September 2009 Archives

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Charlie Parker's 1947 debut album, Charlie Parker. First Coffee isn't a jazzhead by any means, we certainly enjoy Parker's playing, and we'll plead ignorant to the parsing out of influences and trendology jazz freaks obsess over, but it's hard to see what everybody got so excited about. Guess you had to have been there:

Austin-based ManageEngine, which makes network, systems, applications and security management software, has announced the "latest version of ManageEngine SupportCenter Plus, its customer support software.

Claiming the product can now "meet the needs" of larger organizations, company officials say the multi-tenancy capability means users can "simultaneously assist internal users from various company departments and business units, as well as help individual customers and customer groups" from a single console. 

 

It also lets administrators view and organize pending employee and customer trouble-tickets. ManageEngine is a division of ZOHO Corporation.

Its Computer Telephony Integration feature is designed to speed up the time to resolution, company officials say -- "with CTI, when a user makes a phone call for assistance, SupportCenter Plus can match the number from which the user is calling with information about the user's computer configuration stored in a database." At that point the product can route the call to a specific technician.

But for those times when a user needs more than to be talked through an issue, the product has the remote control capability to let a tech -- with the user's permission -- view PC configuration information to help solve the problem.

ManageEngine SupportCenter Plus is available as a downloadable file for both Windows and Linux platforms. A 30-day fully functional trial edition is freely available from the Web site. Pricing starts at $495 for two users in Standard Edition and at $995 for two users in Professional Edition.

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If you suspected that one result of more flexible work schedules is employees working outside of the office more, a recent Harris Interactive survey found that you're right -- 47 percent are working off-site more often now than they were two years ago.

 

And if you thought that's a good thing you're, well, more than half right, as 54 percent "concentrate better" when working off-site compared to being in the office. We just need to get that 46 percent back in the office and away from daytime TV, evidently.

 

The survey also found that in a best-case scenario, a more flexible work arrangement can allow employees to connect better with customers in the field. 

 

The survey, commissioned by Riverbed Technology, found that access becomes an issue in such cases: "Mobile worker productivity is damaged by an inability to efficiently access business files or software remotely." The survey also found that 40 percent say they would work off-site more often if their business files or software would load more quickly.

 

These days working remotely means not only working from home, although that accounts for 80 percent of all business file or software usage out of the actual office, but from a hotel room, another company office location, a vacation destination -- there's your hard core right there -- the airport, a business conference, a Wi-Fi enabled public space such as a park, and -- eleven percent -- from "a coffee shop." 

 

The numbers for "golf course" were not recorded. 

Riverbed Technology is an IT "infrastructure performance" company selling wide area network optimization products. 

 

The survey collected data collection from March 27-March 31 and March 31-April 2, 2009 via the QuickQuery online omnibus service, among 4,391 adults aged 18 years and older, of whom 910 are employed full-time, normally work on-site, and have ever accessed business files or software stored on their employer's server/network/drives from off-site.

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IPass, which sells enterprise mobility services, has announced that Finpro, a consultant network promoting Finnish companies, is rolling out iPass Mobile Office to offices over 40 countries.


 

"Finpro came to us with a very clear need to take back control of the spiraling data roaming costs," said Ren Hendrikse, VP EMEA, iPass.

The company's products are being used to "help mobilize several hundred Finpro staff," according to iPass officials, who add that they're interested in iPass's global Wi-Fi network, which "encompasses almost 140,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, including nearly 60,000 in Europe alone, as well as 3G Mobile Broadband coverage, Ethernet and dial-up."

iPass Mobile Office is a service designed to unify mobility management over any Internet connection, "optimize mobile access, centrally manage mobile connections, and control the end-user organization's mobility expenses." Yes, it works with mobile device support as well. Yes, Finpro, it works with Nokia. Yes, rest of the world, it works with BlackBerry and iPhones.

Finpro officials said staffers using their 3G phones when abroad "has resulted in runaway costs." The main appeal of iPass, they say, is that it could "help the company to reduce these costs," as well as get "the same user experience regardless of location or network access type and irrespective of whether the connection is established from a laptop or handheld device."

"The financial repercussions of unmanaged data roaming charges forced us to review our mobility strategy," said Jarmo Jonninen, IT manager at Finpro.

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Dorado Software has announced the  deployment of its Redcell product suite at Imperial Online, a South African service provider, involving help from Solution Blox, the Dorado-certified EMEA partner.

Imperial Online say the growth common among service providers is "even more fierce in the emerging African market." Company officials say they determined that "existing disparate infrastructure management platforms would require significant consolidation and feature enhancement."

Dorado Software's Redcell Suite was chosen, Redcell officials say, due in part to its modular offering -- individual products can be purchased separately -- while combining server and network monitoring in a single platform.

Andries Coetzee, General Manager of Imperial Online, said Redcell had the "single console" approach they were looking for as well.

 

The Redcell product consolidated "over a dozen monitoring and management products into a single product," a single, integrated platform "spanning multiple layers, domains, networks and services," Dorado officials say.

Besides the ability to manage the entire data center and network infrastructure from a single console, operational efficiencies also include consolidated reporting. The Redcell deployment gives users the ability to monitor and manage customer networks from the console.

All of the described Redcell products are generally available and trial software is available on the Dorado Software site.

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Houston-based The Planet, an IT hosting vendor, has announced the appointment of Capstar Commercial Real Estate Services to lease its fifth data center in the Dallas Metroplex. 

 

It's also offering space for a business continuity center, office space for customers requiring a disaster recovery base of operations during an outage. A video preview of the facility is available on The Planet Web site at the link above. 

 

The first of what company officials say will be four 12,000-square-foot pods has been completed, providing white-floor space "complete and ready for leasing." It's the company's eighth data center.

 

Planet officials say the newest data center uses modular cooling technology from Turbine Air Systems with high-efficiency, water-cooled chillers designed to "eliminate the possibility of an interior water leak." Colocation, private racks and managed hosting services will be offered in the new facility. 

 

Citing interest from North Texas companies "looking to expand or outsource their data center facilities," The Planet's Vice President of Global Sales Tom Blair said this new space "enables us to accommodate the rapid colocation market growth we've seen in the Dallas-Fort Worth area."

The Planet currently hosts over 20,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 18.5 million Web sites worldwide.

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Speech recognition technology at New Zealand Ministry of Social Development has been chosen as a role model for the UK's public sector contact centers

The news from Maidenhead, England is that officials of Salmat VeCommerce, a vendor of voice self-service and speaker verification products, say that UK public sector organizations could "learn some valuable lessons" from New Zealand's Ministry of Social Development when it comes to "handling calls more efficiently using self-service voice technology." 

The New Zealand Ministry of Social Development and Salmat VeCommerce have won a 2009 Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand Award, following the introduction of speech recognition technology into its Work and Income contact center. 

 

The center gets about 6.5 million incoming calls annually.

EMEA General Manager at Salmat VeCommerce, Brett Feldon, says with increased pressure on the public sector to cut costs and meet new improved service delivery targets, "the work at New Zealand Ministry of Social Development demonstrates how local authorities and government departments can use technology to manage contact with the general public on the phone."

In particular, Feldon said, a key concern of local authorities and government departments is "eliminating waste calls and focusing on the true purpose for which the customer is calling. By focusing on why the customer is calling these new products enable more callers to get to the right person first time, minimizing the waste and delays of unwanted call transfers."

At NZMSD average call waiting times have been reduced significantly, "as much as halving in peak times," Salmat officials say.

"The new system means we have a better understanding of why clients are calling and we can get down to business quickly and work out how we can help," said Barry Fisk, Work and Income On-line Services and Technology Director at New Zealand Ministry of Social Development.

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Dotcom-Monitor, a vendor of externally-hosted network & IT monitoring services, has announced that Internet-based product wholesaler DollarDays International has selected Dotcom-Monitor "for its fourth consecutive year."

DollarDays is a B2B online wholesale distributor letting small business owners offer merchandise "free of membership," DollarDays officials say, with the same sort of "discounts and margins offered to the largest retailers." 

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Brobdingnagian Bards doing "Wild Mountain Thyme," a song we have about a dozen versions of here on iTunes, and which we put on as a playlist. Not too many songs you can do that with:

Astoria Software has announced the September 2009 release of Astoria On-Demand, a tool for managing XML content across the enterprise, pretty much on schedule with the company's every three to four month upgrade release.  

Michael Rosinski, President and Chief Executive Officer of Astoria, said the September 2009 release "establishes a new standard for high performance XML component management." 

 

The marketing point for San Francisco-based Astoria is that it's supposed to help "drive efficiencies in dynamic product documentation with on-demand delivery of structured content management," according to company officials, who add that Astoria On-Demand "reduces documentation costs up to 90 percent and compresses product launch cycles from months to weeks."

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Houston-based TRACLabs, vendors of robotics and automation, were recently awarded an $850,000 software development grant from the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The company's proposal, "Building a Coherent World View from Sensory Data," focuses on "creating software that can integrate data from a wide variety of video, infrared, range and other sources to improve the performance of robotic search and recovery," with the goal of saving more soldiers' lives, according to TRACLabs officials.

 

"Imagine a situation where a unit wants to see if chemical or radioactive weapons have been deployed in a building before they enter," says David Kortekamp, President and CEO of TRACLabs. "Our software will enable a robot to quickly and accurately assess the situation without putting troops at risk of exposure."

Robots and unmanned air and ground vehicles form an increasingly large segment of the U.S. military's surveillance and security assets. Currently, there are as many as 4,000 robots and unmanned air and ground vehicles deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

 

One problem arising from all this, of course, is how to integrate the information from each to form a comprehensive picture of what is happening on the ground. TRACLabs officials say they'll develop software that "merges that data into a single stream," and improve robotic recognition of static objects, such as bomb components, and "help robots better manipulate their environments."

 

This will include tasks as diverse as opening doors and drawers to determining a search pattern that will ensure that every square inch of territory has been investigated. In the second stage, the focus will shift to searching for objects that are able to move, from mobile weapon units to human targets.

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Horizon Data Center Solutions, a disaster recovery services vendor, has launched a cloud computing product, FlexSafe Cloud.

 

Company officials characterize it as a "private approach to cloud computing" being marketed on its "flexibility, scalability and cost savings of virtualization" merits. They see it as a way to fill what they perceive to be a gap in the marketplace by providing IT outsourcing options equally attractive to enterprise and small and medium sized business clients. 

 

Chuck Smith, Executive Vice President with Horizon and the company's Chief Marketing Officer, notes the while the industry continues to "debate the actual definition of cloud computing," Horizon has adopted the National Institute of Standards and Technology working definition, with "its key characteristics of on-demand self-service, ubiquitous network access, ability to rapidly scale resources and pay on a measured-usage basis."

He noted that Horizon's decision to adopt the NIST definition was helped along by "our growing list of federal clients," adding that "we believe that the large public cloud providers like Amazon and Google have done an excellent job of supporting the testing and development world, so there's no need for us to pursue the public cloud." 

FlexSafe Cloud is based upon Horizon's Infrastructure as a Service offering, built on providers like Above Net, Cisco, F5 Networks and HP. The FlexSafe Cloud service is virtualized using VMware, and currently has two Dallas-Ft. Worth area data centers.

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Fairfax, Virginia-based Datatel has introduced Datatel Recruiter for the higher education constituent relationship management market, which company officials describe as "the latest addition to the company's Enterprise CRM" product.

 

"Let's face it, customer service doesn't stop once a student enrolls," said Datatel Chief Client Officer Liz Murphy. "CRM is a strategy to improve customer satisfaction enterprise-wide. It starts the moment a student visits your Web site and continues."

Nicole Engelbert, Lead Analyst of Vertical Markets Technology at the Datamonitor Group, and author of the study "CRM in the Higher Education Market," noted recently that "CRM is becoming an important investment for higher education institutions." 

The reasons for that, Engelbert said, are that an enterprise-class CRM "helps to bring together data from three areas: recruitment, retention, and development. Right now, however, the economic downturn is prompting many institutions to focus CRM on recruitment activities in order to manage the influx of applications."

The Datatel Enterprise CRM is geared to track people "from suspect to alumni," according to a particularly felicitous turn of phrase from a Datatel official, who said the product incorporates consulting services and tools such as "true integration with the database of record, reporting and analytics" and dynamic vertical workflows.

 

Datatel has focused exclusively on higher education since 1979.
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IPass has launched iPassConnect Client for BlackBerry a global enterprise Wi-Fi client for the BlackBerry platform.

 

IPass supports such smartphones as the iPhone, Windows Mobile and Symbian-based smartphones. Now iPass Mobile Office corporate customers "can provide their employees with access to nearly 140,000 hotspots in 83 countries," company officials say. 

 

Despite 3G connectivity on many devices, "the advanced applications currently in use from vendors such as Oracle, Siebel, Salesforce.com and Microsoft demand the wider bandwidth associated with Wi-Fi for fuller functionality and greater usability," iPass officials say.

 

With access to what company officials claim is "the world's largest Wi-Fi hotspot network," enterprises can "avoid expensive roaming charges" and get "predictable and transparent" monthly mobility costs. 

 

They're certainly riding a growing market. This year noted tech research firm Gartner said the global smartphone market is growing by 27 percent year-on-year to 40.9 million units.

 

And hey: It'll be huge in Belgium. "Independent research conducted with 300 Belgian companies showed that while laptops remain the most used device for Internet access abroad, BlackBerry ranked top in the smartphone category with 59 percent," said Steven Van den Neucker, Director Mobile Telenet Solutions. "Now that iPass is offering support for BlackBerry smartphones, we can satisfy this demand and provide a global Wi-Fi connectivity service for these users." 

 

IPass is available for all current and future Wi-Fi-enabled BlackBerry smartphones. And as part of the iPass Mobile Office service "there are no additional contracts to sign, start-up fees to pay, or credentials to manage," company officials say.

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GestureTek, a vendor of gesture control interfaces for interactive displays and devices, has announced that its patented EyeMobile optical tracking software will be used in Sony Ericsson's new Yari mobile phone.

EyeMobile is available on over 100 million mobile devices, enabling motion-control game play on mobile phones. Many titles have already added advanced gesture recognition. Click the link above for a demo.

Requiring a small processor footprint, EyeMobile is added onto existing handsets and applications. An upgraded Java-based mobile sensor API lets developers create motion control games or applications for camera-enabled handsets.

 

Francis MacDougall, GestureTek's Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, remarked that EyeMobile doesn't have "the cost of hardware-based touch screen systems." 

Using the mobile device's camera, EyeMobile measures the movement of the phone, or the user, from one camera frame to the next, allowing for a "joystick", "force of motion", "menu selection" or "point to control" style of interaction.

 

"Users can do anything on their mobile device without touching buttons or the screen -- menu selection, scrolling, panning, zooming, shuffling playlists and turning pages," company officials say, adding that other applications that can be made gestural include Web browsing, image view, map navigation and text messaging.

Handsets embedded with EyeMobile include the DoCoMo 904i, 905i, 906i and 706i series, with models from Sharp, NEC, Fujitsu, Panasonic and Sony Ericsson, and the F305 handset. EyeMobile is also accessible for all post-2006 camera phones supporting the Brew, Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a good Dexter Gordon album we don't listen to as often as we probably should around here, Doin' Allright. Released during his stellar early '60s run of albums, it's a perfectly fine jazz album, it just doesn't seem to hold our interest the way other Gordon albums from the same period do:

Gamma Engineers has released Interaction Search, a call center reporting search tool designed, company officials say, to "search all interactions that occur in a call center across all media," such as voice, chat and e-mail in real-time. 

 

Along with real-time search, other features of this tool include "the ability to drill down into searches, unstructured search capability, access to customer information as well as call center information, and cradle to grave report of a call," according to Gamma officials. 

 

So what exactly does all of this mean? Let's take an example: have you ever needed to find out something like "how many people from the 212 area code are calling with a warranty issue right now?" Sure you have. But how do you do it?

 

Interaction Search, according to Gamma officials, allows you to search callers from the 212 area code and then drill down to find out how many 212 callers have warranty issues, and "all of this can be performed in real-time. Unstructured searches are searches that do not require you to follow SQL rules or syntax rules or adhere to any specific language to perform searches. To perform a search, just type in your search criteria much the same way you would type in a Google search, in free form text."

 

So you don't need technical expertise to perform searches, and you can look for specific information relating to customers or for information relating to the call center as a whole, such as how many times Wile E. Coyote called your call center about an issue with Acme Anvils today.

 

And since many call center situations require tracing the entire path a caller took, the product has what company officials call "Cradle to Grave" reporting of a call, "giving users full transparency of a call."

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Promero, a member of the Oracle Partner Network, has announced that it will make a free offer of its proprietary Salesforce CTI Adapter for any customer using the company's OnDemand call center software as a service. 

 

Hurry, though, the offer ends November 15th.

"Salesforce customers can integrate their SFDC service to Promero's hosted product of Oracle Contact Center Anywhere's virtual call center," said Gregg Troyanowski, president of Promero.  Evidently CCA is a tool for telephony features for "sales and customer service environments." 

 

Promero offers a free CTI adapter for SFDC and hosts the Contact Center Anywhere in its data center. The OnDemand Call Center is provided as a software as a service or on premise tool.

With the CTI Adapter and the call center product, Promero officials say, Salesforce users will get to click-to-dial for Salesforce contacts, control inbound calls from within Salesforce --  i.e. put on hold, transfer, or forward calls, open the records for incoming callers, capture and store call activity within your Salesforce customer records.

 

The product also lets users create reports to analyze call activity and performance and improve targeting, and to download direct to the user's PC, meaning no additional servers or IT burden. 
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Altec Lansing, a division of Plantronics, has introduced the newest member of its inMotion family, the inMotion Classic (iMT620), which works with iPhones as well as iPods and includes an FM radio tuner. 

 

Does anybody listen to FM radio anymore? Really? Huh.

 

Based on the iM600 portable iPod speaker system, the inMotion Classic is "engineered for portability and versatility" as it folds to the size of a small book, company officials say, adding that its handle can "swing up for grab-and-go transport, swing back as a kickstand and swing under to stow away and turn off the battery."

Ed Benforado, product category director for Altec Lansing, says in his opinion "mobility is becoming more and more important," adding that "consumers told us they don't want to drain their batteries during travel, they don't want to lose their remote and they want an easy way to carry the dock."

 

As a result, he said, the product has "automatic shutoff in pack mode, a built-in remote control cubby and a three-position handle."

"Works with iPhone" certification, Altec officials say, means "interference-free listening, eliminating the need to switch the iPhone to airplane mode."

It automatically pauses the music when you get a call on your iPhone.

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Aging geeks, nostalgic for those halcyon days of your youth, you're in luck: Aarhuis, Denmark-based Kiloo and Manomio have released the Commodore 64 Emulator for iPhone and iPod touch on Apple's App Store. 

 

Yes, you heard right: That same Commodore 64 you loved in lieu of a social life. The iPhone Emulator is based on the "original and all-time famous" 8-bit home computer released in August 1982.

Jacob Moller, Chief Executive Officer at Kiloo, said it is now possible to "re-experience the golden days of computer gaming right in the palm of your hand anywhere and at anytime. Expect to be entertained as we are rolling out a vast amount of the good old game classics in the coming months."

It's been "almost three decades since we released our first home computer, and today it is possible to get the exact same retro experience on an iPhone," said Bala Keilman, Chief Executive Officer at Commodore Gaming.

Stuart Carnie, Chief Technical Officer at Manomio, said the revered C64 was "all about good game play and it has been fantastic to participate in the creation of what is possibly the best retro gaming experience on the iPhone."

 

Yes, classic SID sounds are included as well, don't worry.

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PowerSteering, which sells SaaS project & portfolio management software products, has announced the introduction of "SaaS for Clunkers," a new software trade-in program making it easier to switch from installed PPM software to PowerSteering's Enterprise SaaS solution at what company officials say is "no additional cost."

Company officials are targeting the program at organizations "burdened with a PPM system that has failed to deliver the ROI expected."

"SaaS for Clunkers" is designed to eliminate "the financial obstacles of switching from traditional software," company officials say, adding that it's supposed to lower the cost of ownership over the life of the deployment as well. 

 

To qualify for the "SaaS for Clunkers" program, companies must currently pay $50,000 or more in annual maintenance fees for installed project portfolio management software. 

 

The product provides access to the PowerSteering application free for the first year. After that an annual subscription -- which includes licenses, hosting, support, upgrades, training and maintenance -- is "priced at 20 percent less than the current yearly maintenance fees for the retired installed system.

 

Is your current system a "clunker?" Helpful signs provided by PowerSteering that you do, in fact, own a PPM "clunker:"

 

Has your PPM system been deployed for more than six months and still isn't fully implemented? (Warning -- you may want to check to see if you have any "clunkers" on the payroll first if this is true, it may not be the software's fault.)

 

Do your configuration changes require extensive IT help? Is the installed application difficult to support, administer and maintain? Is user adoption poor?

"Too often companies find themselves stuck with installed PPM software that's not delivering any return because people simply don't use it," observed Michael Roberts.

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Cortado is offering iPhone users a way to use Microsoft e-mail apps without a "cumbersome PC detour."

 

Users can set up their exchange account directly from their iPhone, using the Cortado mailbox with mobile e-mail, calendar, and address book synchronization. 

 

You can try it out free for 30 days if you want. After that it's the rather quirky price of $11.98 per month. Of if you want to just cut to the chase there's a free demo on the home page linked above.

"Fewer and fewer freelancers are operating their own mail server environment," Cortado officials say, adding that  mailboxes no longer have to be set up and configured on a PC: "It can all be done directly from the iPhone or iPod Touch."

The package is based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, includes a 2 GB mailbox, and lets you continue using your previous e-mail address. It comes with a personal address book and calendar, online access using Outlook Web Access, ActiveSync direct push synchronization of e-mails, contacts, tasks and appointments.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Alice Cooper's classic album Killer. Oh stop giggling - I don't make fun of those REO Speedwagon or Kenny Loggins albums you still listen to, do I?

Tech vendor FreeBit, which sells to "as many as 80 percent of Japan's ISPs," according to company officials, has released today its latest version of the iPhone application ServersMan@iPhone 3.0β. 

 

"I'm very happy to announce the release of ServersMan@iPhone 3.0β," said FreeBit president and CEO Atsuki Ishida.

 

The software, billed as "transforming iPhone & iPod Touch into true cloud storage devices," is now available at no charge in App Stores covering 77 countries in French and German -- assuming Apple approves the App Store registration -- as well as Japanese, English and Chinese.

ServersMan lets iPhones be used as cloud storage devices, FreeBit officials say, and lets users "import, view, and export any type of file -- Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Keynote, Numbers, Pages, PDF, mp3, jpg and others -- from any online device. 

 

In addition, ServersMan has a Web server service for mobile phones to publish data in the iPhone as Web pages. ServersMan@iPhone 3.0β was selected as one of Japan's Best iPhone Apps by TechCrunch, a technology blog.

The product enables file uploads to the ServersMan Storage area in an iPhone or iPod Touch directly from a Web browser on a Mac or PC: "Users do not need any cables or iTunes synchronization when transferring data," company officials explain, adding that since ServersMan also supports WebDAV, "users can transfer data directly to and from iPhone or iPod touch without going through the browser."

It also has a Web server engine to allow users to publish data on the Internet by selecting the data on iPhone and "performing a few touch operations."

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Verizon Business has unveiled a set of IT consulting services designed to "support the deployment and ongoing support of enterprise-wide mobility programs," according to company officials.

The new professional consulting services are intended to help organizations "control expenses associated with multiple mobile devices and usage plans across several carriers, while maintaining security over the IT environment," company officials say.

 

Verizon Business' suite of mobility professional services is currently available in the United States, as well as 19 European countries. The services will be launched in countries in the Asia-Pacific region later this year.

 

Curtis Price, program vice president - infrastructure service, IDC, called professional services "an important and often overlooked part of the mobility ecosystem... these services will help enterprises deal with the competing objectives of accelerating mobility deployments, while controlling costs and securing mobile devices."

The services include the development of recommendations on vision, approaches, objectives and implementation plans for global mobility deployments, consulting for deployment of mobilized unified communications and collaboration applications.

 

It offers "dedicated program managers" providing support for mobility deployments via collection and validation of information to "equip workers with mobile devices and enhance configuration of business systems and reporting" as well, company officials say.

There are also telecom expense management advisory and consulting services for enterprises considering implementation or performing analysis of previously deployed telecom expense-management systems, as well as evaluation and updates of existing mobile policies, or creation of new policies, for use as corporate standards for mobile devices and subscriber services.

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Chicago-based InVision Software, a contact center products vendor, is offering a free Webcast, "Building a Multi-Channel Contact Center in the Era of Social Networking," aimed at contact center managers, operations executives as well as workforce and forecasting managers.

 

The presentation is co-hosted with industry analyst Donna Fluss, President of DMG Consulting. InVision officials say it will focus on "benefits and challenges of contact centers in the Web2.0 era."

The concept of multi-channel contact centers was introduced to the market more than 10 years ago with the rise of the Internet, once people figured out hey, this can alter the way customers and prospects interact with enterprises. 

 

It's a bit surprising, frankly, that many contact centers still insist on providing primarily phone-based support -- and when they do provide support for alternative channels such as e-mail, chat, SMS (texting), community bulletin boards and other social networking, InVision officials say, "service levels and quality are inconsistent."

The 40-minutes online presentation will be followed by a Q&A session with Fluss and Craig Shambaugh, Vice President Sales at InVision Software North America, who'll give a review of the emerging channels.

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Just what you needed, folks: Another way to make your iPhone absolutely, completely, totally indispensable: Skype has announced its Skype for iPhone and iPod Touch on the App Store in Canada. 

 

"We are delighted to bring the Skype for iPhone application to Canadian iPhone and iPod Touch users," says Tom Yeung, Skype`s director of market development, Americas. 

 

Yeung said the Skype for iPhone application has "more than six million downloads from the App Store so far," making it "one of our most popular mobile offerings." 

 

The app includes free Skype-to-Skype calls from any Wi-Fi zone to other Skype users worldwide, and lets users call landline or mobile phones at Skype's rates from any Wi-Fi zone, as well as send and receive instant messages to and from individuals or groups via 3G, Wi-Fi or EDGE.

 

Skype officials say users can also receive calls to a personal online number on Skype and see when Skype contacts are online or available to IM or talk.

 

It offers call forwarding, voicemail retrieval, SMS messaging and is available in such languages as Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish and Traditional Chinese.

 

The Skype for iPhone application requires a Wi-Fi connection to make free Skype-to-Skype calls or calls to mobiles and landlines. The app uses Wi-Fi, 3G or EDGE (based on the fastest connection available) to sign into Skype, update a contact list, maintain and update presence and send or receive instant messages.

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The European mobile industry is still in "uncertainty," according to industry research firm Frost & Sullivan. 

 

"Despite some positive signs, European economies are not out of the woods yet and consumers' confidence remains low," says Saverio Romeo, Frost & Sullivan analyst, adding that "continuous innovation, collaboration between market players and various stimulus from governments' policies can help."

Romeo said in early 2009, Frost & Sullivan suggested that one possible reaction to the coming recession was to "pursue creativity and innovation in order to offer attractive products and services." He noted that during the first quarter of 2009, the industry "predictably focused on managing costs but also looked increasingly at providing creative and innovative solutions to customers' needs."

 

In Romeo's estimation, this led to the establishment of numerous forms of partnerships, and "this approach to the crisis should be continued during the last quarter of 2009 and all of 2010."

Frost & Sullivan is an analyst briefing on the European Mobile Industry this upcoming Thursday at 17:00 BST. The briefing will explore the impact of this recession on the European mobile communications industry, Frost & Sullivan officials say, adding that it will also "illustrate how the industry can react in the short term."

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In more Frost & Sullivan news, Avaya is the top ranked vendor in Enterprise Advanced Premise-based Fixed-Mobile Convergence market share, according to a recently published report by the analyst firm. 

 

"The Worldwide Enterprise FMC Markets, 2008" report puts Avaya's share of the advanced FMC clients market at 43 percent -- more than 16 percentage points ahead of the second-place vendor.

 

The report estimates that worldwide revenues for advanced, enterprise premise-based FMC grew by 486 percent in 2008 over 2007. Further, Frost and Sullivan expects the compound annual growth rate to be approximately 61.4 percent for revenues and 72.6 percent for shipments between 2008 and 2015.

Avaya also got Frost and Sullivan's 2009 Global Market Leadership Award in the world enterprise FMC market. Avaya officials say it was based on the "continued success" of its products in terms of "market share, revenue growth, installed base and the breadth of product portfolio."

Calling enterprise mobility "the most compelling element in the Unified Communications stack," Frost and Sullivan defines enterprise FMC as "any feature, service or product that allows a mobile device to connect with the corporate PBX or WLAN to either extend corporate features and applications or deliver cost-related benefits through the integration of wired and wireless networks."

 

Frost & Sullivan officials say emphasis is placed on "advanced, premise-based FMC products requiring a soft client to deliver call control and PBX features such as single-number reach, single voicemail, corporate directory access deeper mobile handset integration."

Year-over-year growth in the FMC market is attributed to company concerns about cutting mobile expenses, with Frost and Sullivan estimating that FMC products could provide savings of about 10 to 20 percent on the monthly mobile bill.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Eels' Daisies Of The Galaxy. After his previous cheery album, Electro-Shock Blues, E manages to almost sound not completely suicidally depressed on Daisies:

Comodo has introduced vulnerability scanning for internal networks in the cloud on the newest release of its HackerGuardian.

Evidently -- First Coffee didn't know this, but is glad it's true -- merchants who accept payment cards such as credit cards are required to scan their networks at certain periods, checking for breaches in security. "Previously, internal network scans required dedicated hardware, run by an on site employee," Comodo officials explain.

 

Comodo sells security software and services, including digital certificates, PCI scanning, desktop security, online faxing, and computer technical support services.

HackerGuardian lets businesses run remote scans of their internal and external networks using the same software -- "a lightweight bootable agent installed on one of the local network nodes can be activated by an employee" who can be physically located anywhere, company officials say.

 

Merchants required to meet level 1, 2, or 3 of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards can use the product to "centralize the administration of their vulnerability scans," company officials say, adding that it works to scan both internal and external networks.

The product's internal scanning feature lets CI DSS-compliant merchants run vulnerability scans for computers on a local area network, typically inside the company's private network, protected by a perimeter firewall or other network security device. 

The Comodo family of companies is committed to continual innovation, core competencies in PKI, authentication, and malware detection and prevention. As a catalyst in eliminating online crime, the companies' mission is to establish a Trusted Internet.

Comodo's US headquarters "overlook Manhattan on New Jersey's waterfront," according to company officials, and have "global resources" in the United Kingdom, China, India, Ukraine, and Romania. Having lived in Comodo CEO Melih Abdulhayoglu's ancestral land of Turkey, First Coffee is sure they could use it there as well.
...

Pearson has announced the launch of Pearson Test of English Academic, the company's computer-based academic test of English language proficiency. 

 

It measures the English language skills of non-native English speakers who are seeking admission to institutions where English is the language of instruction, and will be available to test takers from October 26.

 

Why limit it to "non-native" English speakers? First Coffee knows plenty of people who learned English as a second language who speak it better than a healthy slice of America's high school graduates do. On a related note, ever seen the civics test applicants for American citizenship have to take? My wife embarrassed me when she asked me to help her study for it, your kid in college would flunk it. Okay, I'll shut up now.

The test, which Pearson officials say "has been already recognised, or is in the process of being recognised, by more than 770 programmes around the globe," uses Pearson's automated scoring technologies to measure the English-language listening, reading, speaking and writing abilities of non-native speakers. First Coffee's sure the mistakes spelling "recognized" and "programs" are merely typos, old chap, ey wot? Blimey.

 

Evidently there's "a mounting number of test takers from China and India," Pearson officials say, noting that the test was developed through field tests involving more than 10,400 international students.

PTE Academic will be delivered through the company's global network of "secure testing centers," and during the launch period, the test will be available in a minimum of 20 territories including China, Taiwan, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, India and Canada for about $150 to $210.

 

Aussies may need to study particularly hard.

Pearson's other English-language teaching activities include textbooks and online material published under the Longman brand, Penguin Readers to introduce learners to classic literature and other works -- which First Coffee used when teaching English in Istanbul and found to be well worth it -- and two chains of English-language schools in China, which operate under the Wall Street English and Longman Schools brands.
...

SAS, a vendor of business analytics software and services, has been placed in the Leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for Operational Risk Management Software for Financial Services by Gartner.

 

First Coffee's seen "The Magic Quadrant" bandied about quite often, and feels and explanation is in order: It's not anything out of Harry Potter, it's the copyrighted name for graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period, showing Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. 

 

Just so it's all clear, Gartner officials say they do not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and don't advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. Company officials say it's intended "solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action."

 

As First Coffee's friend and informal SAS advisor Boadicea Rose would say, "All that settled? Good."

 

According to the report, the Leaders quadrant "tends to be occupied by vendors with software applications that are addressing qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of risk management of ORM." These vendors have, in Gartner's eyes, achieved a certain level of market acceptance and "enable a consistent view of operational risk across the organization as compared to separately designed and implemented risk calculation engines or audit, control and compliance reporting tools."

 

In other words, Gartner thinks such vendors approach operational risk "more comprehensively and holistically" across the enterprise and link operational risk to CPM. 

David Rogers, SAS Global Product Marketing Manager for Risk, said SAS "understands that customers need an overall enterprise-wide product to address different types of risks including operational, regulatory and market."

SAS OpRisk Management is a product built on the SAS Business Analytics Framework, a blend of data integration, analytics and reporting capabilities, and billed as a tool to help institutions "optimize capital allocation while mitigating risks in all areas of their organizations."

...

Oracle has announced the availability of an integration combining the capabilities of Oracle CRM On Demand with InQuira's On Demand Web self-service applications.

Company officials say it's designed to let customers go from self-service to live agent-assisted service: "Service agents receive overall view of customer issues and actions taken, providing a consistent experience across Web, phone and community-based channels."

InQuira was selected by Oracle as Oracle's preferred tool for Knowledge Management for Siebel CRM last year.

The move was described by Oracle officials as a way to "expand the companies' collaboration to include Oracle CRM On Demand," resulting in Oracle an "integrated enterprise multichannel CRM service" product for both on demand and on premise delivery.

With InQuira knowledge management available on demand and embedded in the Oracle CRM On Demand desktop, customer service agents can "access answers right from within their normal service flow," company officials say, describing the service as "fully integrated and available for both on demand and on premise delivery," allowing joint customers to extend on premise deployments with on demand.

 

InQuira's On Demand Web Self-Service application is designed to let users find answers for issues, using community forums to use "the entire customer base to contribute to knowledge creation."

...

SprinxCRM has announced the introduction of their second offering in the SprinxCRM suite of Google Apps business products: SprinxCRM Google Apps GmailSync, with data synchronization with Google Mail.

Overall, the app "provides integration of CRM data with e-mail correspondence," says Radko Jelinek, Sprinx' Director of Sales. "More specifically, it focuses on consolidating customer communications along with CRM data, and presenting it in an easy-to-access, easy-to-act-on format."

The SprinxCRM Google app lets users download e-mail from their IMAP-accessible mail server to corresponding contacts in SprinxCRM, company officials say, thereby creating a history of customer communications, meetings and activities, "all visible on one CRM page."

"With so many businesses gravitating towards value-based systems, SprinxCRM Google Apps GmailSync provides companies and their management with an approach towards both customer retention and sales growth,"says Jelinek.

Sprinx Systems was founded in 1996 in the Czech Republic and is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

...

Sydney-based contact center provider IPscape has announced IPscape for Prosper CRM, a contact center module for Prosper CRM.

IPscape for Prosper CRM was developed to deliver call center functionality, including customer information screen pops for inbound calls and automated dialer, for outbound calling from a Prosper customer record.

Generally with such products, the upfront cost of dedicated lines into the call center tends to limit the number of inbound lines -- "effectively limiting the maximum number of callers talking to agents or on hold to the number of inbound lines," IPscape officials say.

"With IPscape you can theoretically have every one of your customers calling simultaneously and every last call would be answered by the IPscape IVR system," says IPscape CEO Simon Burke, while admitting that "thousands of simultaneous calls is unlikely to happen."

The Prosper CRM integration lets customers enter their customer number while in the IVR queue so the call center agent has complete customer details onscreen when the call is answered. The integration with Prosper CRM "alleviates manual customer lookups after answering the call," says Burke.

 

First Coffee dearly hopes this puts an end to the agent asking you to repeat all the information you've already entered. We have no idea why that happens, we've been in this business a long time and haven't heard a good explanation for that yet.

According to Fred Grebenshikoff, Manager, Business Services at Qantas Staff Credit Union, and a guy who would probably be pretty easy to locate on Facebook, as opposed to First Coffee's old high school friend Chris Jones, who remains unlocated, "the depth of features provided by IPscape is impressive."

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Leo Kottke's magnificent One Guitar, No Vocals, one of First Coffee's Ten Greatest Work Albums, although there are parts where you'd swear there are two guitars:

The electronic book segment is pretty well a feature of the landscape now, and according to a report from In-Stat, has "room for growth" given such new features such as e-mail and Web connectivity.

 

The research, "Electronic Book Survey: US Consumers' Attitudes and Behaviors Towards the Burgeoning E-Book Market," is available now for $1,495 and covers the US market.

 

Indeed, what with reading e-books on your iPod Touch and sending e-mail on your e-book reader, it isn't hard to see that we're going to end up with a blended product pretty soon here.

An e-book is a handheld consumer electronics device capable of accessing and storing digitized books for portable use. Examples are the Amazon Kindle DX -- and one can download and read Kindle books on the iPod Touch and iPhone as well, although without all the neat features of the Kindle reader itself -- and the recently introduced Sony E-Reader Daily Edition.

"According to In-Stat's most recent consumer survey, current e-book owners desire e-mail capability in the next e-book they purchase," says Stephanie Ethier, In-Stat analyst. "Longer battery life and Internet connectivity are the top two desired features among respondents who don't currently own an e-book but plan to buy one in the next year."

 

First Coffee will go along with the "longer battery life" request.

Recent research by In-Stat found that Amazon is the leading brand of e-book owned, the largest percentage of e-book owners (45.5 percent) is spending between $9 and $20 a month on e-book content and that "eleven percent of total survey respondents said they planned to purchase an e-book over the next 12 months."

In-Stat is a segment of the $9 billion Reed Elsevier global information network.

...

Lyzasoft has introduced a feature for Lyza, the company's desktop data analysis product, allowing direct connectivity to Salesforce.com's portfolio of CRM apps. 

 

Lyzasoft officials say this connectivity will allow business analysts using Lyza to "integrate Salesforce data with other enterprise data sources, then analyze, report and share the results." Current Lyza customers will receive the Salesforce connectivity upgrade at no additional cost. 

 

In addition to Salesforce, Lyza provides data connections to enterprise databases such as IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and Sybase, as well as Microsoft Excel workbooks, Access databases and text/flat files. Lyza runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

 

Colin White, president of BI Research, said that while Salesforce.com is a recognized market and technology leader in SaaS, companies performing BI on Salesforce data in general find that "the product's analytical capabilities are lacking. There is great interest in products that enable organizations to add analytics to Salesforce," and that "there is also considerable interest in bringing Salesforce data into the enterprise for analytical purposes."

 

A full feature version of Lyza, including the new Salesforce.com connectivity, is available for free 30-day trial or purchase at lyzasoft.com.

"We see a significant need for Salesforce.com customers wanting to analyze their SaaS CRM data in concert with data from internal systems like billing, inventory, and staffing," said Lyzasoft CEO Scott Davis. 

 

Lyza, complete with Salesforce.com connectivity, is available immediately and is priced at $899 for a single machine, one-year subscription license, unlimited online support and complimentary product updates.

...

Do they ever love their mobiles in the Great White North: A recent Sympatico.ca survey found that nearly half of all Canadians -- 45 percent -- "can't leave home without" their mobile device.

 

Far more Canadians today than just last year agree that mobile media has information that is relevant to them, and survey officials say their findings show that mobile owners are more receptive to mobile media communication, finding it "less irritating and more entertaining and useful."

 

Mobile usage in the home overall has increased, as 33 per cent of Canadian users state that they accessed mobile media in the home in 2009 compared to 21 per cent in 2008.

The majority of Canadian mobile media users "access the same sites on their mobile device as on their home or office computer (47 per cent), and do so from both home (33 per cent) and during a commute (27 per cent)." 

 

And they're even getting more serious: According to the survey, while the primary reason for accessing the Internet via mobile is still "to pass the time," i.e. to goof off, an "increasing number" of users are seeking information or socializing. Why "socializing" and "to pass the time" aren't considered the same answer is a mystery to First Coffee.

The study was conducted as part of Sympatico.ca MOBILE's ongoing Mobile Media Labs program, designed to help Canadian brands "gain insights, co-create and experiment with mobile marketing strategies and tactics."

...

ValueSelling Associates, creators of the ValueSelling Framework, has announced the integration of its eValuePrompter into "every aspect" of the sales process, from lead to opportunity to deal close. 

 

The Internet-based tool for prospect qualification is now available for integration with Customer Relationship Management systems.

Julie Thomas, president and chief executive officer, ValueSelling Associates, describes the ValuePrompter as "a tool for helping our clients with the process of the ValueSelling Framework... we understand the need for supporting the sales process from lead creation through close."

 

Thomas say the eValuePrompter "now can be accessed from the lead stage in CRM systems, such as Salesforce.com." She explained that when the lead is converted to an opportunity, the eValuePrompter started in the lead stage is available throughout the entire sales process:

 

"Information is not lost from stage-to-stage and a complete history can be seen by the entire sales team."

 

Existing eValuePrompter users will receive an automatic upgrade to the enhanced product, company officials say, adding that people can try it free for 30 days.

...

Helpstream, which works the Social CRM suites and customer service community side of the street, will "share its vision for the future of the Social CRM industry" through a blog series from company CEO Bob Warfield. 

 

"The rapid adoption of social software is causing a major transformation in how consumers engage with vendors," Warfield said.

 

Each week will feature a new segment on the Social CRM landscape and introduce new approaches to fusing social Web technologies with customer relationship management.

According to a June 2009 survey conducted by CustomerThink, approximately two-thirds of U.S. consumers believe that companies should ramp up social media usage to identify service and support issues. 

"The rise of social media has rendered the 'command and control' model of customer relationship management outdated," said Paul Greenberg, CRM strategist and author of "CRM at the Speed of Light" and a man who thinks Alex Rodriguez is underpaid. "Consumers are already controlling the conversation through platforms like Twitter and Facebook."

Helpstream's Social CRM can be deployed as a complete customer service system or as an integrated self-service and community case resolution complement to existing CRM systems.

...

WiredContact, which sells Web-based customer relationship management  products, has announced that Prestige Resorts & Destinations has implemented WiredContact Enterprise as its CRM tool. 

 

"Our existing CRM system lacked the customization and relationship management capabilities that our company needed," said Tori Trobak, director of Administration, saying that the company settled on WiredContact as a CRM platforms that could "deliver what we needed."

 

Trobak said the company also considered Salesforce.com, but "based on our analysis, over a three-year period WiredContact Enterprise will cost Prestige approximately 35 percent less than Salesforce.com.

As a result of implementing the WiredContact product, company officials say, Prestige Resorts has cut sales management time by half. Prestige Resorts connects meeting and event planners to a network of destination management companies, resorts and hotels. 

WiredContact Enterprise offers online and mobile CRM capabilities, and is available in a self-hosted or hosted environment. It's a division of Practical Sales Tools, Inc.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the sounds of the U.S. Open, First Coffee's favorite tennis tournament, on television in the background -- current match, Verdasco-Isner -- and we'll try not to let the divided attention affect the quality of the CRM reporting here:

Revel Consulting, a business and IT consulting firm, has announced the launch of its Cloud Computing Practice, aimed at selling products for software companies "transitioning to Web-delivered services" and businesses "incorporating Web-based technologies into their day-to-day operations."

 

Cloud computing uses software-as-a-service to provide the vendor's products to customers via the Internet. The industry will see revenues reach $150 billion by 2013, according to Gartner, which currently leads the third set 5-3.

"Cloud computing is more than a short-term trend," says Vikas Kamran, CEO and Co-Founder of Revel, adding that there are "legitimate benefits" to companies adopting cloud services, such as a better first-serve percentage, reduced expenses and efficient scaling. 

Basically Revel pitches their services as helping companies "transform their infrastructure, operations, and sales and marketing processes" to fit with cloud computing. Their services range from helping assess the cost and benefits of migrating to the cloud to helping companies integrate SaaS apps such as CRM or financial management and reduce unforced errors.

Revel boasts a "pure consulting" model, which company officials say "reduces layers of bureaucracy to provide clients with on-site senior industry experts."

Based in Kirkland, Washington, Revel was founded by Joseph Sedmak with Vikas Kamran and Brett Alston as co-founders.
...

Fourth-seeded Stamps.com -- here, we'll provide the link, it's a tough one to figure out, First Coffee's aware -- which sells postage online and shipping software products, has picked the RightNow on-demand CRM solution for its doubles partner, replacing Siebel/ Kana, which withdrew with a knee injury.

Stamps.com believes the pairing with RightNow will "improve customer satisfaction and agent productivity by helping our agents be more effective and better service customers,"  a more well-rounded, all-court game, according to Dawn Stevenson, director of customer care, Stamps.com.

RightNow claims approximately 1,900 customers among "corporations and government agencies worldwide," including winning the 2002 Bozeman Open.

...

The Oracle Applications Users Group recently announced a partnership with San Francisco-based IT Convergence to hold the OAUG and ITC Oracle Applications Workshops, described by OAUG officials as "a series of four-day training programs" to let users obtain "the necessary skills to master Oracle R12, Oracle 11g, OBIEE" and other Oracle products.

The OAUG and ITC developed the Oracle Applications Workshops to familiarize users on all the features and functions, bells and whistles of specific Oracle products. The curriculum addressed such issues as problem-solving techniques, hands-on exercises, how to hit a really wicked cross-court backhand volley, real-life examples and situations, best practices adaptation of the Oracle applications, troubleshooting and step-by-step instructions.

Raymond Payne, president of the OAUG, said the targeted training was created to help OAUG users implement "the latest developments on Oracle products."

"Throughout the rest of 2009 and 2010, these workshops will give Oracle end-users an opportunity to get the skills and knowledge from veteran Oracle experts," said Patrick Krause, president of IT Convergence, whose world ranking will crack the Top 30 if he beats Verdasco today.

The workshop size is limited to 12 people per session.

...

Austin, Texas-based Convio has announced Summer '09, a software release for online marketing, fundraising and advocacy for nonprofit organizations. 

 

Convio's SaaS model lets the vendor provide clients with major upgrades each year, company officias say, without "the hassles, headaches and costs of traditional software upgrades and maintenance" since Convio handles the infrastructure.

Gene Austin, CEO, Convio, said as supporters move online to communicate with their family and friends -- hello Facebook! Hi Twitter! -- it is "fast becoming the primary channel for engagement with their charity of choice" on both clay courts and hard surfaces.

 

The product is a multi-tenet SaaS or cloud computing infrastructure with a game built around a devastating first serve and power ground strokes.

Convio has been validated Level 1 PCI compliant and completed the SAS 70 Type II audit with no exceptions.

The vendor's online marketing suite offers integrated software for fundraising, advocacy, events, e-mail marketing and web content management and its database system, Convio Common Ground CRM, is marketed as a tool for helping organizations track and manage interactions with supporters.

...

OAC Services, a certified partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork, has announced that it will provide an Oracle Accelerate Semiconductor-tailored product.

The semiconductor industry faces multiple supply chain challenges such as complexity of tracking lots, costing, a weak second serve on critical points and customer shipments. 

 

Based on the Oracle E-Business Suite, OAC Service's Oracle Accelerate Semiconductor Solution provides best practices and industry-tailored offerings marketed as helping mid-size organizations benefit from low-cost, low-risk deployments and rapid implementations, as well as a favorable half of the draw where they wouldn't meet Roger Federer until the final.

"The combination of Oracle's integrated applications with our business domain expertise allowed OAC Services to create an Oracle Accelerate product for a mid-size semiconductor company," said Mark Anderson, CEO of OAC Services. Oracle Accelerate combines Oracle Applications and Business Accelerators with industry- and geography-specific deployment expertise in packages particularly well-suited for grass.

OAC Services is a privately held company based in Campbell, California.
...

Recommind, a vendor of search-powered information risk management software, has announced that Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg picked Recommind's Decisiv E-mail and MindServer Search products as "the backbone of the firm's enterprise search, records management and e-mail management systems." 

 

Taking a commanding 5-3 lead in the fourth set, Davies also selected Recommind's Matters & Expertise module and QwikFind Toolbar to provide access to additional types of information like expertise and projects, and has worked with coach Brad Gilbert to find more consistency in its net play. 

 

Implementing Recommind's products, Davies officials say, will help the company "automate the organization, management and accessibility of information across the entire firm, reducing the firm's information risk, maximizing preexisting investments in document management systems" in the company's offices in Toronto, Montréal, New York and Roland Garros.

Decisiv E-mail tags, organizes and files e-mail messages and attachments, enabling what Recommind officials say is "a virtually automated records management system" addressing what they describe as "the most ubiquitous business tool in use today: e-mail."

 

Davies Partner Gillian R. Stacey said previously attorneys were required to print and file e-mail correspondence, but "with the predictive nature of the system and the fact that it learns user behavior, attorneys can now file their e-mail in a matter-based storage system using a paperless process with little to no effort." 

 

And as a result of the win today, Recommind gets to face the winner of the Djokovic-Stepanek match in the quarterfinals.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is one of the more underrated Texan singer-songwriters on the scene these days, Adam Carroll. If there is a most-played song on my iPod over the past five years it's no doubt Carroll's "Ol' Milwaukee's Best:"

The Data Mining Group, a vendor-led consortium involved in "developing standards for statistical and data mining models," has announced the general availability of Version 4.0 of the Predictive Model Markup Language.

 

This new version of PMML is a major update of PMML Version 3.2, which was released May 2007.

 

 

The idea behind the product is to make it "straightforward" to develop a model on one system using one application and deploy the model on another system using another application. Group officials say it's supported by over 20 vendors and organizations. 

 

"PMML turns the deployment and practical application of predictive models within any existing IT infrastructure into reality. Without PMML, it would take months for models to be integrated and deployed via custom code or proprietary processes," says Cris Payne, Senior Analytics Scientist for XO Communications, Inc.

 

 

This version offers support for multiple models, which includes support for both segmented models and ensembles of models. Group officials say it also has "improved support for preprocessing data," designed to help with simplifying the deployment of models.

 

Oh, and 4.0 also has what Group officials term "survival models." In case you were worried about that.

 

"PMML simplifies the deployment of analytic models," says Robert Grossman, Chair of the Data Mining Group. "With PMML, deploying a new model is as easy as reading an XML file."

...

Jafza officials have announced that "with the help of FVC," a distributor in the Middle East and North Africa for Google Enterprise solutions, Jafza has implemented Google Apps, including the e-mail product.

 

Jafza is a flagship operation of Economic Zones World, a developer and operator of economic zones, technology, logistics and industrial parks under the Dubai World Group. The move is to provide a "standard and compatible communication channel between Jafza and its customers," company officials say.

Using Google's cloud computing capabilities, the product could be "implemented immediately, accommodating hundreds of new users without major IT infrastructure changes," Jafza officials maintain. 

 

According to Saji Mathew, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Corporate Information Technology at EZW, "a challenge for our business was the use of personal e-mail IDs by some customer employees for official communication."

Company officials saw the need for the change, as the company "sends out official announcements and transactional messages to its customers regularly... to audiences ranging from small businesses to large enterprises," and needed "a messaging system that was easy to use and compatible with customers of any kind."

Mathew explained that if an individual were to leave their company, "Jafza would find it difficult to continue its communication channel with the same company until a new contact e-mail ID is provided and updated in our systems. Moreover, history of past e-mail communications would be lost at the customer end which becomes concerning to us and the customer."

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Fellow iPhoners, unite! Rise up and "fight global warming" from your iPhones!

 

Available now on the iPhone App Store, Carbon Pulse Sevenchord Studios purports to tell users "exactly how their lifestyles are affecting the environment," let them "pledge to take action to help reduce their impact, and track their progress making changes."

 

The application estimates a user's carbon emissions based on his vehicle, acceleration, distance and time driven during each trip and miles per gallon, then compares that estimate to that of the average U.S. driver. 

 

The "average U.S. driver" was unidentified by Sevenchord officials, but First Coffee suspects it is, in fact, Louise F. Michaelson, a housewife in Terre Haute, Indiana with three kids, who owns a 2003 Toyota Camry and drives her kids to gymnastics, swimming, drama and volunteering at the SPCA after school.

 

Striking close to the real function of the $2.99 app, Sevenchord officials say "Carbon Pulse users can feel good about their app purchase" for another reason: Company officials say they'll donate "a portion" of the proceeds from Carbon Pulse sales to clean energy projects.

Sevenchord officials say they also built "social media features" into Carbon Pulse, as the application lets users sync their "green successes" with Facebook and Twitter and deliver "environmental news on demand." 

 

Carbon Pulse say the application "has no political agenda."

...

SDN Global has unveiled its Public Safety Access Terminal connecting 911 callers to their Public Safety Answering Point, branding the product its "answer to emergency management's backup requirements."

When 911 call center demand peaks "so does their vulnerability," says Larry Jones, CEO and president of SDN Global, noting that in case of natural disaster or other causes, PSAT offers "an instantly available 911 fault tolerant backup solution for fixed or mobile applications."

The SDN 911 backup supports communication services including administrative phone lines, Internet access, and connection to data applications over the same satellite link, company officials say: "PSAT can also bridge first responders' two-way radio systems enabling emergency crews to communicate with one another regardless of technology compatibility or geographical coverage of the radio systems."

Some SDN customers have installed PSAT within mobile command units for large community events, Jones notes: "If calls spike due to visitors from surrounding areas, 911 operators can quickly light up a mobile unit, for instant capacity reinforcement."

...

Boku, a product for online mobile payments, has announced that "a group of merchants and publishers" has selected Boku for its bank-grade payment product. 

 

And it's going to add a few more stamps to its international passport soon, adding payment service in Indonesia, New Zealand, Slovenia and Taiwan to total 55 countries.

 

"Mobile payments for digital goods is one of the fastest growing segments of mobility," said J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., VP & Chief Analyst, Mobile & Wireless at Frost & Sullivan. "We see billions of digital assets being purchase via mobile phone in the next few years."

 

The group of Boku customers spans the social and casual gaming, social networking and application spaces, company officials say, adding that these companies use the Boku service to sell digital goods and services to their global customers. 

In addition to online payments, the product offers analytics reporting, flexible billing and pricing, fraud and security management. Vu Hoang, co-founder of Aeria Games, said customers choose Boku as a payment method "because of its ease and simplicity."

 

Based in San Francisco with offices in Europe, Asia and Latin America, Boku is funded by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures.

...

ASC, a vendor of products to record, analyze and evaluate communications, will introduce InspirationPro 9.0 in Birmingham, England later this month at a call center trade show.

InspirationPro 9.0 is a quality monitoring product from ASC, having speech analysis with emotion detection, keyword spotting and transcription. There's also an eLearning module to "send customized educational material directly to the agent's desktop," and increased data security to help comply with the standards set by the payment card industry.

Guenther Mueller, Chairman and CEO of ASC, said the product's speech analytics software "provides extended evaluation and reporting features based on the actual meaning of the conversation."

InspirationPro's features include real-time contact between agents and supervisors without the customer's knowledge, and a browser-based interface for access from any location. 

 

ASC's products also support the use of Citrix software for application virtualization. The company has subsidiaries and sales offices in Great Britain, France, Poland, Switzerland, the United States, Japan and Singapore.




 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is more Larry Norman. This guy single-handedly created the entire "Christian rock" genre, today worth billions, but back in the late '60s and early '70s he couldn't get played on radio, as he was too secular for Christians and too Christian for secular radio. His essential '69-'76 records have that dated Brit blues rock with a hippie hangover sound, but the songwriting's strong and they're still better than 95 percent of what passes for Christian rock today:

MPortal has assisted Comcast in developing Comcast mobile for the iPhone and iPod touch, described by mPortal officials as a mobile app providing features of Comcast Digital Voice, Digital Cable, and High-Speed Internet services to iPhone and iPod Touches. 

 

"This is mPortal's first commercial application launch with Comcast," said Alec Walker, Vice President of Strategic Accounts at mPortal. "Together with the Comcast team, we designed a converged voice, data, e-mail and video experience for Comcast subscribers using the iPhone or iPod Touch."

Among other features, the app lets users check Comcast e-mail and listen to home voice mail in one combined inbox, as well as read, reply, forward and compose e-mail and read attachments supported by the iPhone.

Users can manage voicemail messages and call logs, view voice mail in any preferred order as well as "touch" to call, and forward home phone calls to the iPhone from the iPhone, view call history and manage home phone settings.

And hey -- you can see what's on TV tonight, tomorrow or next week, including program details and watch video on-demand movie trailers. What's not to love?

J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., Vice President and Chief Analyst of the Mobile and Wireless Group at Frost & Sullivan noted that this is a growing market, remarking "there are more opportunities to bring other cable operators and media companies into mobile."

MPortal helps service providers, content providers and enterprises "create, deploy and monetize" content and applications across mobile networks and devices, featuring its Springboard flagship suite of products.

...

Fort Lauderdale-based Runaware, which sells software marketing, says the company is jumping into Software as a Service with its recently-announced updated TestDrive platform. 

 

With the launch of the company's updated online demo service, Runaware wants to sell cloud computing services to other software companies. Their TestDrive platform is geared for the Platform as a Service market. 

 

Gartner estimated that the SaaS marketing represented $6.9 billion in revenue in 2006 and projected that the industry would grow by more than 21 percent by 2011, so obviously Runaware sees considerable potential here. In fact consumers are checking out hosted software, and some companies looking for resources to devote to continuing product development are finding the SaaS model to work for them.

"It has always been my goal to make sure Runaware is on the forefront of software hosting technology," said Tim Keyes, Runaware CEO, adding that "we haven't positioned ourselves this way in the past."

Keyes said the company would target "clients who want to get their software up in the cloud, but may not have the development funds or resources to convert traditional installed software to one that is considered SaaS... TestDrive has always been a PaaS-capable system, we just haven't taken it out of the demo space."

The TestDrive PaaS offering can host "all types of software," and deliver it over the Internet without the need for download or installation of the software. The system delivers full functionality of the software through a web browser while all of the processing power is handled by Runaware's servers located in data centers on two continents.

...

Good or bad news, depending on your point of view: Owners of Bluetooth headsets in the US are using them less frequently. 

Only 26 percent of Bluetooth headset owners use their devices every day, in 2008, 43 percent did. These findings were based on surveys with 625 automotive consumers in the US and Western Europe summarized in the Strategy Analytics Automotive Consumer Insights report "Bluetooth Headsets Still Reign, but Daily Usage in US Declines."

The upside? Fewer people on the streets apparently carrying on animated conversations with the voices in their heads.

"The style and design of the Bluetooth headset remains a pain point for consumers," commented Chris Schreiner, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics. "The number of Bluetooth headset owners satisfied with the style of their device dropped 27 percent since 2008."

First Coffee thinks he means consumers' dissatisfaction with their design springs from observing other users, and realizing "Hey I must look like an unhinged loon wandering around the mall talking to myself, too."

Kevin Nolan, Vice President of the Strategy Analytics User Experience Practice, said that while Bluetooth headset owners were generally satisfied with the ease of use of their headsets, "owners of professionally-installed hands-free car kits reported greater satisfaction with ease of use, as well as with sound quality and style."

 

Especially those with tinted windows, First Coffee would imagine.

...

DeltaCom has announced the enhancement of its Simpli-Business service with the incorporation of NEC's Univerge SV8100 Communications Server, establishing an Internet Protocol-based platform.

 

The platform is designed to increase functionality and provide a platform for future IP-based applications, company officials say:

 

"Simpli-Business now supports remote access for phone system management, including the ability to make changes to integrated auto attendant features and auto call distribution and also delivers multimedia voice to e-mail functionality."

Tony Tomae, Deltacom's Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, said the product has the ability to remotely update call distribution settings, manage call treatment from a PC, route calls to virtual extensions like mobile devices or alternate locations and receive voicemail via e-mail files.

Simpli-Business "bundles local and long distance voice, data and multi-media communications services with an IP-based phone system and desk top terminals in addition to multi-functional printers that print, copy, scan and fax," company officials note.

 

DeltaCom, headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama.

...

Net-Results has announced the integration of its proprietary marketing automation platform and lead management tools with Salesforce.com. 

Presumably Net-Results, located in Golden, Colorado, toasted the deal with a beer brewed right there in their home town, name of Coors. Net-Results CEO, Michael Ward said having "accurate and detailed" prospect activity data available in real-time "accelerates the sales cycle."

Coupled with Salesforce.com's CRM offerings, Net-Results' new application is intended to "bridge the gap" between sales and marketing with regard to prospect and lead handling, company officials say. The integration package is now available on the AppExchange.

"Net-Results' lead behavior tracking and management system provides a benefit to existing Salesforce.com customers who are running lean in this economy," said Ward.

Salesforce.com customers can download the Net-Results' package into their account to provide real-time summary data and visit information for accounts, contacts and leads. 

According to company officials, the system not only tracks each visitor's information to a customer's Web site, but delivers such data as the most recent visits, pages viewed, total visit duration, page visit duration, navigational path, referral source, search terms, entry page as exit page.

...

Netezza Corporation, a vendor of data warehouse and analytic appliances, says it's continuing to "fulfill its strategy" of certifying numerous Oracle applications in data integration, data analysis and business intelligence and reporting.

 

The affirmation comes on the heels of the recent introduction of the Netezza TwinFin appliance and the new Oracle certifications.

The Oracle Business Intelligence Packaged Application is made up of components formerly available from Siebel Systems as Siebel Business Analytics Applications, augmented with new capabilities and third party applications. 

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a great find - iTunes finally got Larry Norman's back catalogue, so we're listening to Only Visiting This Planet. Still sounds as good as anything on radio did in 1972:

Oracle partner Promero has announced that is has completed an upgrade of its premier call center software as a service platform to Oracle's Contact Center Anywhere v811.

"We've used the Oracle call center software for years," said Gregg Troyanowski, president of Promero, adding that their customers "truly like" the new features and GUI.

 

Promero also offers a premise-based product as well as the SaaS version of Contact Center Anywhere.

Contact Center Anywhere v8 features include Multi-Channel ACD Built-In Softswitch, and TDM Switching provides "skills-based routing and a universal queue for phone calls, e-mails, faxes and callbacks to route customers in virtual queue," company officials say. 

 

Contact Center Anywhere "replaces or co-exists with" PBX Inbound/outbound cross-media blending, integrated outbound predictive and preview dialing IVR, company officials say, adding that it also provides built-in voice recording, supervision and agent-coaching capabilities, voicemail, fax, and unified messaging.

The product also comes with screen pops -- integrated in pre-built agent User Interface or as separate screen, and a blended agent for both inbound and outbound communications.

Contact Center Anywhere has won 49 industry awards from Internet Telephony Magazine, Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine, TMC Labs and others.

...

 

Intacct has announced a "new and improved" version of Intacct MAX for Salesforce CRM, described by company officials as a streamlined "lead to cash" application built on the Force.com platform connecting Intacct's financial management and accounting system and Salesforce CRM. 

 

Intacct officials say over 50 companies have posted reviews on the Salesforce.com AppExchange concerning their experiences combining Salesforce CRM and Intacct.

The Summer '09 edition of Intacct MAX for Salesforce CRM has such features as bi-directional data synchronization, price book management, automated contract renewals and payment processing. 

 

As a composite application, Intacct MAX for Salesforce CRM goes far beyond simple data integration by creating new and unified business processes, an integrated user experience, aligned master data and shared business objects across both Salesforce CRM and Intacct.

Intacct officials are hyping cloud-connected applications like Salesforce CRM and Intacct as allowing companies to "choose best-of-breed systems, knowing that they will not have to incur the cost or risk of maintaining integration between the applications themselves." 

 

Generally, they contend, with vendor-supported composite applications, "the end result will be far superior" to that delivered by data integration-based products.

"The combination of Salesforce CRM, Force.com and Intacct is compelling for companies moving their business applications to the cloud," said Kendall Collins, Chief Marketing Officer at Salesforce.com, "avoiding the compromises associated with single-vendor ERP and CRM suites."

...

Questetra has launched the Questetra BPM Suite SaaS Edition in Japanese, renamed "Questetra BPM Suite Download Edition."

The free workflow/BPM software "Questetra BPM Suite Download Edition" is a Web application that has been downloaded about 6,000 times since its release in January 2009, and is currently used in such BPM practices as Kyoto University's inquiry and contact process.

The Questetra BPM Suite SaaS Edition service is billed as contributing to BPM activities of bodies such as businesses that promote cloud computing, departments "with no restriction on software installation," as well as small organizations with around twenty members. 

 

The software shall be available in other languages in the future.

...

Noting correctly that small business owners and employees "typically wear many hats in a given day," call center vendor my1voice officials say the company's products offer them "a host of features that are both flexible and easy to use," reflecting "an understanding of the day-to-day challenges facing owners and employees in a small business."

 

And hey, they're designed to "match the way they work rather than forcing them to work according to the phone service."

 

Examples include a single phone number to reach all employees: "Rather than each employee handing out individual -- or multiple -- phone numbers, customers, prospects and partners can reach anyone in the organization by dialing a single number." The virtual receptionist directs calls by extension, or callers can select the company directory to dial by name.

"Time is a precious commodity in a small business," said Steve Adams, vice president of marketing for Protus, the provider of my1voice. "The rich feature set in my1voice allows small business owners and their employees to set up their phones in a way that will use their time more efficiently."

There's also smart call forwarding, letting users customize incoming calls to their cell, home, office, voicemail, and even numbers with extensions. Also my1voice "can be set to deliver voicemail messages directly to the customer's e-mail," company officials say, "eliminating the need to check voicemail for messages or dial in to retrieve them."

Other features include a Web call button letting customers and prospects searching the site connect to an employee over the phone by clicking one button. It's available for as little as $10 per month, with additional plans based on how many minutes per month the small business expects to use.

...

CompanionLink Software, which sells mobile synchronization products, has announced that CompanionLink Express supports the new ACT! by Sage 2010 contact and customer management product family. 

 

Always nice when someone else supports your family, isn't it?

 

The product synchronizes ACT! 2010 data with phones, PC software, and Web-based services so users can access and update contacts, calendar activities and notes from anywhere.

And of course the product is keen to the current trendy favorite biz buzzword: "Social networking is a critical feature of ACT! 2010," said Wayland Bruns, CEO of CompanionLink Software, explaining that any ACT! customer can use CompanionLink to carry this feature to "every cell phone and mobile device."

CompanionLink transfers the links from each contact record in ACT! to contact notes on a phone. Links can refer to Google Maps, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages, as well as fill forms on company Web pages and for paid services like credit checks and vendor forms.

 

The software retails for a one-time licensing fee of $49.95 and includes free e-mail and phone technical support.

...

Just what your iPhone needs -- advertising.

 

"Portable social video technology" vendor mDialog has announced at Ad:Tech what company officials say is their "new step," offering media publishers and advertisers a Video as a Service product for managing and delivering video content with ads to the iPhone/iPod touch owner.

The mDialog Platform can insert geo-targeted video ads into a VOD or live video stream using the iPhone -- "notably," company officials say, "Apple's new HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming technology." The product also brings to market "previously unavailable" features.

 

First Coffee proudly joined the ranks of iPod Touch ownership this past week, thanks to Mrs. First Coffee knowing exactly what the perfect birthday present is. Now he's almost caught up to his 11-year old son technologically.

HTTP adaptive video streaming technology is billed as loading video content faster and "adjusting in quality in real time according to network strength," according to mDialog officials, who pitch the technology as "boosting the iPhone user experience."

For advertisers, the mDialog platform includes geo-targeted dynamic video ad insertion -- the ability to dynamically insert video ad content based on the actual location of the iPhone, integrated with DoubleClick.

The publishers' iPhone app can either be powered by mDialog's White-Labeled iPhone offering or their existing app. "Additionally," mDialog officials say, "they can select the weighting and placement of ads in real time, including mid-roll."

Video publishers wanting to reach the iPhone owner "have hurdles to overcome, including VOD, live streaming, video codecs, CMS servers, CDN and Ad Server integration-the mDialog platform removes those hurdles," says Greg Philpott, President and Founder of mDialog.