November 2009 Archives

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Tom Waits' Rain Dogs. After this we'll play Elvis Presley's From Elvis In Memphis, and vote on which one's the winner in today's War of the Records. So nice to have our own office:

Business analytics vendor SAS and Netezza Corporation, a vendor of data warehouse and analytic appliances, have expanded their partnership to bring in-database analytic processing to mutual customers, SAS officials say.

 

Company officials add that "joint R&D will further integrate the companies' respective products, starting with SAS Scoring Accelerator for Netezza, available in early 2010."

The SAS Scoring Accelerator for Netezza is evidently designed to help businesses obtain analytical results: "Customers using SAS Enterprise Miner and the Netezza TwinFin data warehouse appliance will translate and execute scoring models directly within Netezza's parallel environment."

 

Rather than manually transforming and processing code outside the database, the product automates data preparation and model deployment tasks inside the database to let customers use Netezza data warehousing investments with SAS Business Analytics.

The idea here is that reducing data movement across networks lets organizations process more analytic models "without jeopardizing reliability," SAS officials say, adding that the results are "higher returns from data assets and reliable results supporting operations such as fraud detection, credit scoring and risk management."

Keith Collins, SAS Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, said the SAS Scoring Accelerator for Netezza, which he called "our first in-database activity with Netezza," is a demonstration of SAS' "commitment to integrating SAS Analytics across leading database vendors."

Netezza is headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts and has offices in Northern Virginia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, France, Japan, Korea, Australia and Singapore.

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More fallout from Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference: PivotLink, a vendor of business intelligence delivered via Software as a Service, has announced more customers rolling out PivotLink for Salesforce.com via the AppExchange. 

 

Built using the Force.com platform, PivotLink's on-demand Sales Analysis and Reporting product is pitched by PivotLink officials as a way to deploy such a tool "without the upfront cost and complexity of traditional on-premise."

It's intended to let allows sales and marketing users analyze the data in Salesforce.com to get returns on investment from their sales force automation. PivotLink provides a view of sales performance data and customer metrics that are "commonly scattered across Excel spreadsheets, on-premise systems and SaaS applications such as sales, marketing automation, finance, order management and manufacturing," company officials say.

The tool is billed by company officials as a way to "slice and dice trend information from Salesforce.com, analyze pipeline opportunities and snapshot pipeline value, create trend charts and dashboards for all sales metrics, boost the accuracy of sales forecasts, assess variance between bookings and quota and pinpoint profitable customer segments and products."

 

It's also supposed to identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, determine why deals aren't closing faster and "integrate data from ERP, CRM, supply chain and marketing systems for a 360 degree view of the variables that could affect revenue performance."

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Implix, an e-mail marketing vendor to the SOHO/SMB market, has announced the launch of GetResponse Developer Zone, a portal dedicated to helping "small to large enterprises integrate the GetResponse e-mail marketing API platform with in-house applications, databases, e-commerce shopping carts, CRM, and CMS systems."

 

The idea evidently is to "improve targeted marketing capabilities and increase campaign ROI," company officials say. CEO Simon Grabowski says "since my first attempt at age six, writing code has been a passion of mine." 

Implix officials believe that one of the biggest challenges facing high-growth SMB organizations today is how to integrate existing software with e-mail marketing to increase automation and improve efficiency -- "without costly integration projects."

 

They think much of the reason for this is that in a typical SMB, internal IT resources are limited, which leads to marketers struggling to implement targeted campaigns using tools that don't play nicely with others. If that sounds like your operation, this might be for you.

The GetResponse product, company officials say, provides resources to "integrate and automate targeted e-mail marketing across customer environments." Developers can use its API documentation, tutorials, templates, sample implementations and FAQs to use GetResponse features "wherever they're needed, integrate existing software, or create entirely new applications that take advantage of e-mail marketing."

 

They say the product helps with synchronizing and updating subscriber and customer profiles, segmenting lists by demographics and geolocation -- "all supported by GetResponse's automated list hygiene."

It also can help with implementing behavioral targeting, creating mailing lists based on user behaviors such as clicks, opens, navigation and timing, and by exporting purchase history data to GetResponse for campaign targeting.

Grabowski says in spite of the current economic downturn, "SMB spending on software and self-service applications like GetResponse is expected to reach $35 billion by 2013."

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Toronto-based NexJ Systems, a CRM vendor for the financial services and insurance industries, has announced that ATB Investor Services picked NexJ Contact for Finance as the customer relationship management tool for its investment and wealth management business practices.

 

ATB Investor Services is the operating trade name for the investment services subsidiaries of ATB Financial, an Alberta-based financial institution with assets of $27.2 billion.

NexJ officials say ATB Investor Services liked their product's "view of all customer profile and financial data." NexJ Contact for Finance integrates best-of-breed CRM functionality such as customer profiling, householding, relationship and referral management, schedule and task management, and reporting and analytics, company officials claim, "with existing back office portfolio management, trade order management, and marketing systems."

 

NexJ Contact for Finance is expected to provide a consolidated view of customer data across all users and departments to improve the consistency of the customer experience, NexJ officials say, adding that ATB also expects "automation of core business processes, referral management to identify and respond to prospective customers, reporting and analytics to identify new products for cross sell and upsell opportunities and mobile access via NexJ Contact for BlackBerry."

NexJ Systems was founded in 2003 by former executives of Janna Systems.
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DynamicsExchange.com has announced what company officials are calling "a new focus, new design, and new resources to support the broad solution customization capability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the xRM platform evolution."

 

If you haven't heard of San Diego-based DynamicsExchange, it's an online super-community dedicated, its officials say, "exclusively to driving down costs associated with developing and implementing Any Line-of-Business or x-Relationship Management" products.

 

It's based on the platform of Microsoft's Dynamics CRM xRM, and is announcing new DE functionality, including integration of Microsoft's Live ID for seamless user access improvement across the DE Community Portal and Microsoft eOpen, CustomerSource, and PartnerSource portals for single-login and single point-of-entry for all xRM resources.

 

DynamicsExchange also wins First Coffee's Most Interesting URL of the Week award.

 

It's also announcing a recent expansion of free xRM code share, how-to, and technical resources, as well as what its officials call "improved aggregation of all community blog and forum knowledge contributions," which continue to allow DE to accomplish the single-source location to search, find, review, and exchange openly for the needs of the industry's prospects, users, developers, and professional support community.

One function of DE is to facilitate engaging providers with experience, products, and service offerings available to Dynamics xRM custom tool implementation, coupled with knowledge contributions of topic-dedicated social media, "reducing the costs of business tool adoption across the business eco-system."
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Never let it be said First Coffee doesn't know how to get local: ESalesTrack CRM is offering "more features and services for local users" in the Kansas City area.

 

Kansas City -- Kansas, even, not the Missouri side -- based eSalesTrack is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software application designed for small to medium sized businesses in Kansas City and surrounding areas, company officials say.

 

Although eSalesTrack is Web-based CRM software, universally accessible, First Coffee supposes the reason company officials have chosen to focus on the KC area is because Kansas City users get the "standard service and support" the vendor's offering, as well as "access to personal, on-site support and service, and a greater degree of customization consultation."

Noting that yes, "we have solutions for companies across the world," Grady Hawley, public relations officer for the company, said "we have something special for our Kansas City users. It is hard to find any other CRM software like eSalesTrack due to its combination of powerful and scalable customization with low pricing."

ESalesTrack is a customizable CRM product from Soleran, a Web technology company based in Overland Park, Kan. It has mobile and MSOffice plugins, as well as the standard features, such as marketing, leads, sales, customer support, workforce management and digitalization.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Texas singer-songwriter Adam Carroll's drolly acerbic music, nicely understated for maximum impact:

Beazer Homes USA, an Atlanta-based national home builder, has adopted SalesforceCRM to "enhance sales and customer care processes," according to consulting firm Bluewolf.

 

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Beazer had a cumbersome CRM product with limited capabilities, and as a result - all together now - the sales reps ignored it.

Hit hard by the housing downturn of the past several years, Beazer officials say they see the company "in the midst of a makeover that will enable it to take advantage of the slowly recovering housing market." Part of that makeover, evidently, is looking to strengthen the sales and customer care processes.

 

"Now we are seeing glimmers of hope that the negative market trends in the housing industry are moderating," said Cindy Tierney, CIO, Beazer Homes. 

Beazer Director of Information Technology Joe Harris participated on Bluewolf's panel on "Extreme Makeover: Customer Care Edition" at Dreamforce 2009, Salesforce.com's user and developer conference, "sharing experiences of undergoing an extreme makeover of the home builder's customer care processes and technology," according to Beazer officials.

The builder is looking for improvements throughout the sales organization, including improved customer interaction and agent productivity, an increase in user adoption, improved overall data quality and decreased time required to generate sales reports from days and hours to minutes.

Company officials say with the Salesforce.com technology, they can now "capture and centralize data on potential and existing home buyers, realtors and other partners," and enhance sales performance management through analytics and reporting.

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MultiFactor, a Web application security vendor, has announced its SecureAuth product has been tested and certified by Salesforce.com.

 

Effective immediately, the authentication is available on Salesforce.com's AppExchange marketplace.

SecureAuth is designed, company officials say, to enable "seamless single sign on" while "enforcing 2-factor authentication into internally-hosted applications," as well as SaaS applications like Salesforce CRM and GoogleApps.

 

"The ability to enforce a bilateral authentication throughout the SSO process across network, cloud, and Web applications is unique in the industry," claims MultiFactor's CTO Garret Grajek.

Many folks who like cloud computing's flexibility and cost savings are leery of the security concerns - especially enterprise IT departments. This product is designed to be a way for cloud vendors to guarantee the "integrity and reliability of their applications and data centers," MultiFactor officials explain, adding that the enterprise customer "must control identities of their users for access to those applications and data."

 

The SecureAuth product implements a secure authentication to both legacy onsite and cloud-based applications without forcing the enterprise to migrate or synchronize their existing user credential stores, since it directly accesses an existing native directory, including Microsoft's Active Directory.

 

What this means, according to MultiFactor officials, is that an enterprise can migrate to cloud computing with a single or multiple applications at a time, while using their existing IT infrastructure and "retaining full control of their users' identities.

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From Telluride, Colorado comes news from CRM guru and jazz maven Jim Berkowitz, a guy you need to add as a Facebook friend just to get his music suggestions.

 

Saying that while CRM's a "hot topic" in business today as "both small and mid-sized companies struggle to compete," Berkowitz notes that picking the right CRM technologies for Salesforce automation, customer service, marketing, or social networking, from the literally thousands of technology solutions that are available, "can be a daunting task."

 

Berkowitz, CRM Technology Coach and Industry Analyst with CRM Mastery, says that although there are a number CRM directories available on the Web, "they are not organized in a way that's useful to potential technology buyers."

CRM Mastery's Technology Directory, he explains, helps potential CRM buyers by "segregating On Demand from On Premise and Open Source offerings, distinguishing CRM suites from products designed to focus on just one functional area and also by separating sales force automation products that offer sales pipeline tracking from contact management products that don't."

Directory content is maintained directly by Berkowitz himself, between shifts as jazz DJ on KOTO community radio. He describes the directory as "complete, in terms of the available products, and each product offering is properly categorized."

"CRM Mastery is all about being buyer-focused," Berkowitz says. "Ultimately as our directory expands and matures our goal is to have it become the premier source on the Internet for companies that are trying to put together a list of products that they should be considering for use in their organizations."

CRM Mastery, founded in 2004, is described by Berkowitz as "an independent, unbiased firm that specializes in coaching SMBs through a CRM selection and deployment process."

And join Jim in line for Turkey Bingo -- "a true Telluride tradition."

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Customer Effective, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and value-added reseller of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has completed a customized Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation for CapTrust, an investment advisory and retirement plan consulting firm.

 

CapTrust chose Customer Effective for their Microsoft Dynamics CRM expertise, company officials say, using the product's "technical and development services" to implement CRM using the xRM platform to "build more than 20 business applications on a single platform for CapTrust."

 

These business applications are intended to give CapTrust more efficient processes, help recruit financial advisors, and provide differentiated services to clients, according to Customer Effective officials, who added that the xRM platform was especially attractive "because of its technical flexibility allowing CapTrust to maintain control over business data."

As part of the project with Customer Effective, CapTrust created an online fiduciary management tool for retirement plan sponsors. The company was also able to build a portal for financial advisors.

"We sought out technology that would make our processes more efficient and consistent across all client touch points and let us make rapid changes," says Garrett Klas, Application Development Manager at CapTrust. "With xRM and the expertise offered by Customer Effective, we are able to support the expansion of our business with unique advisory tools that we can get to market quickly."

Customer Effective, with headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina, sells customer interaction products based on Microsoft Dynamics Customer Relationship Management.

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ILinc, a vendor of Web and video conferencing products and services, has announced the availability of iLinc for Salesforce CRM on the AppExchange. ILinc was a Gold sponsor of the event.

The offering "combines iLinc's Web collaboration and conferencing technology with the data management functionality of a Customer Relationship Management system," company officials say, with the idea being to let organizations host "high-impact online events" while "ensuring real-time visibility into registration and attendance information."

 

By adding Webinar data to Lead, Contact and Campaign records within Salesforce CRM, iLinc for Salesforce CRM "automates processes that make up the customer lifecycle."

 

To further streamline interactions with customers and prospects, company officials say, the application lets organizations launch virtual meetings and demos directly from Salesforce CRM.

ILinc for Salesforce CRM is being billed as a way to let users "who move their Webinars and online training sessions to the iLinc platform" not only see productivity from the integration of two business systems, but also benefit from "increased visibility into metrics from the Web meetings and online events they host."

 

Salesforce.com customers "may conduct Webinars and sales demos with iLinc," says Kendall Collins, chief marketing officer, Salesforce.com. Built using the Force.com platform, iLinc for Salesforce CRM is immediately available for test drive and deployment on the AppExchange.

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And yet more mop-up news from Dreamforce 2009: Xactly Corporation, a vendor of on-demand sales performance management, has announced Xactly Incent Express, a sales compensation product for small-to-medium (SMB) businesses that use Salesforce CRM.

 

Built natively on Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, Xactly Incent Express lets companies using Salesforce CRM create sales compensation plans, calculate commissions, and export payments to payroll, "all from a single application."

 

And here's the kicker: "As a completely self-service product, Xactly Incent Express can be deployed entirely on-line by a non-technical user in a matter of hours - no professional services required."

Real-time visibility into compensation and commission management is considered a desirable feature by most companies, Xactly officials say, adding that most companies "are still burdened with managing the sales compensation process in spreadsheets - costing them valuable time and limiting real-time visibility into sales performance."

Christopher Cabrera, CEO of Xactly Corporation, noted that Xactly Incent Express is a product billed as being for "the smallest businesses to afford an automated compensation product, eliminating human error and providing access to performance data."

The product gives users pre-built plans and examples help users get started quickly, automated reporting and real-time dashboards as well as the integration with Salesforce CRM. The product also lets users model and analyze plan changes prior to implementation.

Pricing is $29.95 per subscriber per month with a "nominal" one-time setup fee, company officials say.

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Aimee Mann's Live At St. Ann's Warehouse. Getting tired of seeing this as the music of the day? Get the album and see why we never get tired of playing it here. You know what? We're going to set iTunes on "Repeat Album:"

Helpstream

WhiteHat uses Helpstream's DataSynch to couple its customer support activities with its existing Salesforce.com CRM platform. This has evidently achieved its goal of allowing WhiteHat to reduce its agent caseload.

"WhiteHat's enterprise user community often initiates involved discussions on best practices and ideas around using WhiteHat Sentinel," says Jay Nagro, director of customer support at WhiteHat Security, adding that since it "integrates with our existing processes, it just makes good business sense."

Bob Warfield, Helpstream CEO, said his company's community platform "gives WhiteHat's business team access to customer information for increased collaboration, sharing and insight that makes for true Social CRM capabilities." , a vendor of Social CRM, today announced that WhiteHat Security, which sells Web site risk management stuff, selected its Social CRM to "enable collaboration and communication among customers," as well as provide customer service for the WhiteHat Sentinel Web site vulnerability management.

WhiteHat Sentinel is a Web site vulnerability management product. "With Helpstream's Social CRM, WhiteHat customers can connect with one another, post ideas and product enhancement requests, ask questions, share Web site security resources such as white papers and security materials, as well as connect with customer service agents for direct answers to their questions," company officials say. 

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Enjoy traveling to conferences? Bad news. Paying for your employees to travel to conferences? Good news.

Scalable video coding is a tech standard gaining traction in the videoconferencing world. "As is often the case with new technology, particularly when the technology has disruptive potential, there are many claims and counter claims from the new and the entrenched vendors," say Wainhouse Research

The study, "H.264 SVC: A Technical Assessment," is a view of what SVC is all about and compares SVC to the H.264 Baseline Profile used in traditional videoconferencing systems. 

The study's authors find that SVC can let you host video calls on lower cost, loss-prone IP networks, including the Internet, with equal or better quality than that of traditional systems. 

You can also use it to support video calls between endpoints with widely varying processor power and network connection, deliver improved interactivity due to shorter delays on both point-to-point calls and multipoint calls between H.264 SVC- compliant systems and support "an impressive reduction" in the cost of multipoint infrastructure hardware.

If you consider all that a net good, of course. Hey, we make no assumptions.

The study details the causes of videoconferencing problems over IP networks and how the nature of scalable video coding addresses these issues, the authors say: "The 35-page report also details how the cost and performance characteristics of scalable video coding will affect videoconferencing end users and will change the market dynamics for both conferencing service providers and network service providers."

The report ships with a DVD showing examples of SVC and traditional videoconferencing under different network error conditions. officials, who have released a study on SVC.

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First Coffee's fascination with all things iPhone continues unabated: Now backing up your iPhone address books just got a lot easier.

Gemalto

O3SIS, a Gemalto company, is a mobile software tools vendor. The O3SIS SyncML Client allows iPhone users to protect their address book through simple back-up and synchronization with the Deutsche Telekom address book on the O3SIS' secured server. 

"Once their data has been stored," Gemalto officials say, subscribers can access it through a Web interface and manage all their contact details. Deutsche Telekom subscribers will be first to get this new service through the operator's existing Web portal and O3SIS' tool.

If you're like some mobile users, your address book has become one of your essential features. If you're like these folks Gemato officials are obviously targeting, your address has "great emotional value" to you, as the repository of "priceless information about family, friends and professional as well as social networks."

Clearly, if you'd be devastated and not merely cheesed off by the loss or theft of your iPhone, if enough of your social life is stored on your iPhone that you'd be socially crippled, then my friend, you'd better look into some sort of backup.

"We are proud to make iPhone contact management available to Deutsche Telekom subscribers through a one-click application," says Dirk Dörre, O3SIS CEO.  , a vendor of digital security products, has announced the availability of O3SIS' address book management application on the AppStore. 

Gemalto had 2008 annual revenues of €1.68 billion, and 10,000 employees operating out of 75 offices, research and service centers in 40 countries.

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Fun fact du jour: "Bada" means "ocean" in Korean. How does that relate to today's news? Stay tuned, Grasshopper.

Samsung Electronics has announced the launch of its own open mobile platform, Samsung bada, in December. This "addition to Samsung's mobile ecosystem," according to Samsung officials, lets developers create apps for Samsung mobile phones.

Company officials said they wanted to build a "rich smartphone experience accessible to a wider range of consumers across the world," to a veritable... what's the word... ocean, that's it, ocean of people.

The name "bada" was chosen, Samsung officials explain, to convey "the limitless variety of potential applications which can be created using the new platform. It also alludes to Samsung's commitment to a variety of open platforms in the mobile industry."

Samsung bada also represents the "challenges and opportunities available to developers," they note. Gentlemen, start your engines: "Based on Samsung's experience in developing previous proprietary platforms on Samsung mobile phones, Samsung bada is also simple for developers to use, meaning it's one of the most developer-friendly environments available, particularly in the area of applications using Web services."

Samsung bada also offers an intergratable platform for mobile operators so that mobile operators can provide services to their customers. The firm established its mobile application ecosystem through the launch of Samsung Mobile Innovator in 2008 and the Samsung Application Seller Site followed by Samsung Application Store.

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Callidus

Bill Schuh, vice president for Europe at Callidus Software, said the deal "proves that on-demand is no longer a mid-market phenomenon."

Under the agreement, signed in the fourth quarter of 2009, the company will deploy Callidus On-Demand for its indirect channel.

"The cost-profile of SaaS is perfect for clients in the current economy," Schuh believes.

Callidus On-Demand provides what company officials call "an end-to-end performance management platform," letting businesses "optimize the entire sales life-cycle from sales on-boarding, to quota and plan deployment and payment." Callidus Monaco is chosen by companies in the telecommunications sector, company officials say, to manage their sales performance. , a vendor of Sales Performance Management products, has announced that a European mobile telco provider has selected the Callidus On-Demand software application to automate its sales performance and incentive compensation program and manage its indirect sales force. 

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Lexent Metro Connect

First Coffee's never heard of a "annual holiday construction embargo." We wonder if that's what is meant in Paris by those who say "it's about time for a critical public service union to go on strike."

No, evidently not, according to Lexent officials: "To improve traffic flow in the city during the busy holiday season, the New York City Department of Transportation restricts street and sidewalk construction from November 20th through January 2, 2010, from 6 a.m. to midnight."

As a result, Lexent Metro Connect's people will often work in the early morning hours to install dark fiber to and from enterprise buildings, financial exchanges and/or data center facilities, "while being mindful of the embargo."

Reminds First Coffee of radio shock jock Howard Stern's campaign promise to have road crews work at night when he was running for mayor of New York, or governor, we forget which. Whatever, we believe it was actually adopted by whichever politician won. One of the smartest campaign promises First Coffee's ever heard, we almost wanted to vote for the man.

Every year, Lexent officials bemoan, the construction embargo "makes it difficult, if not impossible, for other fiber-optic installation firms to begin and complete new installation projects on timely schedules."

However, Lexent uses its own dark fiber network and its force of over 300 service workers to continue construction throughout the embargo. Company officials say they also use their relationship with sister company Hugh O'Kane Electric, a 63-year old construction management veteran. 

We wonder if construction worker Hugh O'Kane enjoys being called somebody's "sister."

"Lexent Metro Connect owns and maintains its own dark fiber network," says Ray La Chance, President of Lexent Metro Connect, calling it "a distinct benefit to enterprise customers and telecom operators."

The construction embargo does not apply to the state of New Jersey. Lexent's network expansion into New Jersey data centers and financial exchanges is continuing on schedule: "The next phase, including further network builds into Secaucus, Newark, Weehawken and North Bergen, will be complete by the first quarter of 2010," company officials say. , which sells the dark fiber networks in the New York Metropolitan area, has announced its continuing commitment to 30-day timelines for dark fiber installations in Manhattan, "even during New York City's annual holiday construction embargo."

 

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Don Byron's Ivey-Divey. Interesting clarinet jazz, we raised an eyebrow at the cover of "Freddie Freeloader," but it works:

Communications products vendor Unified360 has announced a new customer: Rasa Floors & Carpet Cleaning, described by Unified360 officials as "one of Texas' fastest growing floor and carpet cleaning companies."

 

Always good to have fast-growing companies as customers, yes. 

Rasa Floors wanted something to help "streamline communication with their customers," according to Jim Barker, CEO of Unified360, saying they wanted "a way of integrating their telephony infrastructure and systems with the core database and CRM."

In mid-2009 Unified360 helped Rasa upgrade their voice and data network to use more intelligent MPLS and SIP transport methods. After putting that network in place, Unified360 rolled out Cisco voice and data infrastructure for Rasa, including phones, soft phones, unified messaging, reporting, and recording.

"The team at Unified360 did a fabulous job of managing this major technology rollout for our business," says Michael Rasa, CEO of Rasa Floors & Carpet Cleaning. "This project was so important that we went to the extreme of checking multiple Unified360 references, going onsite to visit their reference sources, and visiting their offices on multiple occasions."

Unified360, a Premier business partner with Cisco Systems, is based in Dallas.

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Here at First Coffee's we're suckers for news of any cool iPhone apps. If there are enough of them, why, Mrs. First Coffee just may agree that it's the perfect Christmas present this year. And look -- here's another one no modern man should be without.

Joy Entertainment, in partnership with iPhone application developer Big Nerd Ranch, has introduced an iPhone application of its kind that allows users to generate musical riffs, with their own instruments via the iPhone/iPod Touch. 

Riff Raters was created to "allow musicians and music enthusiasts alike to share their original riffs with the world," according to Big Nerd officials. Well, that and to keep people from getting work done, of course.

"Riff Raters enables musicians to spread the news about their music and expand their fan base," says Joy Glenwright, CEO of Joy Entertainment, who explains that using the app, which costs a buck ninety-nine, musicians can "share and get comments about their riffs with the entire App community."

Riffs are "short repeated melodic phrases," usually lasting no more than twenty seconds. Those of you addicted to Twitter can think of them as musical tweets. Use the app to record your riffs on your iPhone/iTouch "with any instrument," company officials say. 

Then do all the cool editing you want with reverb and trimming tools, post it to Riff Raters and watch it climb to the Top 25 charts. Fans even have the opportunity to be notified when their favorite riffers upload new riffs.

Then, in a few months, hear your very own riff stolen on the radio. Ha ha! Just kidding! First Coffee's sure that would never happen!

Gautam Godse, Software Director of Big Nerd, acknowledged that he's in a crowded field, noting that the iPhone is fast approaching 100,000 applications, "with music applications numbering in the thousands."

Oh, and friends, please: Do not, repeat, do NOT upload "Smoke On The Water." The world's coolest riff, yes, but it's been done. Feel free to avoid "Jumping Jack Flash" too.

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AltiGen Communications, which sells Microsoft-based VoIP business phone systems and call center tools, has announced that online retailer BuySeasons adopted AltiGen call center technology to process up to 14,000 in-bound calls a day during the Halloween season.

We know what you're thinking: "Halloween season? Since when does somebody need to beef up the call center during Halloween season?" Ever since that somebody's an online-only retailer of costumes, party supplies and Halloween decorations. Now go eat some more leftover candy corn.

Speaking of candy corn, anybody else remember those old Bartles & Jaymes ads for wine coolers? The ones with two old country guys on the porch? Were those cool or what?

To market for the Halloween season, the company mails millions of catalogs and maintains the BuyCostumes.com and "CelebrateExcess" family of Web sites. It also added 250 seasonal agents to the 90 year round agents to address its share of the $5 billion a year Halloween industry.

etcha didn't know Halloween was a $5 billion-plus industry. That there's a lot of candy corn.

"We've experienced tremendous growth in the last several years," said BuySeasons Vice President of Operations Terry Rowinski. "It's unusual for most call centers to go from 90 to 300 agents in a few days, so we require technology that is flexible and easy to manage."

Using AltiGen's software, Rowinski said, the company can "adapt to changes that may take place in a single day."

Earlier this summer, BuySeasons deployed an AltiGen softswitch and call center suite. The company implemented digital lines from the phone carrier to allow up to 368 concurrent calls to the AltiGen system.

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DocuSign, vendor of on-demand electronic signature tools, has announced its participation and sponsorship of the Salesforce.com Dreamforce Global Gathering 2009 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The party starts November 17th. 

DocuSign is presenting three conference sessions, including "DocuSign for Salesforce." 

Dreamforce Global Gathering 2009 is expected to host more than 12,000 attendees for four days of best practices, training, networking and "an entire community of Salesforce.com experts."

DocuSign is also launching products, including electronically signed quotes, automated proposal creation with routing and electronic signature functionality, smart electronic signatures for Salesforce CRM and integration with contract management products on the Force.com platform.

In collaboration with Apttus, the DocuSign Large Enterprise Track Session, "Electronic Contract Execution with Apttus and DocuSign for Salesforce," will demonstrate "the benefits of deploying an end-to-end electronic contract management and eSignature," company officials say.

"At DocuSign, we see Dreamforce as an opportunity to deepen our partnership with Salesforce.com, engage existing and new partners and come up close and personal with our DocuSign for Salesforce customers," says Ken Cavallon, market director at DocuSign.

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Colin Taylor, The Chairman and CEO of The Taylor Reach Group, has announced that the Toronto-based contact and customer service consultancy has added Deborah MacAskill to its team of consultants:

"Deb adds more depth to the team. With twenty years of call center experience she provides hands-on center management expertise our clients expect from TRG."

Taylor says MacAskill has "a successful track record building and operating" customer service and operations centers, noting that prior to joining The Taylor Reach Group, she was Vice President Operations at Sutherland Global Services, a contact center/BPO outsource agency, where she was responsible for operating four outsourced customer support contact centers. 

MacAskill also worked for other outsourcers including Teletech, ICT Group and Resolve (formerly Watts Communications). At Resolve as Director, Atlantic Operations Deb oversaw three centers. 

Her career began at Bell and included a period at Register.com.

Taylor says TRG offers an ROI guarantee: "When we make a recommendation and our clients ask us to implement we guarantee a 300 percent Return on Investment. In four years offering this, we have yet to pay against this guarantee."

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Tampa-based Ideal Dialogue has rolled out systems for improving call centers' customer satisfaction ratings.

Previously known as Quality 3, Ideal Dialogue is unveiling its new branding and releasing details of the research and development behind IDEAL systems on its site.

Company officials say it brings to the industry a "focus on the human component of customer service," and that the systems are designed to "refashion hiring, training, and performance improvement for outsourced and in-house call center operations."

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Aimee Mann's Live At St. Ann's Warehouse. Just about the perfect album to play in a home office doing business writing... for all of you out there in a similar situation...

 

Santa Claus could be bringing a lot more social networking and text messaging this Christmas.

The latest "Entertainment Trends in America" tracking study, published by the NPD Group, finds that many consumers expect to be spending the same amount on traditional entertainment categories during the Christmas season, "even as their participation in newer forms of entertainment continues to rise."

The study found the most notable increases occurring in social networking and text messaging: "More than a third (37 percent) of respondents reported visiting a social networking site over the prior six months, which is an increase of 11 percentage points since last year." Sixty-three percent reported sending and receiving text messages, an increase of seven percentage points over the prior year.

Only nine percent used Twitter during the same time period. Lumps of coal all around.

"With a host of new mobile devices and free mobile and Web entertainment applications now widely available -- and as adult consumers get more comfortable with these newer technologies -- we can expect to see further increases in these areas in the months to come," says Russ Crupnick, senior entertainment industry analyst for NPD.

The overall spending outlook for entertainment for the remainder of the year is still reasonably stable, the study's officials found, "considering that many consumers continue to have anxiety about the state of the economy and the employment picture."

In fact, in August fully 66 percent of consumers reported that they planned to spend the same amount or more on entertainment products and services in the coming 12 months than they did the prior year -- three percentage points higher than when the same question was asked last year. 

Interestingly the report found that sixty-three percent of men surveyed planned to spend more than they did last year on entertainment, versus just 37 percent of women who reported feeling similarly.

The study found the picture inconsistent across categories, with consumers more inclined to spend money on digital music and movies in the theater, and somewhat less willing to spend money on CDs and DVDs.

Of course the death of recorded music purchased in stores via CD has been predicted for a long time now. If these are, in fact, the death throes they're quite drawn out.

"Although CDs have been facing challenges for years, our research shows that video games, home video and other categories will benefit from releases that consumers really want at prices they perceive as offering a good value," Crupnick notes. "Consumer sentiment can shift quickly with the release of powerful titles like Halo or Transformers."

And once again First Coffee is embarrassed that he needs his eleven-year old son to fill him in on what Halo and Transformers are.

...

According to the latest forecast data from Pyramid Research, Ringtone isn't where you want to be in Latin America.

Pyramid, the telecom research arm of the Light Reading Communications Network, found that Ringtone's revenue falls short in Latin America as mobile Internet access will account for almost 79 percent of all non-messaging mobile data revenue by 2014.

The glass is half full: Pyramid's third quarter 2009 Latin America mobile data forecast found that 11 percent of total mobile data subscribers will be ring tones users by year-end 2009. The glass has a crack in the base: The same study found "deeper opportunities for network operators clearly lie in mobile Internet services."

The increasing importance of mobile Internet in the data revenue pie is "a clear trend in every single market, growing the fastest in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico," writes Cesar Jimenez, in Pyramid Point's "LA Mobile Operators Turn a Deaf Ear to Ringtones," adding that in his estimation, by 2014, "mobile Internet access in Latin America will account for $16.5 billion, or almost 79 percent of all non-messaging mobile data revenue, whereas ring tones will make up four percent."

Written by Pyramid analysts, Pyramid Points are complimentary online notes on market, business, and regulatory developments in the global telecoms industry.

...

ShareMethods has announced the availability of ShareSpaces for AppExchange on the Salesforce.com AppExchange.

 

"We are thrilled to launch ShareSpaces for AppExchange," says Eric Hoffert, CEO of ShareMethods. "We look forward to delivering benefits to customers with the launch of ShareSpaces for AppExchange."

ShareSpaces officials bill their products as letting companies "connect everyone in the sales and marketing value chain -- prospects, customers, salespeople, partners, and marketing teams -- into social workspaces."

ShareMethods' other AppExchange offerings include ShareNow for document sharing and collaboration, ShareOffice for document creation and electronic signing on-demand and ShareSpaces, for "private ad-hoc sharing spaces." 

ShareSpaces' three-step wizard lets users set up brand-specific ShareSpaces by "creating document categories and inviting users with defined roles for collaboration," company officials explain: "Content can be copied and distributed between ShareSpaces, allowing companies and partners to create hierarchical and interconnected networks of social work spaces."

The product also has support for document versioning, workflow, and such community features as rating, reviews, and tagging. Documents in ShareSpaces are accessible from Salesforce CRM. It's available immediately and is priced on a cost effective per user per month basis.

...

Sydney-based Contact People, a specialist contact center consultancy in recruitment and home agent managed services, says with the "predicted recruitment boom next year," now's the time to get your ducks in a row.

"Contact centers are going to experience increasing difficulties to recruit quality agents which could ultimately effect customer service levels and higher customer churn," company officials warn.

Company officials cite research from callcenters.net reporting that Australian contact centers are now spending 69 per cent of their available budgets on human resources, including salary, benefits, recruitment and training costs -- with four percent going to rent. Is it all that much better where you are?

Callcenters.net reports that flexible work arrangements are the most effective strategy currently used to retain employees in a contact center: "The benefits of home agents are undeniable," says Paul Smith, Managing Director, Contact People. "Contact centers can access a far greater pool of quality agents that offer the flexibility and scalability to ramp up or down based on demand."

Smith says he sees the advantages of the home agent workforce in a flexible workforce "which often begins with the onset of the holiday season and the need to staff up."

Smith points to Aussie online retail and auction company GraysOnline, which sells in excess of 120,000 items of all kinds each month to both consumers and businesses. On average every month its contact center handles 12,000 voice calls and 6,000 e-mails. Such a company has used their services, he says.

...

Infusionsoft, which sells automatic follow-up software for small businesses, has announced the creation of a Business Development department "aimed at cultivating strategic partnerships," company officials say.

Dave Lee, an Infusionsoft veteran, was appointed as vice president of the newly-created department and Tyler Garns as vice president of marketing. Lee, a 15-year veteran, previously served as vice president of marketing for five years and Garns as director of marketing.

Clate Mask, CEO and co-founder of Infusionsoft, said the move was an effort to "broaden our partnership program with the creation of the Business Development department."

As vice president of business development, Lee's team is tasked by Infusionsoft with "forging relationships through the company's existing Partner Program and with new partners."

Marketing and business growth expert -- and Infusionsoft partner -- Dan Bradbury calls strategic partnerships "key to business success and momentum in today's environment, and this represents a competitive move from a smart company." 

Garns will focus on "building the Infusionsoft brand via marketing, communications and social media," company officials say.

...

Ottawa-based QNX Software Systems, The Company That Can Always Google Itself, has announced that its QNX CAR application platform is powering the ng Connect Program's LTE Connected Car concept vehicle.

QNX officials say this demonstrates how Long Term Evolution 4G networks can bring video-on-demand, Internet radio, and other wireless broadband services to the automobile. 

The QNX CAR application platform provides the software foundation of ng Connect's LTE Connected Car concept vehicle. The platform provides all of the car's system software and infotainment applications, including the real-time operating system, touchscreen user interfaces, streaming media players for YouTube and Pandora, navigation system with Google local search.

It also offers Bluetooth and portable device connectivity, multimedia playback, hands-free integration, climate controls, Adobe Flash games, application store technology, and a virtual mechanic.

 

QNX is a Harman International company and vendor of operating systems and middleware for the in-car infotainment market. The vendor has licensed its software technology for more than 12 million in-vehicle systems worldwide. 

The auto application platform has attracted more than 50 technology partners and automotive customers, including Adobe, Cisco, Daimler, Delphi, Freescale, General Motors, Google, Gracenote, IBM, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, Panasonic, Pandora, and Volkswagen.

Recently, the QNX CAR application platform was noted with an Adobe MAX recognition for its use of Adobe Flash technology.

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is R.E.M.'s Lifes Rich Pageant. One of First Coffee's favorite albums, but we get this sneakingly guilty feeling we should like R.E.M. more than we actually do:

Chelmsford, Massachusetts-based Aspect, a unified communications products vendor, has won the 2009 PilotHouse IP Contact Center Award based on a customer survey report from Nemertes Research. 

Companies responding to the survey "praised Aspect's customer service as the highest in the call center industry," research officials said.

"More than 1,300 individuals participated in the survey," according to Nemertes officials, who said Aspect garnered a 4.48 overall score on a five-point scale, bettering whoever was in second place in the IP contact center market by more a half-point. 

Katherine Trost, research analyst, Nemertes Research, said the results can be seen to "validate the company's unified communications strategy and direction. More than half of the IT practitioners we work with plan to bring unified communications capabilities into their call center operations."

Customer comments in the report singled out Aspect's unified communications vision as noteworthy, Nemertes officials said, adding that the company's product integrations with Microsoft Office Communications Server and Aspect's UC services practice also impressed users. 

Jim Foy, president and chief executive officer, Aspect, said "from virtualization capabilities, to unified communications tools, to system integration services, our customers' feedback is evaluated and incorporated into our product road map and corporate strategy."

...

Ufone -- which of course you recognize as PTML, or Pakistan Telecom Mobile Limited -- has signed an agreement with Teradata Corporation to expand its Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse.

Abdul Aziz, chief executive officer, Ufone, said they want the Teradata technology to "better understand our customers and gain insight into their needs, and to be able to respond with matching services and offerings at competitive prices."

Since 2001 Ufone has used analytical products from Teradata to store information and analyze their information reserves.

Khuram Rahat, managing director, Teradata Pakistan said the agreement with Ufone should help the telecom "carry out detailed analysis and to make strategic and timely tactical decisions that better serve their customers while achieving optimal efficiencies in their operations."

PTML is a wholly owned subsidiary of Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation that started its operations in 2001 under the brand name Ufone. With PTCL's privatization, Ufone became a part of the Emirates Telecommunication Corporation Group in 2006.

Ufone has a subscriber base of over 20 million, network coverage in 10,000 locations and across all major highways of Pakistan. It currently caters for International Roaming to more than 260 live operators in more than 150 countries,and offers Pakistan's largest GPRS & BlackBerry Roaming.

...

Dublin, California-based Sybase 365 has announced the release of its mobile banking application for the iPhone available to financial institutions worldwide through the Sybase mBanking 365 platform. 

The app is intended to serve as a turnkey mobile banking product for financial institutions, helping them roll out banking capabilities to their customers "with Sybase 365 managing the entire infrastructure," vendor officials say. 

Sybase 365 also announced BBVA Compass as one of the first adopters of the app.

"It was most efficient for us to turn to Sybase 365 to manage the entire project and deploy all of the technologies," said Chris Causey, Vice President, Internet Banking Department BBVA Compass.

With the app BBVA Compass customers can now check balances, view posted and pending transactions, transfer funds between accounts, and interact with bank representatives using their iPhone. The Sybase 365 works with 800 mobile operators around the world.

"Mobile banking allows banks and financial institutions the ability to interact with their customers on the one screen they carry with them all day - their mobile device," says Matthew Talbot, vice president, mCommerce for Sybase 365. 

BBVA Compass is a subsidiary of Compass Bancshares, a wholly owned subsidiary of BBVA, a financial services group with more than $750 billion in total assets, 48 million clients, 8,000 branches and approximately 108,000 employees in more than 30 countries. BBVA ranks among the top seven largest financial institutions in the world based on market capitalization and 13th in Global Finance magazine's list of the "World's 50 Safest Banks" for 2009.

...


 

Yes, admittedly it's still a small portion of the total mobile market, but according to ABI Research practice director Dan Shey, business customers offer between 20 percent and 80 percent greater ARPUs than the average mobile consumer in emerging markets. 

The research firm also thinks mobile business customer revenues will grow over the next five years "from one to four percentage points more than the overall mobile services market."

But in what ABI officials say is "one of the most important statistics from analysis of the mobile business customer in emerging markets," about 72 percent of all mobile business customers are self-employed or work in businesses of fewer than 100 employees. 

This, they say, "presents great opportunities for mobile operators." As Shey explains, smaller businesses in emerging markets "still have relatively simple computing and connectivity needs, but these will evolve and become more sophisticated as the regions' economies grow. Operators in the emerging markets have the opportunity to become the primary providers of telecommunications and data services for a vast majority of companies in these regions."

The analysis also found that data services for emerging market mobile business customers will command an even greater portion of revenues than those in developed region markets, "growing to as high as 59 percent of total mobile services revenues by 2014."

Mobile broadband services connecting computing devices such as laptops, the study found,  will in most emerging market regions provide more revenue than messaging services by 2014.

...

New Global Telecom, a vendor of wholesale hosted IP Telephony Communication products, has certified the Cisco SPA500 series of IP phones "for use in conjunction with NGT's managed VoIP services," company officials say. 

NGT and Cisco plan to jointly market Small Business VoIP services and equipment to partners and end user businesses.

John Guillaume, senior vice president of sales and marketing for NGT, said Cisco's phones and "approach to the SMB space" were attractions for NGT, saying his company would "promote a series of Webinars, field events, and co-marketing engagements for potential resellers and agents."

The Cisco SPA500 phones comes with full duplex speakerphone and enhanced speech technology including support for HD voice (G.722). The phones are Cisco XML enabled for integration with applications to the device.

NGT provides cable operators, VARs, agents and resellers with tools for adding hosted and trunk-based VoIP and communications to their service offerings. NGT's Private Label and Agent offerings are turnkey, company officials say, and include the "elements to deploy VoIP and unified communications." 

Interested partners may sign up for the agent program and training.

...

And from Jakarta, Indonesia comes the news that Smart telecom, a national cellular operator, and Research In Motion have launched the EVDO-enabled BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone in Indonesia.

Smart will offer the BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone with two service plan options, Smart officials say -- Smart BlackBerry Hemat monthly for IDR 140,000 and Smart BlackBerry Hemat daily for IDR 5000.

The subscription allows customers unlimited Internet and e-mail access on Smart's network. The service also allows subscribers unlimited video streaming, access to instant messaging services such as BlackBerry Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and Google Talk, and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Activating BlackBerry service from the BlackBerry Curve 8330 requires users to send an SMS to 2233 with the text "ON Hemat30" for monthly service or "ON Hemat1" for daily service. To deactivate, users can send an SMS with the text "OFF" to 2233. 

Smart officials say there is "no condition on subscriber type, prepaid and postpaid customers" are welcome.

CDMA customers "in our country, for the first time," will get the BlackBerry platform "on our network," says Tom Alamas Dinharsa, Head of Device Technology & Special Projects, PT Smart Telecom.


 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is an iTunes shuffle of The Kinks. First Coffee agrees with the considered opinion of sportswriter Peter King, who saw the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame show in Madison Square Garden recently with an all-star lineup, including Kinks frontman Ray Davies schooling Metallica on "You Really Got Me" as part of the show: "We've forgotten how great The Kinks were:"

Intermedia, a vendor of Microsoft Exchange hosting, will offer free migrations to its hosted Exchange 2010 customers when the service debuts. If "free" fits into your budget you might want to take a look.

Company officials hope the free migration offer is of particular interest to SMBs looking to upgrade from Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003. Jonathan McCormick, chief operating officer, Intermedia, said the migrations will be handled to "minimize disruption to their business and preserve the value of their existing Exchange set-up."

 

The vendor's Exchange Concierge team will perform the migrations using proprietary tools for hosted Exchange 2003 and 2007: "The tools are being readied for use with hosted Exchange 2010, in part through the hosted Exchange 2010 beta Intermedia launched in May 2009. Exchange 2010 is not yet available for sale from Microsoft," they explain.

You can get the free migration if you're a new customer or existing customer upgrading to an Intermedia Exchange 2010 hosting plan. And because Intermedia's Exchange 2010 beta is hosted, no software downloads or installations are necessary, of course. .
...

Salesforce.com has announced, much to everybody's surprise, Dreamforce 2009, modestly billed as "the cloud computing event of the year."

Benioff's Merry Band does have a truly impressive special guest, General Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret.), the 65th U.S. Secretary of State as a speaker.

 

They're evidently expecting over 12,000 attendees this year. So if you're not doing anything from November 17-20 and you happen to find yourself around the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. drop in since they're offering "free keynote and expo passes" to Dreamforce. Hit the link for details.

According to Salesforce.com officials, Dreamforce 2009 will focus the Sales Cloud, the Service Cloud and the Custom Cloud. "In addition, attendees will meet with Salesforce.com product teams, hear from more than 300 users at customer and partner companies, get hands-on training" and hear best practices and strategies for cloud computing.

There's also quite a push for nonprofits -- "more than 800 nonprofit attendees are expected at Dreamforce this year," company officials say, adding that through the Dreamforce Gives Forward program, "nonprofits will be matched with attendees for pro bono technology assistance."

...

AT&T Business Solutions, the business unit within AT&T selling services for business customers, completed the third quarter 2009 'highlighted," company officials say, by an "outreach to small and midsize businesses that included new offers and customer support programs."

The company pointed to their small business efforts, "driven by a series of announcements that emphasized the company's efforts to embed AT&T's 3G wireless technology into netbooks and laptops from device manufacturers."

AT&T also announced that in the first half of 2010 it will offer remote access support services built on Intel vPro technology.

The business unit rolled out several support programs during the quarter, including the introduction of Tech Support 360 Desktop Helpdesk Minutes, an expansion of the popular Tech Support 360 service that is now available to midsize businesses with an average 15 to 50 employees.

 

The service is described by company officials as offering "remote online computer support, installation assistance and PC performance tune-up 24 hours a day, seven days a week via any high speed Internet connection."

The quarter also saw an expansion of AT&T Small Business InSite, an online portal for small business owners, with a series of free "how to" articles, podcasts, Webinars, and videos.

Other business unit highlights during the quarter included a $45 million Networx contract with the U.S. Department of State, an agreement with Barnes & Noble to provide complimentary in-store AT&T Wi-Fi service to any customer that visits a Barnes & Noble bookstore nationwide, the expansion of AT&T's Wi-Fi presence in Europe and China, bringing its global Wi-Fi footprint to 125,000 hotspots, and the expansion of its managed security services to India.

...

HarperCollins and Skype have created "Cecelia Ahern's Virtual World Tour," an event to promote the publication of Ahern's latest novels, The Book of Tomorrow and The Gift around the world.

 

Ahern is evidently one of the UK's best selling authors. You may have heard of PS: I Love You. Maybe you saw the movie voluntarily. Maybe you were more or less dragged to the movie.

Book tours are a staple promotion tactic for many authors, but Ahern can't tour due the arrival of her first baby. So hey -- enter Skype.

 

HarperCollins and Skype are bringing the author to fans through real-time Skype video: "Ahern will join events live from her home in Dublin, and will appear on screens at selected retailers in central city locations. Events will range from celebrity-hosted evenings to invite-only retailer events."

 

The publishers says some fans will be able to speak to the author and buy signed copies of her new books. The tour kicks off with an event at the new Liverpool Waterstones store on Friday 13th November -- Cecelia's not superstitious, evidently -- with further events scheduled in Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Sydney and Singapore.

Cecelia Ahern has sold 12 million books in over 48 countries in only five years. At 28, she is one of the biggest success stories in commercial fiction. She is also the creator of the TV drama series, Samantha Who?

Jonathan Watson, Skype's marketing manager, said he hopes "this is first of many virtual book tours we will facilitate with Harper Collins."
...

CyanGate, a McLean, Virginia-based media technology company, has announced their newest application, S-Drive.

Company officials say it will be usable by CRM vendor Salesforce.com's professional and enterprise edition customers to "store and share their files without any storage limits."

S-Drive uses Amazon's storage cloud for file management while providing an interface within Salesforce.com platform. Bulent Dogan, Senior Solution architect at CyanGate, says companies using Salesforce.com CRM platform will be able to store and share their sales and marketing collateral, product documentation, customer documents and even any type of media files via S-Drive:

 

"Companies can allow their customers to upload and download case files, product updates and documentation directly from Salesforce.com's customer portal without file size and storage limitations," he said.

Salesforce.com have released a new Adobe Flex Builder recently to go with their Internet application initiative. S-Drive is being marketed by company officials as "a showcase for these type of applications that will enhance the CRM experience for companies," and allow applications to be built on the Salesforce.com platform.

Since the launch of S-Drive's newest edition on AppExchange, customer feedback supports that this application is easy to use and is an improvement to Salesforce.com's document management. To get started companies need to sign up for a single company account from AppExchange.

...

Following its launch of the new Cloud Gateway v1.0, Gladinet has released Cloud Desktop v1.3.

 

The update "adds AT&T Synaptic Storage to the list of cloud services the cloud storage client supports, as well as Amazon S3, Google Docs and EMC Atmos.

 

Jerry Huang, co-owner of Gladinet, said the newest version of Cloud Desktop will "essentially make AT&T Synaptic Storage a virtual drive or folder on the user's computer and allow both drag-and-drop and set-it-and-forget-it file backup to AT&T Synaptic Storage."

 

Company officials see the appeal of Cloud Desktop v1.3 to SMBs in its ability to integrate multiple third-party Web services into users' individual desktop operating systems on an open platform.

This means, they say, that cloud services like Amazon S3, Google Docs, Google Picasa, EMC Atmos, EMC Atmos onLine, Box.net and now AT&T Synaptic Storage "no longer require users to manage numerous accounts and interfaces; instead, each can be mapped as a network drive directly accessible from Windows Explorer."

 

In addition to support for AT&T Synaptic Storage, other tweaks to Cloud Desktop v1.3 include the new Gladinet Online service, which encrypts and stores user profiles online for access from multiple computers running Gladinet Cloud Desktop.

The news as of Halloween, and no we're not listening to "Monster Mash." Okay, granted it's the greatest Halloween song ever recorded. I mean, there's nothing else remotely in its class. Nothing. But it's just that... after the 10,872nd time you've heard it a bit of the charm begins to wear off:

Qwest Communications has reported financial results for the third quarter 2009, announcing net income of $136 million and earnings per share of eight cents, which was equal to prior-year results.

 

The third quarter saw net operating revenue of $3.1 billion, including 36 percent growth in IP services. Overall reported revenues declined ten percent compared to the prior-year period, and excluding the effects of the company's transition to a new wireless business model, revenue declined 7 percent year over year.

 

Total operating revenues declined 1 percent sequentially.

In the quarter, adjusted EBITDA increased 1 percent from the year-ago period as substantial cost improvements offset lower revenue: "Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter of $1.1 billion includes nearly $60 million of incremental non-cash pension and OPEB expenses compared to the third quarter 2008," company officials say.

 

For the quarter, adjusted free cash flow was $428 million and year to date, adjusted free cash flow totaled $1.4 billion, compared to $846 million through the third quarter 2008.

Qwest officials said fiber to the node was deployed to more than 500,000 additional homes during the quarter, and that during the quarter 71,000 customers added broadband services that use the fiber network. Company officials also announced the company will begin developing backbone facilities with Alcatel-Lucent.

 

Operating expenses in the quarter were $2.6 billion, a decrease of $356 million, or 12 percent, year over year.

...

Solutions Group has announced the retention of World Market Media to lead the company's social media marketing efforts.

Ronald P. Russo, Jr., Founder & Social Equity Officer -- there's a job title one doesn't see every day -- pronounced World Market Media "delighted" that Solutions Group management team "has engaged World Market Media to design and implement their social media distribution plan and platform."

Solutions Group sells managed engineering services, integrating regional design centers in North America with its lower cost off-shore engineering locations in Romania and Mexico to provide "blended pricing" products and "reduced product design cycle times."

 

The firm uses its core engineering competencies in other areas, including "royalty partnerships, intellectual property creation and selective acquisitions. SGI's customers currently include major Fortune 500 companies, small and mid-range OEMs and early stage product companies," company officials say.

...

Every once in a while one hears news that demands, yes, demands to be covered, however tangentially related to CRM or communications. Such a news item has crossed First Coffee's desk, and will be covered:

 

Famous Dave's Utah Barbeque recently selected Telesphere, a Phoenix-based managed telecommunications and Internet services provider, to provide fully hosted voice and data services to their Salt Lake City call center.

 

That's right, Utah barbecue. Two words that go together like "Relaxing" and "New York City," "Polite" and "Paris" and, oh, "Utah" and "Jazz,"right? First Coffee calls Virginia home when he's in the States, and has not had much call to sample barbecue outside of the Smoky Pig out Route 1 in Ashland, as it's difficult to imagine any could be all that much better.

 

But evidently Dave has some idea what he's doing: Famous Dave's of America has 178 locations in 38 states -- "including Times Square in New York City," company officials say, as if that's anything to be proud of when it comes to barbecue, seeing as how New Yorkers know about as much about barbecue as they do about harvesting wheat.

 

Now if they had said they have managed to stay in business in any North Carolina city outside of Charlotte or the Research Triangle, okay, First Coffee's impressed.

 

The Telesphere Complete product with Call Center application selected by Famous Dave's provides an all-in-one smart fully managed and hosted private data connection, hosted VoIP with Quality of Service, business-class IP phones and installation, "the latest in user and system features" as well as 24x7 support and a call center application with call monitoring and controlling features, cole slaw, hash browns and biscuits 'n' gravy with sweet iced tea.

"We were most impressed with the call center application. It will allow our remote restaurants to forward all catering calls to one location," says Scott Morton, Area Director for Famous Dave's, noting that this year, Famous Dave's Utah Barbeque has increased their catering volume "well beyond expectations."

...

Avaya, a vendor of enterprise communications applications, systems and services, has announced that it will launch the Avaya Virtual Partner Conference on November 10, 2009.

 

Company officials say the event will offer a combination of "on-demand training, live question and answer sessions and key reference materials."

 

The conference is designed to provide Avaya's global channel partners with in-depth details on Avaya's business strategies, product and service road maps, and information on critical tools to improve their company's effectiveness and overall success.

Patti Moran, senior director, Worldwide Channel Marketing, Avaya, said the conference is intended to let associates at our partner companies "hear and understand the new Avaya Connect program, our road map. The format allows partners to attend the live session or opt in at a time that is more convenient for them."

The conference will launch via Web cast at 9:00 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, November 10. It will feature several video presentations wherein Avaya executives address channel initiatives and explain the proper care and feeding of the Avaya Aura unified communications architecture and new service options.

 

There will also be in-depth discussions on the new partner program, Avaya Connect, and the streamlined competency model, company officials promise.

The Avaya Virtual Partner Conference website will also feature a Resource Center with presentations and relevant documentation and Virtual Briefcases that will allow partners to save pertinent resources for later use.

...

More good news: Overall customer satisfaction with residential high-speed Internet service providers has increased from 2008, "primarily due to improvements in performance and reliability," according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Internet Service Provider Residential Customer Satisfaction Study released today.

The study measures customer satisfaction with high-speed Internet service based on performance and reliability, cost of service, customer service, billing and offerings and promotions. It found that overall satisfaction with residential high-speed Internet service is 639 on a 1,000-point scale--"an increase of 22 index points compared with 2008," officials said.

The study also finds that customer satisfaction with performance and reliability averages 687 in 2009--a 43-point increase from 644 in 2008.

 

Why the improvements? Power officials point to the decrease in the percentage of customers who report experiencing service outages, as well as improved customer perceptions of connection speed.

"In many instances a household's Internet connection acts as the backbone of its voice, video and information services," notes Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications at J.D. Power and Associates. "As households become more dependent on services provided via the Internet, eliminating outages and providing consistent connection speeds will become necessities in Internet service providers' business models."

Among customers who bundle services from their Internet service provider, the most popular option is a combination of video and Internet services, chosen by about one-third of customers who bundle their services. The percentage of customers who bundle voice, video and data services has increased from 16 percent in 2008 to 19 percent in 2009.

 

The proportion of customers who indicate they "probably will" or "definitely will" bundle their Internet service with other voice or video services in the next year also increased to 52 percent in 2009 from 43 percent in 2008.

As far as trends go, the study found that the proportion of high-speed Internet service customers who indicate they are loyal to their provider has increased by two percentage points from 2008, to 32 percent in 2009. Additionally, 66 percent of customers state they "definitely will" or "probably will" recommend their provider to others in 2009--an increase of four percentage points, compared with 2008.

And the strikingly good news: Among customers who contacted their service provider to resolve a problem or question, average hold times have decreased by nearly 30 seconds in 2009, compared with 2008.
...

Another one of those silly bets politicians and businesses make whenever the local boys are in a Super Bowl or World Series:

 

After winning last year's World Series bet with a Tampa-based company, Philadelphia-based Alteva, an enterprise hosted VoIP and unified communications provider, has bet Philadelphia pretzels against New York bagels with Stage 2 Networks, a New York-based vendor of hosted PBX and converged network tools.

This year there's a humiliation factor -- the 2009 loser will also don opposing team's fan wear and have a photo session with a banner acknowledging the winner in front of either New York City's Times Square or the Rocky statue in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

"After winning bushels of Florida oranges last year, we bought a juicer and got accustomed to drinking fresh squeezed orange juice at breakfast meetings... the only thing missing is a good bagel," says William Bumbernick, CEO of Alteva in an incredibly sly reference to Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez's admission that he was using banned steroids, or "juicing." "We enjoy doing things like this as its fun for the company, overall morale and we get to show our support of our home team."

Joseph P. Gillette, CEO of Stage 2 Networks, notes that the only previous Yankees-Phillies World Series was played back in 1950, "so we're looking forward to going head-to-head almost 60 years later. We're also looking forward to eating lots of Philly pretzels."

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the sounds of of the Yankees getting started against the Phillies, particularly the Yankee Stadium fans riding Pedro hard here in the bottom of the first. Gotta love New York fans. Promise that won't affect the column, though:

Okay, you wanted some good news, we have some good news for you: Global management consulting firm Booz & Company's fifth annual analysis of global innovation spending finds that the world's 1,000 largest publicly traded corporate research and development spenders increased spending on R&D in 2008.

 

Yes, this is in the face of a global economic downturn. If you're really looking to read the tea leaves you can see this as an affirming the importance of innovation to corporate strategy. Plus Matsui just got a hit, the first against Pedro so far, so that's a good sign.

 

R&D outlays for these companies rose by 5.7 percent to $532 billion, a sizable sum almost equaling Alex Rodriguez's contract with the Yankees, even as sales were up only 6.5 percent. While the increase in 2008 R&D spend was less dramatic than 2007's gain of 10 percent, Booz analysts found, "it was just slightly less than the 7.1 percent global five-year compound annual growth rate for R&D."

It's not just deep spending, it's wide as well: "Overall, more than two thirds of companies maintained or increased their R&D spending in 2008, despite more than a third (34 percent) reporting that net income plummeted last year," according to the study.

 

More than a quarter of companies decreased their R&D allocation in 2008, but we won't talk about them.

In a particularly striking metaphor Barry Jaruzelski, Partner at Booz & Company, who's obviously been reading a bit of Sun Tzu on the side, said "Reducing efforts on innovation would be similar to unilateral disarmament in wartime. Now is an opportune time to build advantage over competitors, especially weaker ones that may have to skimp on R&D for financial reasons."

In another bit of news that bodes well, the study also found that according to senior managers and R&D directors seven in 10 companies are now adjusting their strategies to better capture changing customer requirements.

And this'll shock you: No industry felt the pain more than auto, with nine out of the top 10 R&D spenders in the category cutting their innovation outlays in 2008.

...

A new Web-based iPhone app to locate property for sale or rent around certain physical locations was launched in the United Kingdom today.

Propertynearme.comUnited Kingdom first then in Germany, Italy and Spain over the next couple days. Plans are in place to launch an Australian version in the very near future. And you don't even need to download an app, since its Web-based. It's developed by mobile developers Internetics.

Internetics Director Clive France, showing that necessity is, in fact, the mother of invention, calls the app "a dream come true for property hunters. I was driving through an area a few months ago, liked it and thought wouldn't it be useful if I could simply click a button on my iPhone and see what property was for sale around me."

And hey -- it's free of charge to use. Stand next to Buckingham Palace and see if Her Majesty's looking to find a new crib.
...

Chinook Hosting, a white label hosting company, has gotten together with VoIP app vendor BroadSoft to demonstrate a new enterprise-class customer relationship management app for SMBs.

The product itself is built by implement.com and uses Microsoft's business productivity apps integrated with BroadSoft BroadWorks VoIP application platform. Chinook officials say the idea is to show how BroadSoft Xtended, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 "work collaboratively to retrieve customer contact information based on the caller ID or other call parameters."

UC integrates the components of VoIP, mobile voice, IM, presence and video. Steve Schwartz, president and CEO of Chinook Hosting, maintains that approach helps the product "interact seamlessly with hosted business applications to enable collaboration across the whole organization. This type of integration clearly validates the business value of UC."

Leslie Ferry, vice president of marketing at BroadSoft, pitches the partnership with Chinook Hosting as demonstrating how hosted UC "can be integrated with business applications," to let service providers deliver this offering to the SMB market "without a massive investment." is designed to show what properties are available around your current geographical position. Just stand in a neighborhood and dial up the options. This is one of the first Web-based property apps to use the "geo location" awareness feature of the iPhone.

The site launches in the

...

OneBill Telecom, a British business telecoms service provider, has announced the expansion of its online services for customers.

 

As part of the expansion customers get better "My Account" features, intended to allow for "easier and more efficient management of their accounts online."

The way it works now, logging in to the "My Account" section of the OneBill Telecom site lets OneBill customers access a new account overview page, giving them "a snapshot of important information, including a rundown of past invoices, a summary of their most recent bill and their account history."

 

From there, customers can make payments online, download and print past invoices and customize their account features, company officials say, "opting, for example, to single out calls made to certain destinations and monitor calls according to price."

 

James Wilson, Marketing Manager of OneBill Telecom, said they think customers prefer to manage their communication costs online, "rather than rely on paper-based invoices. Indeed, the recent postal disruptions have only accelerated the interest in -- and usage of -- our online customer service facilities."

 

Through the My Account service, customers "can instantly know what their communication costs for the month have been," Wilson added.

OneBill was founded in 1999 and now has over 25,000 customers, the majority of them small businesses.

...

ClickFox, which sells customer experience analytics products, has announced what company officials call "the expansion of their deployment" with a telecommunications organization to include "all customer interactions across all of their interaction channels."

The coyly-unnamed wireless provider will use both existing and new interaction analysis to "further improve operational efficiency, customer retention, revenue generation and customer satisfaction."

Marco Pacelli, chief executive officer of ClickFox, notes correctly that the telecommunications industry has "steep competition, high customer churn and highly publicized customer satisfaction issues." Amen, that last one goes double.

 

Fascinating question, isn't it? Which came first -- the lousy customer service, high churn or stiff competition? If customer service were better would churn decrease? Is such a thing possible? What would it look like -- increasing the quality of customer service to the point where it actually reduces churn? Interesting question, somebody get Paul Greenberg on it right away... well, when the Yankees game's over.

 

These issues need to be constantly monitored and analyzed, company officials say, adding that limited analysis doesn't always cut it when it comes to getting insight.

ClickFox officials are trying to position CEA as a counterpoint to what they call "traditional business intelligence and data warehousing approaches," touting their ability to deliver "enterprise-wide investigative insight into customer experience and behavior." If you're looking for a one-sentence differentiation, well, First Coffee supposes that's as good as any.

...

VeriSign, which sells Internet infrastructure services, says German multichannel bank Postbank, is "bringing trust and reassurance" to its iPhone-equipped mobile banking clients through VeriSign's Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer Certificates.

Postbank has used VeriSign EV SSL since October of 2007 on its Web site. Evidently it's a happy customer, as it's now extended the service to its iBanking offering. Evidently it works for iPhone users who access its iBanking service via Safari mobile browsers, according to company officials.

The reason for putting the VeriSign EV SSL brand name on an iBanking site, according to Postbank officials, is that it offers a "recognizable visual cue" that tells customers "they have reached a site whose authenticity has been verified by VeriSign."

 

When Postbank customers reach the authentic iBanking site, their Safari browser's address bar turns green. Evidently this is the signal that aforesaid customers can "conduct their transactions with confidence and that all data transmitted to the site will be encrypted."

Why a green address bar? VeriSign officials say it's because identity thieves use phishing schemes to lure banking customers to look-alike Web pages, designed to steal account numbers, passwords and other sensitive information: "Even the most convincing fraudulent pages, however, cannot replicate the color of the browser's address bar."

 

"Yet," First Coffee can't help but think.

"Postbank has offered mobile banking services to its iPhone-equipped clients since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007," according to Michael Heinen, business unit manager of Direct Banking at Postbank.

...

Consumer debt is at an all-time high. As a result, according to officials of CRM and other business technology vendor SAS, financial institutions are being pressured to reclaim unpaid debt to rebuild cash reserves in a tightening market.

 

Now collecting this debt requires resources to execute the collection process. And it's not as easy as sending Vito and Guido around to inquire about the health of someone's knees and use the opportunity to show off their nice new Louisville Slugger. Things are much nicer these days. And probably as effective.

 

"Financial services institutions must re-gear their analytic techniques to adapt to a new playing field," says Brian Riley, Research Director of Bank Cards at TowerGroup. "Rising unemployment, coupled with a protracted recession and increased credit costs make existing tools obsolete. Successful lenders that apply advanced analytics to optimize their strategies experience particularly strong results." 

Debt collection, according to SAS officials, is "delicate. Customers are sensitive to how, when and why they are contacted." In their view, most debt collection approaches fail to identify who best to contact or which channels to use.

 

First Coffee knows what you're thinking: "Call centers." Yes, that is often the most effective communication method - are also the most expensive. SAS says using predictive analytics helps companies make effective use of their call centers and alternative methods of communication (SMS, IVR, e-mail) that may also achieve successful results at low costs. 

SAS officials say that using their approach, collection managers can plan and prioritize outbound communications, "balancing the organization's capacity with the likelihood that customers will respond."