By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is The Beach Boys’ 1966 album Pet Sounds,
the finest American pure pop music of the rock era:
Late Friday – First CoffeeSM missed it, maybe you
did too – Renee
Ferguson wrote that SAP is expected to announce early this week
that they’ve hired away several
executives from Oracle, PeopleSoft and Siebel.
She quotes Joshua
Greenbaum, principal of Enterprise Applications Consulting in Berkeley as
saying they’re “senior-level people.” Matt
Hines writes that Bill Wohl, SAP’s communications chief, said late Thursday
that SAP’s new hires are “on the same level” as George Paolini, the company’s senior vice president for platform
ecosystem development who was one of the guys in on the creation of Sun’s Java.
The new hires, which Ferguson says “in some cases have been
on board at SAP since the company’s annual Sapphire user conference in May,”
are said to “have experience in technology and application development” SAP
needs to “morph from an applications provider to an infrastructure provider.”
…
Announcing Salesboom.com’s new CRM and SFA add-ons, Aziz Samarai ,VP of Sales lashed out at salesforce.com,
saying they don’t listen to their customers.
The Nova Scotia-based provider of on-demand CRM and SFA is
announcing the release of its CRM Outlook Integration Software add-ons, some of
which, Samarai says, were inspired by comments from “disgruntled”
salesforce.com customers.
“Our competitors tout Outlook based CRM integration
functionality, but did they listen to their customers when they designed it,”
Samarai asks rhetorically. “Evidently not, because the functionality behind
Salesboom’s Microsoft Outlook CRM software was inspired by requests from former
Salesforce.com customers who weren’t pleased with Salesforce’s Outlook CRM
offering.”
That’s right, jump in the ring, plenty of mud to go around,
grab a fistful and throw.
…
ShoreGroup, Inc. of New York City is announcing Release 3.0 of its CaseSentry
Systems Management product, a product “that ensures the availability and
integrity of the vital systems and processes that business depends on,”
according to officials.
ShoreGroup and TiVerity Consulting of Atlanta, two old
Cisco Intelligent Contact Management and Customer Voice Portal installation
hands, have also announced they will join forces to offer a complete suite of contact center products for enterprise,
service provider and government sectors.
TiVerity Consulting is a consulting, engineering and implementation
provider of large distributed contact centers focused on the Federal
marketplace. Pete Schamberger, CEO and President of TiVerity Consulting said
the partnership would “give us entrée into the commercial contact centers areas.”
…
Telefonica Moviles Espana, the wireless
operator of Telefonica Moviles Group in Spain with over 19 million customers chose Nortel as the main supplier for
expansion of the core multiservice network that will support its third
generation service offering under a multi-year contract.
The network will enable TME to support increased voice and
data traffic on its 3G Universal Mobile Telecommunications System network,
while reducing operational expenses through consolidation. Voice calls,
Internet browsing and data applications on TME customers’ 3G handsets will be
consolidated across an Asynchronous Transfer Mode-based network using Nortel’s
Multiservice Switch portfolio.
Nortel will provide professional services for TME, including
installation, commissioning, technical support, repair and return, and full,
first line maintenance services.
...
IT service provider Network Task Force, the B2B spinoff of Geek Squad Inc. has merged with OutsourcedIT,
another IT service provider focusing on small and medium-sized business in Minneapolis-St.
Paul.
OutsourcedIT will move its head office and facilities into Techies Network Task
Forces' Network Operations Center in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.
…
Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, LLC, an
interactive communications consulting firm, based in Washington, DC is claiming this morning that they “recapture”
10% of profitable working time by using Autotask Professional Services
Automation Software to manage its business processes.
Marketed to a range of industries, Autotask has found the most traction with IT
service providers.
10% time savings is “a lot,” Shabbir Safdar, Chief
Technology Officer of Mindshare Interactive Campaigns says, noting that “on
some projects it’s the difference between making and losing money.”
Previously, Mindshare officials say, they used a patchwork
of CRM tool Salesforce.com for sales, BigWebDesk for the help desk – “to manage
small and unexpected projects” – and Microsoft Project for resource allocation.
You know what happened next: The CRM tool wasn’t integrated
with scheduling, the help desk and project management stuff didn’t talk to each
other, none of the software tools captured billing time adequately, the ankle
bone wasn’t connected to the leg bone…
…
By the way, Human Science Systems, Inc. announced
Friday they’re looking for a contact
center technology reseller to distribute the company’s flagship product,
Central Authority, in Europe.
Human Science Systems CEO Lou Mandic said that while the
company’s original marketing and distribution strategy was largely centered on
North American distribution, “our research has discovered an overwhelming
amount of information that supports the European launch of our product.”
In April of 2005, Gartner reported that it anticipates
European technology spending to reach $225 billion by 2008, growing at a
compound annual growth rate of 3.9%. Business
Insights, gazing into a crystal ball recently reported that the global
market for contact center component technology will have grown to $5.1 billion
by 2008.
…
Good article over the weekend on Israel
21C reminding the world that the
basic technologies used in VoIP were developed in Israel ten years ago.
First, the article says, “was the commercialization of the IPhone,” developed and marketed by the
Israeli company VocalTec ten years ago, which allowed users to speak to each
other over the Internet. Around the same time a similar product was produced by
an IBM-Israel team in Haifa, giving a sort of official big-business imprimatur
on the fledgling technology.
February 15th marked the 10 year anniversary of VocalTec Communications’
introduction of the IPhone and “the commercial starting point of the IP
communications revolution,” according to a VoIP entrepreneur quoted in the
article.
The instant messaging program ICQ was developed in Israel,
and while U.S. phone companies have been using VoIP for internal communications
for the past few years, the Israel Defense Force has used it since the 1980s.
One reason for Israel’s success with cutting edge
communications is that broadband penetration in Israel is “second only to
Korea,” according to one VoIP executive. “The language of technology here is so
evolved that things happen faster,” said another, senior director of product
marketing for Time Warner cable Michael Jablon.
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