The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells A Story. Before he was a socialite, a disco act or a crooner, in the early '70s Stewart was one of the greatest bluesy-folk rock performers in the game. Here he is at his absolute "Maggie May" and "Reason To Believe" best on one of the very, very few truly indispensable rock albums:

"Customer experience systems" vendor Amdocs has announced the acquisition of jNetX, a privately-held service delivery platform provider, for $50 million net of debt and cash, subject to post closing adjustments.

 

Amdocs officials say the acquisition "accelerates" their position in the SDP market, since it combines jNetX's offering with Amdocs' CE products and service delivery.

The SDP market is estimated to grow at a 14 percent to $6 billion by 2013, according to industry analyst firm Analysys Mason in a study concluded a couple months ago. It's seen as a way of "enabling faster time-to-market and the monetization of services."

 

Amdocs and jNetX share a number of customers, including Vodafone Group, British Telecom and Mobilkom.

 

In explaining the market opportunity they see, Amdocs officials contend that "today," service providers "are seeking to move their businesses from predominantly subscription-based access services to include rich content, applications, and other offerings." Therefore, the combination of Amdocs and jNetX products will, in their view, "allow service providers to expose both Telecom and IP components in the network to offer convergent network, IT and Web-based services."

 

Amdocs is evidently hoping to distance themselves from other SDP vendors supporting services solely on IP-based networks: Jim Liang, senior vice president strategy and corporate development for Amdocs, underlined the "technological combination" of the acquisition.

 

The combination is also an excuse for punching up Amdocs CES Portfolio. The vendor has enhanced their convergent charging offering by providing service control and service brokering capabilities, and are touting "closer integration with the Amdocs App Store to expose network services to developers."

Amdocs does not expect a material impact from the acquisition of jNetX on fiscal year 2010 non-GAAP earnings per share, which excludes acquisition related costs and equity-based compensation expense, net of related tax effects. The impact on GAAP results will be finalized after Amdocs completes the purchase price accounting for the acquisition.

...

IT Structures has the idea that trying out enterprise IT can -- darn it, should -- be as simple as browsing iTunes.

 

To that end, company officials say they've created a platform that lets companies share "fully functional" IT environments in the cloud with their "Try I.T. Now" button.

 

The button allows any software or appliance vendor let their sales teams, prospective customers or partners "take the product for an instant test drive, in a monitored and controlled way," company officials say: "Companies can post the button on their Web site," and users are spared "having to install or download anything."

This approach "goes beyond basic Webinar or virtual lab offerings by letting customers create production-grade replicas of their existing IT," IT Structures officials contend.

Taking note of what they see as "the rising popularity of on demand and SaaS software applications" leading to "an increase in cloud-based business tools," IT Structures officials say there is increased pressure to provide sales prospects with a true user experience without ever leaving the office.

"When we say 'try it now' we mean that literally," says Zvi Guterman, CEO of IT Structures, adding that since "we're living in a 'try & buy' world" anyway, the concept isn't foreign.

 

The vendor's also offering the option to customize the button to reflect corporate branding.

...

Indianapolis-based consulting firm Walker Information is offering an iPhone application to provide its users "fast and easy access to customer feedback," company officials say.

Walker Link for iPhone was created to complement Walker Link -- an online application linking account managers to feedback provided by customers. With the new iPhone app, account managers can access that customer information.

Mike Grindstaff, Walker's IT product portfolio manager, said Walker Link for iPhone "provides access to the most recent feedback from customers."

So from an iPhone, an account manager can get the feedback from a company or individual contact, see which contacts have responded to a survey, and send survey reminders: "Walker Link for iPhone allows people to have a meaningful dialogue with their customers," Walker's Chief Information Officer Brian Kovacs says. 

Walker is a privately held consulting firm.
...

Emobus, a vendor of "mobility management" services and software, has formed an advisory board to serve as "a representative sounding board to provide strategic insight" to the company. Advisors include Aris Kekedjian, Philip Dodds, and Sean Murphy.

 

Company officials say the board will help Emobus with customer development and product development efforts so their products and vision "remain closely aligned with customers' business objectives."

Kekedjian is Managing Director & CEO, GE Strategic Development & GE Capital, Middle East/Africa. He's expected to provide Emobus with insight into selling to large corporations and financial strategies.

 

Dodds, chosen to provide Emobus with database and business intelligence insight, has worked in a variety of roles in the last 15 years: CTO of DevZuz, Co-Founder of Unity Systems, and consultant to various global banks and multimedia companies.

Murphy will provide Emobus with "strategic insight into marketing and scaling a new technology," company officials say. Murphy has worked in a variety of roles in the last 25 years -- software engineering, engineering management, business development, and product marketing at companies such as Cisco, AMD, MMC Networks, 3COM and VLSI Technology.

Emobus officials claim their products help clients "slash direct carrier billing costs," via not only selling them software but letting them "offload their enterprise cellular challenges."

...

Salesforce.com has announced that 20/20 Companies is running its growing business on custom applications built on the Force.com cloud computing platform.

 

The vendor works in the marketing and sales contracting industry. It used Force.com for custom application development to manage orders, invoicing and payroll, as well as employee time-tracking.

The need for custom applications arose when 20/20 officials got tired of their sales reps manually entering order data into one system, and then manually reconciling with their client's systems, as well as internal company financial, payroll and reporting applications. You can guess the result, of course: Time-consuming busywork, just the sort of thing sales reps thrive on, with errors and inconsistent information.

Fort Worth, Texas-based 20/20 Companies officials figured they could develop custom applications on Force.com at 25 percent of the time and cost required to build the same apps on-premise with .NET, according to company officials.

The firm now has an application to manage the order-to-invoice-to-payroll process, described by company officials as "a central point for the sales team to track orders," and one where information is "shared across 20/20's business applications and with clients." They also have a time-tracking system for staff to log in and out "with the assurance that their hours will be paid accordingly, whether regular, overtime or holiday rates."

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Warp 9, which sells e-commerce platforms and services, has announced that customer ShapeFX, a Spiegel Brand, was featured on the The Today Show with Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira.

Hey we know. Not everything here at First Coffee is hard news. Gotta relax and have fun every now and then. We like a little showbiz glitz as much as the next guy.

Warp 9 officials are proud of the fact that they've had customers featured on national television programs like NBC's The Today Show and Oprah before. And for good reason -- "The surges in traffic and sales that accompany these appearances are quite amazing. These are great opportunities for clients to boost brand and product awareness, sell a lot of product, and acquire a large amount of new customers."

As well as maybe get a chance to meet Tom Cruise! After the caffeine buzz has worn off!

"Because of the benefits of these opportunities, it is important that these experiences go extremely smoothly for our customers. These large spike factors are figured into the capacity and resource planning we do," notes Harinder Dhillon, Warp 9's CEO.

The ShapeFX.com site runs Warp 9's ICS Enterprise E-Commerce Platform. Enterprise ICS sites are served by, on average, 15-20 enterprise-grade servers. A typical Warp 9 Enterprise ICS site, company officials say, is capable of 1200+ orders per hour.

 

One wonders how many an Oprah appearance generates.