelve months. 

The fine print: The 50 percent revenue share offer will apply to all new NetSuite subscriptions secured by the partner on one, two or three-year subscriptions. The new program for Sage channel partners is available through September 30 to all current Sage channel partners in good standing, based on acceptance into the NetSuite Solution Provider Program.

 

In a concentrated bid to attract Sage customers, NetSuite officials have announced that Sage channel partners will receive "dedicated training customized for Sage implementation experts" on NetSuite's accounting / Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management and e-commerce products. 

NetSuite officials say they expect this program will find "a warm reception" in a Sage channel partner community "wracked with fear, uncertainty and doubt about the future of on-premise applications and the ability of Sage to lead them to the new world of cloud computing." 

In fact, NetSuite officials say, pointing up the differences between their offerings and Sage's, demand for on-premise software "is diminishing across the board... Sage has yet to offer their channel partners a Software as a Service application which can be recommended to clients, forcing some partners to look elsewhere." 

Aric Shelko, President, Accession Technology, a value-added reseller of Sage products and a new NetSuite provider based in Ridgewood, New Jersey says in the future "we expect to see an increase in companies moving toward the Software as a Service model."

Research from "Gartner Market Trends: Software as a Service, Worldwide, 2008-2013" cited by NetSuite officials finds that Software as a Service is forecast to have a 19.4 percent compound annual growth rate through 2013, "more than triple the total market CAGR of 5.2 percent.

...

FunnelSource, a vendor of what company officials call "lightweight" Business Intelligence products, have announced the official release of the FunnelSource product. 

FunnelSource pulls data from cloud CRM systems (such as, oh, Salesforce.com), converts it into information and presents it in a single-screen view that gives users "intuitive quota vs. actual revenue tracking bars," company officials say, including "enhanced forecasting capabilities and error alerts to warn users that data in their CRM is either bad or incorrect."

In addition, FunnelSource gives executives the ability to drill down from the executive level to the individual sales rep level to track performance, "all on one screen and in real-time" while still retaining executive washroom privileges.

With user adoption being a "great challenge in the world of CRM," John Hanna, co-founder and CEO of FunnelSource, says "our philosophy is simple. If you empower your reps on the front lines with an application that helps them hit their individual quotas and eliminates fumbling around in the CRM, then your reps will see true value in the application and they will use it."  Because hey, sales reps are human, too. Honestly. 

FunnelSource is on the Salesforce.com AppExchange. 
...

The SAP road show hits India as customers, partners and industry experts are meeting at Le Meridian for the unveiling of "Clear New World," described by company officials as "a new mid-term strategic thrust."

The theme is "See Your Way Clear: Strategies for Success in the New Reality." It's being held in 100 cities across 50 countries. 

Keynoter Ranjan Das, Managing Director, SAP Indian subcontinent, focused on how technology enables companies to derive increased understanding, visibility and value -- "both of their own operations and those of their partner networks," according to SAP officials.

Riffing on the theme of "clear," SAP officials said at the Indian event that companies must "see clearly, think clearly, and act clearly." Becoming "clear," in their estimation, allows companies to operate with "increased speed, relevance and accuracy."

...

Requisite Technology, a vendor of channel management, eCommerce and master data management products, has announced the release of eCommerce Suite - Small Business Edition, described by company officials as "a streamlined version" of their flagship product designed for small enterprises.

The suite is available in two packages, one providing sales force automation and customer relationship management functionality, and the other geared towards "the eCommerce needs of small businesses" such as order capture, shopping cart, lists, order and shipping status, company officials say.

Both packages have the functionality of Requisite Technology's channel-specific framework, including modules such as marketing communications, partner profiles, partner programs, and business plans with "quick implementation timelines."

Grace Feliciano, general manager at Requisite Technology, said the eCommerce Suite - Small Business Edition "is designed specifically with the requirements of small businesses in mind... to help them get the most out of their current channel relationships."

...

Neudesic has been named to the 2009 Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle, company officials say, adding that the Microsoft designation is for "the top 10 Dynamics partners in the world."

Darren Gooding, Neudesic Director of Microsoft CRM/XRM Practice, said the company is "excited to have achieved this accomplishment for Microsoft's FY 2009. We made it into their President's Club for the third year in a row which is the top five percent of the Dynamics partners." He called the recognition "a great achievement for our team."

Doug Kennedy, vice president of the Microsoft Dynamics Partners team, pronounced himself "proud to congratulate the company on being named to this year's Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle."

Neudesic helps customers launch CRM, company officials say, "with minimum disruption and maximum ROI," integrating CRM and analytic capabilities "into our customers' current environment, allowing them to use the Microsoft software and systems they already use." Neudesic officials say they By working closely with the teams at Microsoft, Neudesic officials say, they maintain "an understanding of the Microsoft Dynamics platform."

Neudesic was established in 2001 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. It maintains a global presence based out of Hyderabad, India.

...

Sage has announced the availability of Sage ERPX3 for Australian and New Zealand customers, specifically designed for deployment and operation over the Internet.

The product is described by company officials as "the latest in Sage's Enterprise Resource Planning suite designed to automate and manage business processes for medium to large organizations with between 100 and 5,000 employees." It's aimed mostly at businesses in vertical markets and industries including discrete manufacturing, finance, process manufacturing, warehouse management, distribution, pharmaceutical, medical and mining.

Processes automated by the new solution include finance, production, sales, CRM, purchasing and stock management functions. Sage officials say a reduced total cost of ownership and improved speed and ease of deployment are "particularly high priorities for Australian and New Zealand businesses at present," citing feedback from their resellers.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Frank Sinatra's Songs For Young Lovers:

Open Source CRM vendor SugarCRM's CEO Larry Augustin has agreed to participate in two upcoming panel discussions on what companies need to consider when implementing and enforcing open source licensing and trademarks.

Augustin will offer his perspectives on whether or not it's useful to register a trademark and, if so, how to permit its use by others. He'll "evaluate various policies and enforcement strategies from corporate and non-profit perspectives" as well, SugarCRM officials say. For a preview of his thoughts on the state of open source and other related topics visit his blog at:http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/.

The discussions will be held at the Open Source Convention underway in San Jose. 

In May TMC's Stefania Viscusi reported that SugarCRM founder John Roberts stepped down from his board seat and as CEO of the company to "pursue other opportunities." Board member Augustin stepped in as interim CEO after serving on the board for a little over three years. He had been CEO of Linux systems vendor VA Linux.

...

Zoho has announced the Zoho Mail Add-on for Zoho CRM. Aimed at small and medium businesses, it's supposed to provide integration of Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail. It's available immediately for three bucks a month.

Check out the video tour after you're done searching for Erin Andrews videos. Which carry a virus, by the way. Not that it'd affect you, of course -- warn the guy in the next cubicle.

Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL e-mail users can also use the Zoho Mail Add-on by using Zoho Mail as a client to those e-mail services: "In effect, Zoho Mail acts as an intermediary for these users, enabling them to continue using a third-party e-mail service, but still review contact-related e-mails within Zoho CRM. Currently, the Zoho Mail Add-on supports POP access. Going forward, IMAP will also be supported.

Raju Vegesna, who has "Zoho Evangelist" on his business card, says the Zoho Mail Add-on gives users "the kind of contextual integration of information that we can provide," adding that it "bridges the divide historically separating e-mail and CRM systems."

There's another feature in the Zoho Mail application that lets users add contacts directly to the Zoho CRM application from the Zoho Mail interface. It can determine if a contact already exists in your CRM system, thereby avoiding duplicates.

The product is designed to give Zoho CRM users access to contact information found in both Zoho CRM and Zoho Mail. For instance, if you're using Zoho CRM and are searching for contact information within Zoho CRM, you'll also see Zoho Mail e-mail exchanges with that contact. The Zoho Mail information will be presented in Conversation View, Zoho officials say, adding that users "can expand any conversation to view the individual e-mail."

...

EGain Communications has announced a partnership with mobile device support vendor WorldManuals to combine eGain's knowledge management technologies with WorldManuals' device support content to market support to European service providers.

It's currently being tested by a global mobile communications company and will be presented to new and existing clients soon. It's designed to allow mobile operators and service providers to sell "access to all relevant and available content" so the support experience for the end user every time should be good "regardless of query complexity or chosen communication channel."

Andrew Mennie, General Manager, eGain EMEA, said eGain's knowledge management product will provide access to WorldManuals' device content, in the call center and on the Web.

Thomas Thrane, CEO, WorldManuals, said he sees the partnership's market value in the fact that, as he sees it, "organizations increasingly look to harness new revenue streams and introduce a large number of services," and need "answers to the increasingly complex questions posed by customers... our strategy is to work with complementary technology providers within the telco sector."

...

You knew it was coming sooner or later, so don't act surprised: Positioning Animals Worldwide and American Kennel Club Companion Animal Recovery have announced the availability of SpotLight GPS Pet Locator. 

Developed by PAW (rim shot), SpotLight combines GPS tracking technology with the 24/7 AKC CAR recovery services, paving the way home for the millions of pets that go missing each year.

"With an estimate of one-third of all dogs going missing at least once in their lifetime, SpotLight will help reduce this number," says Chris Newton, CEO of PAW.

One-third? Wow. First Coffee sure would like to see that study.

"Our mission is simple, provide the market with products and services to reduce the number of lost pets... through this partnership, we are able to offer owners peace of mind knowing that their dogs are safe at home or, should they escape, be quickly returned," Newton says.

SpotLight customers also receive a lifetime enrollment in AKC CAR, which includes a collar tag with ID number. Fitting on the dog's collar, SpotLight "senses" when the dog leaves the configurable boundary, dubbed a "SafeSpot" (Get it? "Safe Spot," safe doggie). Upon escape, SpotLight alerts the owner via text message, e-mail or both. To ensure immediate recovery, the owner then receives the dog's real-time location and turn-by-turn directions to the dog. 

In addition, the AKC CAR recovery team is on call around the clock for assistance with the tracking and recovery. SpotLight comes equipped with a "rescue" button so that if the pet is found, a Good Samaritan can notify the owner and AKC CAR.

Next reality show: "Dog Chase! We're tracking Fido, turn by turn, by helicopter as he tries to escape by running through Mrs. Wilcox's geraniums... he clears the fence and is running through the playground now, AKC CAR officers are in pursuit..." 

No doubt the pet will need a visit to one of California's many licensed pet psychiatrists after such an ordeal.

AKC CAR offers free lifetime enrollment for all active service, military, and law enforcement K-9s.

...

Sharein company officials say they have launched a Web browser tool letting users share links to their friends, family and customers -- "60 percent faster via e-mail."

Yes, of course it works with Twitter and Facebook, what did you expect? First Coffee would not be surprised to see -- fully expects to see -- Twitter and Facebook-enabled caskets.

If you're one of the people Sharein sees as their target market, you "dread the hassle of copying long web addresses -- URLs -- to share articles or videos."  Long URLs are not e-mail friendly, as First Coffee can attest, as the link can be broken. Sharein's answer is to enable automatic link sharing within a single click on any Web page.

The product captures a Web page's URL, title, and description, creating a thumbnail image so the recipient can preview the page before clicking on it. And here's a nice feature -- Sharein saves your most commonly e-mailed friends, as well as your Twitter and Facebook profile for instant sharing.

"Discovering good content on the Internet has become an increasingly social activity. You are more likely to read an article that was shared to you from a good friend," says Colin Wong, CEO of Sharein, who has worked for Google and was "involved" in the launch of Google's AdSense.

"Link sharing is only one half of the story. What happens after you've shared a link? What is the impact of your share? How many people did you reach? How many people viewed it? How many people re-shared your link to their friends?" Wong asks, adding that Sharein helps with this information as well.

...

Mobile business expert Cortado has launched a partner program for specialty and online stores, featuring Cortado's mobile SaaS offerings, such as hosted Microsoft Exchange and BlackBerry Mailbox packages. 

The partner program encompasses the Cortado Premium hosted Services for mobile viewing, printing, and faxing of documents. Partners taking part in the program are also authorized to sell the Cortado Corporate Server software, a non-hosted product installed at the company letting customers use BlackBerry devices to access documents on the network, send them as an e-mail, and print, scan, or fax files. 

Cortado officials say they charge no setup fee for customers, and that participation in Cortado's Specialty Store Program is free as well.

There are differing business models Cortado's offering -- if the reseller decides on an intermediary partnership, he can receive prepaid codes to sell to customers, or embed a manufacturer-provided banner on his homepage. He can sell the services in person, like in an actual brick and mortar store if he wants. He also has co-branding and white labeling options to market the products under his own name.

Signed agreements are reported and commissions paid quarterly. Cortado officials say the commissions are between 10 and 25 percent "depending on the product." 

Thorsten Hesse, International Sales Manager Cortado Enterprise Solutions, said "without any advertising at all" Cortado has "87 parties interested in our Specialized Trade Partner Program."

Cortado is an independently acting division of ThinPrint AG.

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The J. Geils Band's Blow Your Face Out, which iTunes finally decided to offer as a full album. It's a jam-packed double live album (everybody over 30 understands what "double album" means) which is as much fun as rock 'n' roll was always meant to be, with not a smidgen of pretension to be found anywhere:

Green of one kind begets green of another kind: NetSuite has announced the results of a recent independent sustainability impact study of the company's Software as a Service platform, finding "significant business energy-saving benefits" for NetSuite customers using its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and e-commerce software.

These eco-friendly green benefits translate into bank-friendly green returns for NetSuite users, according to the impact study by Greenspace: "By vastly reducing the need for servers and support equipment, such as server room air conditioning, Greenspace found the average NetSuite customer can cut its electricity bill by more than $10,000 per year," NetSuite officials say, "calculating" that when added to the overall costs of hardware, software licenses, maintenance, personnel and occupancy, "the cost reductions can exceed $100,000 per year, per customer."

 

To arrive at these results, Greenspace officials say they reviewed NetSuite's platform using its EcoMetrics scorecard review, which measures cost savings, efficiency and environmental benefits. 

"Being a green company, one of the main reasons we selected NetSuite was because we didn't need to buy additional hardware or servers," says Angelica Biehl, director of IT for CMC Energy Services. 

 

The NetSuite data center incorporates HP's servers listed in the ENERGY STAR program, a voluntary energy efficiency program sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Greenspace EcoMetrics study found "tremendous incremental benefits" to the NetSuite approach. It not only identified significant energy savings opportunities, but revealed green benefits including e-waste reduction, paper use reduction and increased employee productivity.

NetSuite's billing their SaaS model as an "energy-saving green alternative to traditional on-premise ERP and CRM," contributing to "less overall energy use, fewer emissions and smarter thinking about how companies manage technology." The company is also offering alternative energy industry association members "substantial on-demand business suite discounts," company officials say. 

 

Greenspace sells office, janitorial, energy and maintenance supplies and products.

...

Knoa Software has launched the Knoa Academy of End-User Experience Management, kicking off with the publication of a benchmark report titled "Monitoring the End-User Experience: Improving Business Performance through Application Management," by Aberdeen Group.

 

The study "emphasizes the need to advance current practices in this discipline," according to Knoa officials, who say the Academy of End-User Experience Management ("A.E.U.E.M." on the sweatshirts sold in the campus bookstore) will provide a "forum for practitioners of end-user experience management to share knowledge and advance best practices." It will have an online content repository of industry research, a collection of operational experience and business outcomes from end-user experience practitioners to cross pollinate best practice, a series of knowledge-sharing events but -- as of yet -- no football team.

 

The Aberdeen report found that the application management strategies of top-performing companies "focus on the user, rather than simply using technical measurements... The best-in-class respondents in this research initiative were over twice as likely to improve brand reputation and 75 percent more likely" to improve employee productivity.

"Throughout this study we found significant gaps between enterprises that committed to bettering the experience between end-users and the applications they interact with and those that choose not to," says Jeffrey Debarros, Senior Research Analyst, Network and Application Performance Management at Aberdeen. 

Aberdeen officials say their research "detailed the need for true end-user experience and performance management -- software that reaches beyond infrastructure and application performance to monitor, measure and manage how end-users are using applications within enterprise IT departments." 

"Aberdeen's report is extensive and it details myriad benefits realized by enterprises that have adopted end-user experience and performance management software," said Lori Wizdo, vice president Marketing at Knoa Software. "The goal of the Knoa Academy is to provide the industry's premier forum to advance the art and science of end-user experience and performance management to optimize business process execution in support of achieving business goals."

...

If you agree that the Web has "evolved far beyond browser capabilities, limiting the usability and practicality of cloud storage and cloud services," you might be interested in Gladinet, whose officials describe the company's goal as to "transform the Internet into a virtual PC by integrating cloud services directly onto a PC desktop."

 

Gladinet offers open-platform integration with EMC Atmos, Google Docs, Amazon S3 and other providers. Gladinet's flagship product is Cloud Desktop, which provides "an Internet-based virtual disk drive," company officials say, adding that it also allows for cross-storage backup among such providers, and for "using these providers as a redundant array of cloud storage."

"Previously, each cloud storage provider has required a different interface tailored to that particular brand, and this has been highly inconvenient for users," says Jerry Huang, co-owner of Gladinet. "Gladinet's Cloud Desktop is truly revolutionary because, as a ubiquitous cloud storage client, it provides the same features and interface to many cloud storage providers. Plus, the virtual drives, which are then located on your desktop, allow for backups to a redundant array of cloud storage, eliminating the need to rely upon one provider for backup."

...

IBM is announcing a self-managing, "office in a box" appliance for small and midsized businesses (SMBs), a market niche IBM last counted itself a member of in, oh, 1916 or so.

 

The product, IBM Lotus Foundations Reach, available for purchase next month, combines unified communications and collaboration tools for running a business with "the ability to connect to telephony" in a single product. It's marketed to that chronic SMB sweet spot, needing a way to overcome limited in-house IT expertise -- Big Blue says it "reduces complexity and enables employees to access people and information."

The new Lotus Foundations Reach, IBM officials say, "customizes and extends the IBM Sametime UC(2) capabilities in a single appliance designed specifically for SMBs that have limited IT skills and smaller budgets. In about an hour, a business can install and configure its entire UC environment in a system small enough to fit under a desk."

 

The product is designed with an eye to minimizing the need for human intervention with self-managing technology that automates IT tasks such as adjusting to workload demands, conducting proactive system checks for security and reliability of the network, and detecting and repairing potential issues. To more closely approximate a corporate IT department it also wears dashikis, knows all the lines to Monty Python & The Holy Grail and is using company time and resources to invent a remote-controlled, all-terrain drive beer caddy.

The product combines UC features such as instant messaging, presence awareness to see who is online and available, e-mail, calendars, contacts, office productivity tools, network security, remote access, file and print sharing, and backup and disaster recovery accessible from a mobile device.

...

VendorRate, a Web-based business information service offering "confidential" performance ratings and comparisons of technology vendors, has announced that customer satisfaction scores for Microsoft "plunged dramatically in the second quarter of 2009," while IBM Informix and telecom equipment maker ShoreTel earned the top scores in the quarter.

 

Guess the Best Little Software Company in Redmond didn't opt for the confidentiality rider. VendorRate officials say the service is vendor neutral, and accepts neither vendor sponsorship nor advertising, and that its users rate vendors on ten specific performance criteria that include customer service, reliability, integrity, budget and effectiveness. It also collects rating information by cooperating with user groups, trade associations, event management, and IT and telecom departments from organizations.

"IT pros" rating vendors on VendorRate in April, May and June downgraded Microsoft across the board with poor customer satisfaction scores for the company's server and infrastructure software (55 out of 100, down nearly 17 percent), operating systems (67, down 9.5 percent) and applications (64, off nearly 18 percent), VendorRate officials say.

 

Take solace, Microsoft: Verizon Communications received the lowest overall vendor score of 61.

"Microsoft was cruising along with satisfactory scores in earlier reports but it simply fell off a cliff in this quarter," says Rick Schaefer, CEO of VendorRate. "Meanwhile, IBM Informix was among the top rated vendors for the fourth straight quarter, and this is the first time that ShoreTel made it into the top rankings."

Schaefer noted that GovConnection was the top rated reseller with a score of 98, "the highest ever posted for a VendorRate quarterly report."

...

The Latin American Call Center Association has announced the availability of a toll-free hotline to help answer questions during this hurricane season. 

 

Yep, that's right -- just hurricanes, please.

 

U.S. callers to the hot line will receive information regarding hurricane preparedness, storm development, hurricane tracking, shelter locations and evacuation information. Call center representatives from the LACCA member companies will staff the toll-free number throughout the hurricane season, as the National Hurricane Center issues the first Tropical Storm Watch Alert. 

 

The number is 888 99HURRICANE and it will be answered from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the various stages after the first alert is issued.

"We are very proud to be able to offer these services, which are funded by our member organization. They have provided us with a team of representatives who are now trained to work the hurricane hot line and offer assistance to our callers" says Isabelle Fuentes, LACCA Director and founder of the LACCA.

The Latin American Call Center Association was founded to inform companies in the United States of the call center industry in the nearshore Latin American region. LACCA officials say it serves as a "guide" to those businesses who are interested in relocating their business to the area.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an Elvis twofer -- first the best complete album The King did, the last time he ever sounded like he was really trying and not just milking it, 1969's From Elvis In Memphis, followed by 1977's My Aim Is True by the second greatest Elvis in pop, Mr. Costello:

No, not everybody falls in love with SaaS: Gartner has released a study finding that the increasingly mainstream Software as a Service underwhelms many customers: "The apparent acceptance of SaaS as a viable model has not entirely translated into satisfied users of SaaS."
 

Overall, organizations are "somewhat satisfied" with SaaS, giving it a tepid average score 4.74 on a 7-point scale. The survey was conducted in December 2008, which may help explain why some folks were grouchy as the economy was not, ah, rosy at the time. It looked at "users and prospects" of SaaS in 333 enterprises in the United States and United Kingdom.

 

When asked to identify the top three factors that they would consider in making their decision to deploy SaaS, meeting technical requirements was the top overall consideration at 46 percent, followed by security, privacy and/or confidentiality at 33 percent and ease of integration and functionality needed for business unit owners, both at 29 percent.

"Our research findings did not exactly provide a ringing endorsement of SaaS, in fact I would go as far as to say that satisfaction levels among SaaS users are little more than lukewarm," said Ben Pring, research vice president at Gartner. "Although macroeconomic factors would seem to favor SaaS providers, almost two thirds of respondents said that they planned only to maintain their current levels of SaaS in the next two years."

While a healthy 58 percent of organizations will maintain current levels of SaaS in the next two years, Gartner found, 32 percent will expand, five percent will discontinue and five percent will decrease levels.

Those who "considered using" SaaS, but decided not to, cited high cost of service, difficulty with integration and the product not meeting technical requirements as the main reasons. As Gartner officials noted, "these findings contradict the general impression that SaaS could help alleviate costs and also that it does not require much integration and technical requirements."

"At a time when SaaS is becoming more of a consideration for more enterprises, the results of this survey will be somewhat disquieting for SaaS vendors," says Twiggy Lo, principal research analysts at Gartner and First Coffee's new favorite principal research analyst name, adding that vendors must reaffirm the fundamentals of the SaaS model -- that SaaS solutions are "lighter, simpler, more intuitive, more agile and more modest."

The report, "Dataquest Insight: SaaS Adoption Trends in the U.S and the U.K.," is available on Gartner's Web site.

...

More studies: Strategy Analytics Wireless Media Lab has released "Palm App Catalog: Intuitive UI, Appealing Content but Lacks Volume," finding that the Palm App Catalog has "a visually appealing storefront that offers users an intuitive user interface and straightforward search feature," as well as a simple download process.

However, "while the App Catalog contains desirable and recognizable content, the volume of content overall is lacking" thinks Paul Brown, Senior Analyst in the Strategy Analytics User Experience Practice.

Christopher Dodge, Analyst at Strategy Analytics, noted that while the download process is "logical, allowing users to get content in one click," the purchase details of content are "not clearly defined, leaving users unsure if they are downloading a trial version of the item or the complete version."

Strategy Analytics officials say the Boston-based firm "focuses on market opportunities and disruptive forces in the areas of automotive electronics and entertainment, broadband connected home, mobile & wireless intelligent systems implementation strategies and high frequency market intelligence.

...

Evidently the SaaS story is still a good one for some firms: Roswell, Georgia-based Network Services Plus Inc., seller of technology services, has added Microsoft CRM to their suite of Microsoft Hosted Solutions. 

 

NSPI officials are bullish on SaaS, saying they expect hosted services to represent 25 percent of all new business software purchases by 2011.

 

"We offered our first Microsoft Hosted Solutions in 2008," says Tim Roe, Sales and Marketing Director for NSPI, adding that the firm has found "great success" with the offerings, saying adding Microsoft CRM was a response to "customer demand for faster deployment and easier management of applications."

Microsoft Hosted Solutions already available from NSPI include Microsoft Communication Services with applications like Outlook Services for e-mail and Windows SharePoint Services for collaboration and Office Communication Services for company communications for office and mobile employees. Those wanting the whole buffet can get the jumbo deluxe Hosted Business Productivity Suite, which has Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Instant Messaging, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and a side order of fries.

...

Minneapolis-based SPS Commerce is also putting eggs in the SaaS basket. The SaaS "trading partner integration center provider" says more than 1,000 companies using Sage MAS 90, Sage MAS 200, and Sage MAS 500 ERP have subscribed to its outsourced supply chain integration services, resulting in "more than a million business documents electronically in the past 12 months."

 

SPS Commerce's Electronic Data Interchange and label services can be integrated with MAS 90, MAS 200, and MAS 500 systems to eliminate pesky manual order entry and fulfillment processes. The idea, of course, being to "improve accuracy, boost customer satisfaction, and provide timely communication of purchase orders" and other groovy things up and down the supply chain.

"Suppliers using Sage Software's ERP have been automating how they send and receive supply chain documents using SPS at an increasing rate," says Archie Black, President and CEO of SPS Commerce. "Volume from our current Sage customer base is up 16 percent."

SPS Commerce officials claim 37,000 customers and pre-built integrations spanning 2,700 fulfillment workflows across 1,300 retailers, grocers and distributors.

...

XO Communications and NEC Unified Solutions have announced that NEC's UNIVERGE SV8100 and UX5000 communication platforms are now certified to work with XO's Session Initiation Protocol trunking solution, XO SIP.

Launched in the spring of 2008, the UNIVERGE SV8100 and UX5000 communications servers have experienced "wide adoption and deployment" by NEC's dealer network and customers, company officials say, adding that the certification confirms that the NEC SV8100 and UX5000 communications servers and XO SIP play well together.

Eric Hyman, director of managed services at XO Communications, says that the idea behind the interoperability of XO SIP and these NEC's communications systems is to let businesses deploy and manage end-to-end IP communications using NEC's systems coupled with the XO SIP service.

It's being pitched as a budgetary answer too: "As SMBs nationwide look to curb operating costs in today's economy, they should consider the combination of XO SIP and NEC's UNIVERGE SV8100 and UX5000 communications servers," says Jay Krauser, general manager of core solutions and engineering, NEC. 

XO SIP uses Session Initiation Protocol signaling and a native IP-based facility to manage all traffic between a customer's IP-PBX system, the XO IP network, and the Public Switched Telephone Network. It includes such bandwidth options and features as dedicated Internet access with dynamic bandwidth allocation, unlimited local calling, unlimited site-to-site calling for multi-location customers with IP Flex, IP Flex with VPN and XO SIP locations and online feature management through the XO Business Center.

...

 

Openbravo, a developer of Web-based open source Enterprise Resource Planning and Point of Sale products, has announced a new partner program.

"The demand for open source applications such as ERP is growing" among organizations of all sizes, according to company officials, explaining that Openbravo's partner program is "designed to enable community members and new partners to get up to speed." 

 

The four different levels of partners are Registered, Certified, Gold, and Platinum. Benefits naturally are tiered according to "commitments such as Openbravo certifications held, customer references, and customer retention," Openbravo officials say.


 

Barcelona-based Openbravo says in the past year it's "expanded into new markets across the world." Put First Coffee down for the next community meeting, the Openbravo World Conference in Barcelona, one city at the top of the See Before You Die list. 

 

Cees Poortman, VP of Global Commercial Operations of Openbravo, said the company has "never seen such a great demand for open source ERP: the opportunities are there for our partners, and we are there for them."

Openbravo's commercial open source business model "eliminates software license fees, providing support, services, and product enhancements via an annual subscription," company officials say. The company is venture backed and has received record funding in the Open Source ERP space from Amadeus Capital Partners, GIMV, Adara Venture Partners and Sodena.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of the true redwoods here at First Coffee, a sturdy stalwart standard, an old favorite, an ideal work album, what you put on when you don't know what to put on, Aimee Mann's Live at St. Ann's Warehouse:

Cary, N.C.-based SAS has announced Marketing Mix Advisor, billed as a tool helping "marketers faced with countless choices among media and marketing channels to determine the right investment mix" by "analyzing, predicting and optimizing" the mix of advertising and promotions.

 

The product offers data "from marketing mix models in a dynamic form that generates dashboards and Web reports as data updates occur," helping marketers "calculate the effects of specific tactics across business units, product lines, geographies, channels and time horizons." 

The hosted product is pitched as a planning and forecasting tool to help "calculate the effects of marketing tactics across business units, brands, geographies and channels." SAS officials say it consolidates all media and promotions analysis in one location, offering prebuilt reports "for performance assessment across an organization's media mix." 

Kimberly Collins, Managing Vice President, CRM, at Gartner Research, noted that understanding how to best allocate marketing resources is "one of the biggest challenges for organizations today. Companies that can figure out the optimal allocation of their marketing mix - and how to do it more frequently and accurately - will be a step ahead."

Saying they're "simplifying interactions with marketing mix data and models," SAS officials say Marketing Mix Advisor identifies opportunities to increase profit through improved ROI on existing investments in marketing and research projects and improves collaboration and consistency of analysis across business units, brands, categories and geographies.

...

File this one under GUG -- Genuinely Useful Gizmo: Tripware, a new travel service, provides a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook 2007 that lets travelers to handle all their business trip needs directly in Microsoft Outlook. 

 

It may not give the economy much of a boost, though: "I no longer pay an assistant to book my trips," says the CEO and President of Tripware, Clark C. Rines.

 

The plug-in, OutBook, connects to a traveler's online travel portfolio storing  flight, hotel, car, and scheduling preferences. Using the time, date and location information already entered into a business meeting, Tripware OutBook can book a trip and embed the itinerary in Microsoft Outlook within three minutes or less.

 

If you're not on Microsoft Outlook 2007, no problem: Tripware offers a desktop application called Tripware Travel Center with many of the same features as Tripware OutBook. 

Rines claims he can "book a complete itinerary in under three minutes, know that I am getting what I want because the system knows me personally and when the payment is made, all of my corresponding frequent flyer, rental and stay numbers are sent to the appropriate vendors automatically." He says he doesn't even have to worry about typing in a credit card to pay: "This same system automatically puts my itinerary into my Outlook calendar along with maps and weather, keeps me apprised of trip events prior to and during my travels and even helps me do my expense report when I get back."

Travel writer Jay Hammond says "based on an unscientific comparison with other online travel services, Tripware holds up well. Prices are comparable to those on Travelocity and Expedia, at least for the trips this writer checked. Choices were also similar although Tripware was the only one that displayed options according to my stated preferences."

The company is headquartered near Phoenix and is owned by Remotian Systems.

...

Aspire Technologies has expanded QuoteWerks' real-time price and availability support to now include BlueStar, a distributor to the specialty electronics channel.

 

The QuoteWerks Real-time Module is a tool for improving quoting efficiencies and accuracy by obtaining real-time product pricing and availability data from select distributors. It offers instant confirmation of stock on hand to fulfill the order, and can help reduce the time spent by the distributor's sales support team to provide verbal confirmation of current pricing and availability for the company's customers.

Basically its payback is in eliminating the need to contact the distributor sales rep for pricing. It also gives that extra bit of confidence in the accuracy of the quotes sent out to customers.

 

Headquartered in Hebron, Kentucky, BlueStar distributes a wide variety of product lines including point-of-sale, bar coding, biometric solutions, and printers. 

In addition to running the Professional or Corporate edition of QuoteWerks, users who wish to access real-time price and availability for Accutech will need to purchase the QuoteWerks Real-time Module and be current on their Update Maintenance Plan. Users must also have an established reseller relationship with BlueStar. BlueStar works exclusively with VAR partners.

QuoteWerks is a registered trademark of Aspire Technologies, Inc. Other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners.
...

Isn't it nice to know that the government cares about the big issues as much as you do? Unemployment, the staggering deficit, North Korean nukes, and robocalls. 

 

"Robocalls?"

 

Yeah, you know, those car warranty calls warning you that your vehicle warranty's about to expire? Usually come during dinner? If not, count yourself lucky: Federal regulators say as many as 1 billion of these deceptive nuisance calls have been made in recent years.

 

According to officials of AutoServiceWarranty.com, which bills itself as a "reputable" company in the field, "those billion calls appear to have originated from just three companies." AutoServiceWarranty.com officials say they "applaud the FTC recent lawsuits aimed at stopping this annoying practice."

FTC Chairman, Jon Leibowitz has been quoted calling the extended car warranty scam "one of the most aggressive telemarketing schemes the agency has ever seen. I'm not sure which is worse, the abusive telemarketing tactics of these companies, or the way they try to deceive people once they get them on the phone. Either way, we intend to shut them down." To that end, federal regulators have filed lawsuits against all three companies seeking the return of illegal profits, believed to be in the tens of millions of dollars, from the extended warranty telemarketing scams. 

 

AutoServiceWarranty.com officials identified two of the companies as Voice Touch & Network Foundations (FTC File No. 0823263) and Transcontinental Warranty (FTC File No. 0923110). Voice Touch owners also claim to have placed more than one billion calls for Missouri's National Auto Warranty Services, (currently doing business as US Fidelis). That prompted former Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon last year to sue for misleading sales pitches.

 

"These dishonest telemarketers have given the entire extended car warranty industry a black eye" says Dave Caravona CEO of AutoServiceWarranty.com in Ohio, a national auto extended warranty company, bringing to mind Henry Kissinger's famous observation about how 90 percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad name.

Caravona recommends doing your homework before buying a car extended warranty online. Probably a good idea -- we make our kids do their homework before watching TV, too. 

 

"The easiest way to check out a company's legitimacy is look for a physical address on their Web site. Next, ask the representative for a telephone number you can use to contact him or her. Negative answers to either question should immediately raise a red flag," he advises.

...

CTCOMPLY.com is announcing a new product for clinical trial professionals "to stay on top of key compliance issues and streamline their operation." 

 

It's described as an instant-answer interactive Web site from Thompson Publishing Group and AHC Media, putting Thompson's CT manuals, databases, news and analysis and other research tools in one online source. "The huge benefit of the online format is that we're able to keep the information continuously up-to-date," says says J.W. Schomisch, senior managing editor at Thompson.

"From keeping up with the latest compliance issues and sorting out the evolving conflict of interest guidelines, to data management, adverse effects, and preparing for an FDA inspection," -- CT COMPLY provides information and regulatory guidance on clinical trial issues, company officials say: "CT managers can help ensure 100 percent compliance with changing state and federal regulations, ensure subject protection and meet privacy requirements, and avoid errors that could lead to fines, loss of funding or disapproval of data."

"CT professionals have been asking for this for years," says Schomisch, editor of the Guide to Good Clinical Practice. "Now CT managers can find advice to stay in full compliance, as well as advice to help save time and money and smoothly speed their trials. We've made it intuitive and easy to use with several ways to find what you're looking for. "

 

The product includes complete, searchable online access to two industry-standard reference books -- Thompson's acclaimed Guide to Good Clinical Practice and AHC's Standard Operating Procedure for the IRB.

It also offers three quick-search databases, including FDA warning letters that show what clinical trial violations are being actively pursued. "The exclusive OHRP Determination letters database that shows exactly how to correct areas that may be out of compliance, and CT laws and regulations of all 50 states to help stay on top of state-specific requirements," company officials say.

...

Aspect, a unified communications vendor, has announced that Mike Sheridan has been named executive vice president of worldwide sales reporting directly to chief executive officer, Jim Foy. 

 

Sheridan will be responsible for providing executive leadership for all sales teams across North America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia Pacific, and the Latin America regions, according to Aspect officials. Previously, he served as the company's senior vice president of strategy and marketing, responsible for unified communications initiatives across product management and marketing.

"Unified communications has the potential to bring significant value to organizations," Sheridan thinks. 

In his previous position, Sheridan was also the executive liaison with the unified communications teams at Microsoft. This responsibility transitions to Andy Bezaitis, senior vice president of corporate development at Aspect.

Sheridan has been with Aspect for more than eight years in various marketing and product strategy roles. Prior to Aspect, he held a number of positions in sales and information technology at leading companies like Hewlett-Packard. He earned a master's degree in computer science and telecommunications from DePaul University and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and technology from Bradley University. He currently resides in Chicago.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits' Bone Machine. If you're looking for a good album to set a romantic mood, or use as background for your eight-year old daughter's birthday party, you'll probably want to look elsewhere:

WaveMaker Software, who sell a visual development platform for Web applications, say the ECN Group selected WaveMaker to "SaaS-enable" their ECN Round Trip Logistics application. 

 

Chris Keene, CEO of WaveMaker, pronounced the company "excited" about the deal. WaveMaker is based on the Java stack, offering WYSIWYG tools.

 

ECN needed help with their supply chain. "We wanted to get our RTL suite to market to take advantage of our niche market opportunity," said John Axe, CEO of ECN Group. "I want my development team focused on providing the middle layer smarts of our application. Being able to collaborate with one's supply chain partners across organizational boundaries without the usual integration issues allows customers to see their supply chain from both a forward and reverse logistics."

 

The ECN Group is a wholly-owned subsidiary of New Zealand Post, selling B2B messaging, business process management and systems integration, with a strong presence in New Zealand, Australia and Asia. ECN RTL is designed to give "all participants in the supply chain a Web-based, unified view of sales, inventory, returns and stock transfers between warehouses," WaveMaker officials say. 

 

San Francisco-based WaveMaker is privately held and funded by Allegis Capital, Sippl Investments, Hummer-Winblad and Worldview Technology Partners.

 

...

Belfast-based Aepona, which sells telecoms software products and services, has acquired Valista, a Dublin-based provider of payment, settlement and service lifecycle management to mobile and broadband operators worldwide. Here's betting they signed the deal in a nice pub with a few hearty toasts.

 

The company will continue operating under the Aepona brand and position itself as a "Network as a Service" vendor to sell to telcos globally.

 

"Operators recognize the need to adopt a more collaborative approach to working with organizations such as enterprises and Web-based service providers," says Al Snyder, CEO of Aepona. "The move towards openness initially focused on the device side, but over the past year attention has shifted towards the network side."

New Buzzword Alert: NaaS is a term for how model, mobile and broadband operators "treat their network and informational assets as marketable resources that can be made available to third party application developers, upstream service providers and enterprises," according to Aepona officials. Evidently this helps with such telco services such as voice, location, messaging, profile, billing and so on.

The new Aepona will offer such products and services as open APIs towards core network capabilities, third party relationship management, monetization, billing mediation and settlement, and service lifecycle management. 

Snyder notes that while Aepona has contracts with Tier 1 operators to implement their Open Network API programs, "until now we have lacked the monetization and settlement capabilities that are required for a true NaaS offering. With the acquisition of Valista, we can now offer telcos the means to monetize their Open API initiatives, as well as offering third parties a way to bill end-users for their services."

...

Level 3 Communications says it's expanding the communications services it provides biopharm company ImClone Systems.

 

"We chose Level 3 because they deliver what we require as our bandwidth requirements grow," says Stephen Davies, VP of information technology for ImClone Systems. 

Under the contract, Level 3, which currently provides data transport services to ImClone, says it will deliver colocation, Internet access and Internet-based private network services to ImClone's locations in New York City, a couple New Jersey locations and Heidelberg, Germany, "as well as ImClone's North American data center in Newark and European data center in Frankfurt." 

 

Davies noted that as ImClone's "international researchers pursue advances in oncology care, we need to be able to quickly transport files between our U.S. and German locations."

 

Level 3 officials say to deliver these services they'll have to expand the fiber network to directly connect to ImClone's two New Jersey locations and the Gotham location.

...

Revenue management vendor Model N says that FCI's Electronic Division integrated Model N's Global Price Management application with Salesforce.com's lead and opportunity management capabilities. 

 

The integrated product is intended to "automate and streamline the division's lead-to-quote conversion processes," Model N officials say, adding that FCI deployed it within its Automotive Division. Model N's GPM automates and centralizes direct and channel quoting with a rules-based pricing and contract management engine. 

 

Rafael Mathieu, Chief Information Officer at FCI, said it "allows us to reference customer contracts, prices lists and business rules during the lead to quote conversion process," among other capabilities.

 

Model N officials explain that by integrating with Salesforce.com, FCI's Electronic Division has a single platform to track and convert "leads to opportunities to quotes." It also has reporting capabilities for visibility across the lead-to-quote lifecycle to ferret out and get rid of those nasty performance bottlenecks and margin leakage. 


 

Europe-based FCI began its relationship with Model N in 2003 by implementing Model N's Global Price Management and Deal Management. It's now live on Model N's Channel Revenue Management and uses Model N's Deal Analytics application as well.

...

Austin, Texas-based KaleidaCare Management Solutions has signed nine new customer agencies this year to use the company's products. 

 

The new accounts are CEDARS, Childkind, Visinet, Walden Family Services, Baptist Children's Home of North Carolina, Masonic Home for Children at Oxford, York Place Episcopal Home for Children, CITY House, and Nazareth Children's Home. As one can tell, the company's into the nonprofit market - KaleidaCare provides private welfare agencies with Web-based case management and administrative tools, and currently have 86 private child and family services agencies across the United States as clients. 

 

And this is a crucial area: "The tough economy has led to more families who are unable or unwilling to care for children, and at the same time governments have been reducing funding," KaleidaCare President and CEO Alistair Deakin says, adding that there's a "growing awareness among child and family welfare providers of the importance that client workflow optimization plays in responding to the economy and changing regulatory landscape." 

 

KaleidaCare has been in business since 1995.

...

Good news for all you PivotLink fans out there -- the vendor has, in its officials' words, "solidified its lead in the Software as a Service business intelligence market with record growth across all areas of its business."

 

Break out the champagne. Or, better yet, see "pub, Ireland" above. 

 

PivotLink's cloud-based SaaS BI solution is a business analysis, reporting and dashboarding tool marketed on its moderately-priced "scalability and analytical enterprise-class business intelligence. The company recently completed a $10 million round of venture capital financing in Q1 led by StarVest Venture Partners -- yes, that StarVest, the lead outside venture capital investor in NetSuite. StarVest recently announced that it closed its oversubscribed $244 million second fund involving PivotLink.

 

Much of the confidence is in the market PivotLink serves itself: A 2009 study by BeyeResearch finds that "SaaS has now gained a significant foothold in Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 enterprises," showing that more than 50 percent of the respondents were adopting SaaS BI based on such factors as "low cost approach, faster development time, being business -- not technology -- focused, easy maintenance and on-demand capacity. The study, titled "Pay as You Go: Software as a Service Business Intelligence and Data Management," by Colin White, BI Research and Claudia Imhoff, Intelligent Solutions, was issued in May.

 

The company's new bookings revenue for 2008 grew 100 percent over the prior year and 75 percent in the first half of 2009. New customers include CamelBak Products, FirstCare Health Plans, Guardian Home Care Holdings and MySpace.com.

 

Several major products were released by the vendor in Q1, including the PivotLink Gadget for Google. New resellers and partners include Appirio, a cloud provider specializing in Google Apps and Force.com, and Demand Solutions Group, which sells on-demand software and services.