Privus Mobile, Pronexus and Aumtech, Sonoma Partners and Microsoft, StrongMail and SAP

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
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Privus Mobile, Pronexus and Aumtech, Sonoma Partners and Microsoft, StrongMail and SAP

The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is a Hayes Carll mix on iTunes. What a maddening artist Carll is - good enough of a red dirt country artist with a wide blues-rock streak to spark high expectations, but still not fully able to meet them. We look forward to his musical development:
 
Since its 2008 launch, Privus Mobile has been a mobile Caller ID service provider for sales representatives, real estate agents and numerous professionals. Now the firm, in conjunction with Accudata Technologies, is launching a new corporate enterprise service to makes it easier to use Caller ID screening and caller name lookup services on company smartphones.
 
Privus Mobile's new enterprise service includes special volume licensing rates for businesses as well as support for IT deployments for pushing the service "without needing to purchase the service for each phone individually," company officials say.
 
It's being billed by Privus officials as a way to let corporate enterprise customers see the full caller details of incoming calls, from unknown numbers to callers that aren't in the contacts list, as the call comes in or on a missed call: "Customers also can input any complete phone number and receive the person's or company's name registered to the number."
 
Privus Mobile President Greg Smith said since many of their customers use the service at work, "we wanted to make it simple to experience better call management. Our new volume licensing options and IT deployment capabilities lets companies customize how employees receive and experience mobile Caller ID."
 
In addition to the launch, Privus Mobile recently received AT&T Enterprise Solution Certification and now can be found in the AT&T Certified Solutions Catalog. AT&T tested, certified and approved Privus Mobile's placement alongside its other enterprise applications, and Privus Mobile works on more than 30 devices on AT&T's network.
 
Users can download the complete application with a 10-day free trial on their devices through Privus Mobile's mobile site, the BlackBerry App Store or any of the numerous mobile application dealers, including Handango, Handmark and Mobile2Day.
 
Privus Mobile is available on most Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian and BlackBerry devices as well as on the iPhone with Privus Mobile's application, iPrivus.
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Pronexus, now entering its 16th year of operation and the developer of VBVoice, a Rapid Application Development Toolkit for Interactive Voice Response applications, is partnering with Aumtech, a vendor of private label speech and automated telephony products, to provide a multi-lingual Speech Recognition Server through Aumtech's Media Resource Control Protocol Connector. 


"We have certified Aumtech's MRCP Connector with our IVR toolkit VBVoice, allowing our customers access to the Microsoft Speech Services 2007 Automatic Speech Recognition engine," says Valentin Doroga, Chief Architect at Pronexus.
 
Aumtech's MRCP Connector gives VBVoice IVR developers running on non-Microsoft platforms a way to use Speech Server and TTS products available in Microsoft's Office Communications Server, "rather than being constrained by the choices available for their operating system."
 
"This is in production at the largest enterprises, and Pronexus' support gives its customers a reason to upgrade to VBVoice Version 5.6.2," says Deep Narsay, Aumtech's Director of Software Engineering: "These products provide value in Speech Recognition, particularly to customers who have been delaying the introduction of ASR and TTS into their applications."
 
VBVoice is a toolkit for creating speech-enabled products, including voice self-service, unified communications and interactive voice response systems. Aumtech is a white label provider of its VoiceXML platforms and products, selling primarily through resellers.
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Chicago-based Sonoma Partners, a reseller and customizer of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, says it's seeing big business gains. In this economy that's something to write home about.
 
Despite many competitors reporting flat outlooks, Sonoma Partners officials say, their consulting revenues increased 44 percent in 2009: "Equally telling is the triple digit jump in deal size for the company.  Twice named among the fastest growing privately held companies on Inc. magazine's annual list, Sonoma Partners looks to improve that ranking again this year."  
 
Sonoma Partners Principal Mike Snyder attributes recent success to not only the growing popularity of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but the increasing usage and customization of the product, which is Sonoma's line of work.  
 
"A large part of our business upswing is attributable to our customization efforts," said Snyder, noting that the current economic conditions are forcing businesses to "invest in applications that not only help them get closer to their customers, but streamline the way they do business."
 
Expanding upon traditional uses of CRM is driving the company's success, Sonoma officials say, adding that they're using so-called XRM opportunities to spur development.  "XRM" refers to any relationship that needs to be managed, such as vendors, employees, prospects, dealers, as well as other types of business relationships including properties, assets, projects, grants, legislation and more.  
 
Examples of this type of work by Sonoma Partners would include a new system for tracking election-day activities and judges in a major metropolitan area and a commercial real estate firm that uses XRM to manage leases and available space.
 
Founded in 2001, Sonoma Partners works exclusively with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and has twice been awarded Global Microsoft CRM Partner of the Year. Sonoma Partners has written multiple books about Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Press as well. But we bet they still use iPods.
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StrongMail, a vendor of online marketing products for e-mail and social media, has announced that its StrongMail Message Studio is being integrated with the SAP Customer Relationship Management application and is scheduled to be generally available on March 8.
 
StrongMail said the integration is being developed in cooperation with SAP AG and is currently listed on the SAP EcoHub solution marketplace, where StrongMail is also now participating.
 
By integrating StrongMail Message Studio with SAP CRM, StrongMail officials say customers can have "enterprise-grade e-mail marketing capabilities, including campaign management, high-volume delivery and advanced targeting."
 
The combination is intended to let customers use their SAP CRM data within Message Studio to identify their most influential and profitable customers and automate relevant marketing programs. "Programs can be based on key events within the customer database, Web analytics data, purchase activity, or other relevant data attributes," company officials explain.
 
Jujhar Singh, senior vice president, CRP Product Management, SAP said the product "will provide more flexibility to our customers to use e-mail delivery tools from StrongMail to execute their campaigns using customer data from SAP CRM."
 
StrongMail is a member of SAP EcoHub, a community-enabled online marketplace designed to make it easier for customers to discover, evaluate and purchase solutions that complement their SAP applications, including StrongMail's e-mail marketing tool.
 
Bob Tekiela, CTO of StrongMail, said he expects the partnership with SAP to "open up a new channel for introducing our e-mail marketing."


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