By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Bob Dylan’s unequaled 1965-1966 run of brilliance, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway
61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde
and Live 1966 in honor of ol’
Minnesota Mudthroat’s 64th birthday today:
Looks like Vodafone Group Plc’s having a good year:
The world’s largest mobile company by revenue, according to Reuters, is buying back $8.23 billion worth of their
stock and doubling their dividend
as “as higher full-year earnings and revenues topped average market forecasts.”
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization
rose by 7 percent to 13.041 billion pounds on 2 percent higher revenues of
34.13 billion pounds. Vodafone has 154.8 million subscribers and a dividend of
about “4.07 pence,” about seven cents, “as part of its strategy to increase a
payout ratio that, at 22 percent of earnings, had been low by industry
standards.”
…
Mitel has chosen Texas Instruments as the primary supplier for both its IP
phone sets and VoIP gateway systems. The Ottawa-based broadband communications
products provider is specifically interested in TI’s TNETV1050 IP phone
technology, TNETV1xxx and TNETV2xxx series of VoIP gateway technology.
New products based on TI’s VoIP technology will be available
from Mitel later this year.
Mitel plans to use TI’s technology in both its business
telephone sets and its core Integrated Communications Platform portfolio. TI’s
TNETV1050 gives Mitel a “highly integrated IP phone system-on-a-chip” with a
comprehensive feature set and robust integrated LCD controllers, according to
company officials. Mitel plans to use the flexible TNETV series to build feature-rich
platforms for customer premises gateway applications.
Ron Wellard, Vice President, Product Development, Mitel said
TI “share(s) our vision for the future of our IP-based products.” Bill
Simmelink, general manager of TI’s Packet Voice and Video business says “Mitel
captures the imagination of how VoIP potential can be realized in products,
services and trends.”
First CoffeeSM thinks it’s wonderful when you
find a soul mate like that.
…
Cincom Systems is announcing an alliance agreement with Intervoice, Inc., a
converged-voice and data tool producer headquartered in Dallas to offer a
combination of Intervoice’s phone-based customer self-service solutions and
Cincom’s customer experience management software, Synchrony.
The pair’s combined efforts will be marketed to companies “looking
to enhance the efficiency and productivity of the contact center environments
and improve the customer experience,” according to company officials.
Shawn Reynolds, Director of Cincom’s Customer Experience
Management Products explained that the combined efforts are meant to present “all
of the relevant customer information automatically to the agent at the start of
an interaction,” so “customer issues are resolved more quickly, call handling
times decrease, and the overall customer satisfaction and productivity of the
contact center improve.”
Cincom’s Synchrony is a contact center tool architected to
link multi-channel contact center functionality with a smart agent desktop that
lets call center agents punch up info for different customers when they call in.
…
Salesforce.com’s act is getting obnoxious. Here’s how they chose to release
their latest financial numbers – bear in mind that this is not First CoffeeSM’s
purple prose:
“Salesforce.com continues to embarrass its traditionally
focused CRM counterparts with surging quarterly financials that have
outstripped its own previous performance and the average of analysts
expectations.
“For the quarter ending April 2005 the hosted market maker
saw revenue soar by 84% compared to the previous year, to $64.2 million. Net
income grew a headline-grabbing 902% year on year to come in at $4.4 million,
while also managing a 22% sequential increase.
“Although the actual sums are comparatively modest the rate
of increase on both a yearly and sequential basis shows that Salesforce.com
continuities to tap into an unfulfilled need. With the growth rate also
indicating that the market is still in a fairly early stage, there is also
plenty of opportunity for continued growth while the lack of a strong direct
challenger also confirms Salesforce.com’s position.”
Aren’t we great? Don’t the rest of you guys suck? Ha ha. And
of course they have to get in their gratuitous shot at tottering Siebel: “Siebel
is already showing signs of attrition. Earlier this year it said it had 28,000
subscribers and had added 5,000 new subs, but due to attrition its total was
hovering at around 30,000.”
And sorry, guys, but net income of $4.4 million is not “headline-grabbing.”
What was Siebel’s 2004 profit, something like $110 million? That’s a
headline-grabber.
Lots of us who follow CRM are impressed with salesforce.com’s
products and business savvy, but this kind of talk belongs in-house, for Marc
Benioff to fire up the troops in the lunchroom to go out and kick Siebel’s
butt. It almost – almost – gives one sympathy for Siebel to see some yappy
little brat snapping at their ankles like this.
Besides, chest-thumping about profit’s a little more
impressive when aforesaid profit is greater than what a slumping left fielder or
backup point guard makes in a quarter. $4.4 million’s a budgeting mistake in serious
businesses, not a champagne-popping press releases.
Boasting about numbers like this is a nine-year old wearing
a Superman costume flexing his “muscles.”
…
End2End, a European B2B managed service
solution provider for mobile data services and content has announced the successful rollout of a local service
delivery infrastructure in the US as part of its North American business
expansion.
End2End has deployed a local Point-of-Presence in New
Jersey, providing the company with “more robust service delivery capability for
the North American and Latin American markets,” according to company officials.
Companies across the Americas can now access End2End’s
products and service delivery infrastructure by connecting to a local PoP
rather than integrating to the data centers or PoPs in Europe.
Commercial service delivery from the New Jersey PoP is
expected to start in June.
…
Thank God for the blogosphere. Relying on the MSM – the
blogs’ derisive shorthand for the mainstream media – we’d believe Iraqis spend
all day car-bombing, cowering in fear of car-bombers and protesting America.
Fortunately, thanks to Australian blogger Art
Chrenkoff, we have a running summary of all the positive news from Iraq which doesn’t seem to make it into
the pages of Newsweek or on CBS news. His “Good News From Iraq, Part 28” was
posted yesterday, hit http://chrenkoff.blogspot.com/
and search “Good News From Iraq.”
There’s an ocean of good news. Journalists who actually
leave their Baghdad hotels and the carefully-choreographed terrorist bombings
find that coalition troops are rebuilding the country, are loved by the Iraqi
people, and that Iraqis are making unbelievable progress in construction,
health, education, the arts, politics and everything else.
After ten minutes’ reading First CoffeeSM was
furious at the pathetic, lazy, one-sided job the MSM is doing covering the actual news in
Iraq – the pace of construction and the depth of affection ordinary Iraqis feel for
coalition troops alone are stunning. Find out here what’s really happening,
that the reality is a lot better than you’ve been led to think.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content placement and, uncompensated, recommends ‘72 VW Beetle ragtops, dark roast
coffee, monogamy, T.S. Eliot and Moose
Drool Beer.
