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.

...

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.

...

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."

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.