First Coffee

First Coffee for July 6, 2005

July 6, 2005

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is what some critics call the greatest rock album ever, Bob Dylan’s Live 1966, the old Royal Albert Hall bootleg:

Microsoft CRM 3.0: Ten Things You Need To Know:

It’s still scheduled to be released at the end of this year. 2005. That’s a Microsoft PromiseTM, friends, so count on it as you would any Microsoft PromiseTM.

The time and effort required to integrate it with other apps, or create customized versions of the software for your particular verticals will be shortened, Redmond says. Gee… thanks, guys.

(“Partners will be able to obtain the necessary software development kit for CRM 3.0 through the Microsoft Developer Network later this year,” according to ComputerWorld Singapore.)

It’ll come in two modules, one for automating the management of direct marketing campaigns, and one managing personnel and resource scheduling.

Service Provider License Agreements will let hosting partners pay as they go.

According to Barbara Darrow there’s a Quick Campaign module “for sales staff who might need to devise a fast plan of action for a call.”

(The main marketing stuff is for professional marketers, Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft CRM says, with campaign planning and approvals. “This is more for a sales guy who finds a prospect and wants to put something together quickly, plan a golf outing and pull a list together.”)

It’ll be more tightly integrated with Office and Outlook than Microsoft had let on before – it’ll look quite a lot like Outlook, actually.

First Coffee for July 5, 2005

July 5, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is – can’t believe we haven’t had this one on yet – 2004’s There Will Be A Light, by Ben Harper with the Five Bind Boys of Alabama:

It was an ambiguous headline on the press release – “Salesboom Announces Release of New Web-Based Automotive CRM Software Edition.” You’re an American, you assume that’s CRM you can do in your car, right? You have car phones, car faxes, why not car CRM? Something you put your BlackBerry in to synchronize…

Actually it’s a CRM package specifically for the automotive industry. No cup holders included. The press release calls it “a tailor-made CRM version for all aspects of the automotive industry.” Tools include Car Dealer Software, Used Car Dealership Software (plaid sport coat and toupee available as upgrades) and Automotive Factory Software among others.

It’s available for trial upon a request to Salesboom, and since it’s on demand can be deployed online. Companies are invited to try Salesboom free of charge for 30 days or 5,000 miles, whichever comes first.

So what was the pressing need for this product?

Decaf Today.

July 1, 2005

First Coffee for June 30, 2005

June 30, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is a new recording of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 by the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda which you can download for free, along with Symphonies 7, 8 and tomorrow 9, here:

In the wake of Oracle’s triumphant fourth quarter earnings report announcement yesterday, speculation is on what Larry Ellison will do for an encore.

The acquisition of PeopleSoft went smoother than many had expected, at least as far as affecting the bottom line goes, so the office pools now are on who Oracle will buy up next – or whether they’ll stand pat and take care of Fusion first.

Robert Wallberg’s Street Patrol column reminds readers that he’s been suggesting Oracle’s application servers and middleware foe BEA Systems, or business intelligence software vendor Hyperion Solutions as targets, and throws Siebel and Business Objects in the mix. “Given the relative ease in integrating PeopleSoft, don’t be surprised if Oracle goes after one of these companies sooner rather than later,” he says.

Pop over to BusinessWeek this morning for some heavy hinting that it’d be a good idea for Oracle to pick up Siebel pretty soon. Naturally Ellison has to scotch the idea in the press – “we have no plans to buy anything that doesn’t contribute to our five-year plan to grow profitability by at least 20% per year,” he announced loudly.

“Yet, in practically the next breath,” BusinessWeek writes, “he laid out his strategy for buying software companies with narrow profit margins but rich maintenance-revenue streams, adding them to Oracle’s portfolio, and stripping out costs.” That sure sounds like Siebel to First CoffeeSM.

First Coffee for June 29, 2005

June 29, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bob Dylan’s The Bootleg Series Vol. 5, songs from his 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue finally released officially in 2002:

Eerily enough, there’s an almost direct parallel to the Brand X contretemps elsewhere in the world – Latvia’s two mobile operators “appear unwilling to cooperate with newcomer Lithuania’s Bite GSM, which is eager to lease mobile infrastructure to begin operations, possibly setting the stage for a confrontation,” according to The Baltic Times a couple weeks ago.

Basically, LMT and Tele2 don’t want to lease their infrastructure to Bite GSM while Bite installs its own relay network.

Bite GSM won the tender for Latvia’s third GSM license on March 31, which evidently meant it now has to sink 150 million euros ($180 million) in building a new network, but “in the meantime the Danish-owned company would like to use competitors’ infrastructure in order to launch operations and begin receiving revenue,” the Times says.

The Latvians aren’t having any of it. “We are not considering such a possibility now,” Petras Kirdeika, acting CEO of Tele2 has said. LMT, Latvia’s leading mobile operator, said that it won’t lease its network to other operators, pleading a lack of excess capacity. Bite officials have offered to cover the costs of expanding LMT’s capacity.

First Coffee for June 28, 2005

June 28, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Bruce Cockburn’s 1987 collection Waiting For A Miracle:

First CoffeeSM likes to follow arcane topics – Ivy League football, the history of New Zealand, Al Stewart’s recording career – and burrowing deep into the minutiae of the news has run across an obscure Supreme Court ruling on Brand X which no doubt you’ve missed, as First CoffeeSM is hard-pressed to find any commentary on it…

You’d think with the blizzard of words swirling around on the Internet this morning on this highly-expected, completely unsurprising to anyone ruling they’d put Michael Jackson back on trial or something.

Okay, leaving aside Grokster with the comment that if it’s legal to sue Grokster what’s to stop anyone from suing assault gun manufacturers for murders… huh? Oh, the NRA, right. Sorry, Grokster, you need an NRA on your side, then you can be protected from the legal consequences of people using your product for the exact, specific purpose for which you manufactured and marketed it.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority in the Brand X case, ruled that the Supreme Court must defer to the expertise of the Federal Communications Commission in regulatory issues. The FCC had already issued a 2002 ruling that cable companies did not have to share their line networks with competitors, the way telecommunications providers must share their lines with their competitors.

“The Commission is in a far better position to address these questions than we are,” Thomas wrote.

First Coffee for June 27, 2005

June 27, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is The Allman Brothers’ magnum opus, 1972’s Eat A Peach:

The war between SAP and Oracle is escalating now that SAP’s combing through Oracle’s client base as part of a “telephone market research survey” trying to get JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users to switch to SAP products.

And they’re having some luck: Industry observer Sandra Rossi writes that “in its first round of calls, 30 percent of recipients agreed to hold talks with the German software company,” according to SAP Australia managing director Geraldine McBride.

“Two years ago these customers wouldn’t talk to SAP, but now they are interested; they want to get off the frog march of upgrades they are on and take control of their maintenance spending,” McBride tells Rossi. She doesn’t expect JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers to immediately migrate to SAP, but to make incremental moves.

“For examples, they can keep their AS/400 on the backend and just add SAP analytics, CRM or portal technology,” she says.

Part of SAP’s strategy was to acquire TomorrowNow at the beginning of this year. TomorrowNow provides support to JD Edwards and PeopleSoft systems, so the fact that they’re a “fully-owned subsidiary of SAP” gives them access to over a hundred Edwards and PeopleSoft – i.e. Oracle – clients.

No doubt Oracle will have a return volley soon.

First Coffee for June 24, 2005

June 24, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the 2001 compilation John Coltrane & Miles Davis, 1955 – 1961 from the Columbia Jazz series:

We have clarity on the Epiphany cash issue. It looks, like First CoffeeSM suspected, as if we have different definitions of “cash.”

Two days ago First CoffeeSM wrote about an article on Epiphany, which prompted a note from Gordon Evans, in Epiphany’s corporate communications department. Evans said that the ComputerWire article First CoffeeSM highlighted had grossly understated the cash Epiphany had on hand.

“Always known for being cash rich,” ComputerWire wrote and First CoffeeSM quoted, “in the second quarter 2004 the company had a $93.4 million cash pile, but by the fourth quarter 2004 this had dwindled to $18.1 million, and at the end of the first quarter 2005 it stood at $21.5 million.”

Evans wrote to say that actually, “we have more than $250 million in cash on hand as of our last earnings report Q105.”

Such a discrepancy is rarely a case of someone getting numbers wrong, it’s almost always a case of how you define the terms. Sure enough, a reader who knows a whole lot more about business accounting than First CoffeeSM does set the matter straight.

Looking at the Epiphany’s 1Q reported results, she writes, “you can see from the Balance Sheet at the bottom of the press release that Epiphany had ‘cash and cash equivalents’ of $21.5 million on March 31,” which is the number ComputerWire reported as their “cash” position.

“Based on a quick skim of the balance sheet, I’d hazard a guess that the $250 million figure (Epiphany CEO Karen) Richardson mentions is what you get if you add together all the current assets, which comes to $171 million, and the $84 million of long-term investments,” she says.

In other words, Evans and Richardson are wrapping up all the assets the company has that could be fairly easily liquidated into one big number that, arguably, gives the best picture of the company’s balance sheet health.

“Companies do this often,” First CoffeeSM’s reader wrote. “Personally, I can’t recall ever seeing ‘long term investments’ being referred to as ‘cash,’ but that’s just me.

First Coffee for June 23, 2005

June 23, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Johnny Cash’s 2000 gospel retrospective, cleverly titled God:

Yesterday First CoffeeSM looked at Epiphany, and afterwards received a polite note from Gordon Evans, in Epiphany’s corporate communications department. Evans said that the ComputerWire article First CoffeeSM noted was mistaken in their analysis of how much cash Epiphany has on hand.

“I do want to point out,” Evans wrote, “that Computerwire, while putting together a very balanced article, did include some incorrect statements about our financials.

“In fact we have more than $250 million in cash on hand as of our last earnings report Q105, and have had anywhere between $250 million and $272 million on hand over the last year.”

First CoffeeSM looked up Epiphany’s results for the quarter ended March 31, 2005 and found Epiphany CEO Karen Richardson quoted as saying “I am pleased that our results were within our financial guidance and we maintained our strong cash and investments balance of approximately $250 million.”

The other information was as ComputerWire had it, and if anything the second quarter looks grimmer for Epiphany – for the quarter ending June 30, 2005, they currently expect total revenue to range between $15.5 million and $18.0 million, with license revenue ranging between $4 million and $6 million. Net loss per share on a GAAP basis for the second quarter is expected to range between $(0.12) and $(0.14), of which approximately ($0.05) will result from restructuring charges of up to $4 million.

First CoffeeSM does not have an accounting background, and is more than willing to be corrected in this – as well as any other – area of ignorance, but knows “cash” is not an exact definition. First CoffeeSM wonders if “cash” and “cash and investments” are interchangeable terms – if we’re talking about cash and investments that can be quickly converted into cash, or if ComputerWire’s subtracting debt for a net cash figure, or what.

First Coffee for June 22, 2005

June 22, 2005

By David Sims
[email protected]

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the transcendent Lyle Lovett-Al Green duet on the Willie Nelson song “Funny How Time Slips Away,” from the 1994 Rhythm, Country and Blues album:

Things appear to be going swimmingly for salesforce.com at their Summer ‘05 SalesStock in San Francisco this week, where “tight integration” is the mantra. They’ve unveiled their so-called “operating system,” Multiforce 1.0, billing it as a single platform companies can use to run any and all hosted applications, add-ons plus whatever creative things your tech guys can write using Customforce 2.0.

It’s a great idea, and while First CoffeeSM’s not sure Marc Benioff will accomplish his goal of putting Microsoft out of business – although we’re rooting for him – it does force Siebel, SAP et al to take note of the new way of delivering software.

As industry observer Antone Gonsalves notes, salesforce.com “hopes customers will use Multiforce not just to access Salesforce.com applications, either pre-built or custom, but also applications from partners or third-party ASPs.”

This will prove tricky, “particularly if it involves competitors,” Gonsalves says, remarking that “Got Corporation, a maker of marketing software, is the only company to announce support for the platform so far.”

GOT CEO Eric Melka jumped up on the stage with Benioff to trade stinging guitar licks – uh, to announce Campaigner for Salesforce, GOT’s “tightly integrated” e-mail communication tool for Salesforce which lets users track large volume e-mailings from within Salesforce in a two-step wizard, while unifying them with sales and customer support activities.
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Good piece on what the heck happened to Epiphany on ComputerWire this morning. CEO Karen Richardson’s sunny and optimistic in the face of some pretty grim numbers – she calls her company’s net loss increasing from $4.2 million in the first quarter last year to $6.4 million this year, and revenues dropping from $20.2 million to $16.2 million “bumpy” and “seasonally challenging.”

At the end of 2004, ComputerWire says, Epiphany dropped the “E.piphany” dot in the company name “to distance itself from the dot-com era,” and refocused on “what it was first known for: analytics and marketing, following its nondescript foray into operational CRM, and restructuring the sales organization.”

Richardson says Epiphany is focused on sales and capitalizing on its niche position. The software world is splitting into really big players and niche vendors, “and I mean niche in a good way,” she says.

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