By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Mahalia Jackson’s 1991 Gospels,
Spirituals and Hymns boxed set. The only time First CoffeeSM has
ever agreed with anything noted shakedown artist Jesse Jackson’s uttered is
when he said that a voice like hers comes along not once in a lifetime, but
once in a millennium:
As a Washington Redskins fan, First CoffeeSM
is in a particularly good mood this morning. Our thoughts and prayers of
sympathy to all you San Francisco 49ers
fans out there, that’s as poorly as First CoffeeSM has ever seen
a supposedly professional football team play – and First CoffeeSM
watched Super Bowl XX.
…
Aruba Networks is announcing new access points and a software update
to its ArubaOS Mobility Software, designed to enable the deployment of the
company’s newly announced Mobile Edge architecture.
In an unrelated announcement Aruba says it has closed a series D round of funding,
securing an additional $25 million in equity financing. The latest round
brings the total equity investment in the company to $84 million.
The new round of financing was led by Artis Capital
Management, LLC, with additional participation from all existing equity investors,
including Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Trinity Ventures, and WK Technology
Fund.
The Mobile Edge architecture connects mobile workers to
enterprise VoIP and data networks from any location. The newly announced APs
extend the enterprise WLAN to remote locations, creating secure corporate
hotspots that follow the user.
…
ECI Telecom is announcing that Intelsat,
a provider of satellite communications services, has chosen ECI’s XDM Multi-Service Transport Platform for its
optical network.
Intelsat has used ECI’s T::DAX bandwidth management platform
for bandwidth aggregation for all of its GlobalConnex managed services.
GlobalConnex is a portfolio of end-to-end services designed to support
trunking, broadband and media communications requirements by bundling space
segment with Intelsat’s global teleports, points of presence and ground network
infrastructure.
As part of its optical network build out the XDM optical network deployment in
the Greater Washington D.C. area will be used as the backbone infrastructure to
deliver services to customers. The implementation will feature an XDM-based
network and ECI’s LightSoft network management system, which will enable
Intelsat to view and remotely manage multiple technology layers and services
within the network.
So Redskin fans in the D.C. area can do things like call each
other to see where the victory party is, and 49er fans can do things like call Dial-A-Prayer.
…
A report into the third-party logistics industry released
Sunday highlights that 3PL providers need to “reinvent” themselves to offer more strategic and
standardized products to users.
The findings come from the 10th Annual Third-Party Logistics Study, published today by
Capgemini and the Georgia Institute of Technology, in “collaboration with” SAP and
DHL, two firms with significant business interests in the subject of supply
chain logistics.
The study was unveiled in San Diego at the 2005 Annual
Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Conference, and will be
presented in London at the Eye for Transport Conference later this week. It
attempts to provide an assessment of the use of 3PLs across several key
geographies and major industry segments, with an eye to the future of the
industry.
For the first time in the 10-year history of the survey, price has overtaken value-added services to
become the most important attribute in selecting a 3PL provider, reflecting,
say the study’s authors, “the emphasis on the pressure of logistics cost
reduction in the supply chain.” At the same time that 3PL users closely examine
cost, they also are demanding more strategic offerings.
The report stresses the importance of the use of technology in the 3PL supply
chain process to balance cost concerns and strategic needs. 90% of respondents
agreed that IT capability is “a necessary element” of overall 3PL provider
expertise, whereas only 38% are “satisfied” with their providers’ capabilities.
Survey respondents identified the top three future
requirements of IT-based services as being Radio Frequency Identification,
Internet-based transportation/logistics markets, and supplier management
systems.
The study surveyed 1,091 logistics and supply chain executives. While about
half of responses (516) came from North America, almost one-third (339) came
from Western Europe, and approximately one- tenth (144) came from Latin
America. Responses also were received from Asia-Pacific (53), South Africa
(31), and the Middle East (8).
More than two-thirds of overall respondents came from the
manufacturing sector, with significant responses from the automotive, chemical,
consumer products, food and beverage, high tech/electronics and life sciences
(pharmaceutical) industries.
The survey responses, according to the study’s authors, confirmed that the
proficiency of a 3PL provider’s core services was considered more important
than the provider’s ability to deliver value-added services during the
selection of a provider: “This shift from frills to core services is a major
change, likely driven by recent global consolidation that may have given the
perception of weakened core services.”
“3PL providers cannot be all things to all people; they need to clearly define
their customer satisfaction strategy,” says C. John Langley Jr., Ph.D.,
Professor of Supply Chain Management and 3PL study leader at Georgia Institute
of Technology.
Capgemini is a provider of consulting, technology, and
outsourcing services to clients, and reported 2004 global revenues of 6.3
billion euros ($7.5 billion). Dr. C. John Langley Jr. is The Logistics
Institute Professor of Supply Chain Management and a member of the faculty of
the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of
Technology.
…
A tip of the coffee pot to Wayne Nelson and Bill
Woodruff, recently appointed
sales directors at Formula Telecom Solutions, Ltd., a developer and global
provider of billing and CRM products for the telecom industry and a member of
the Formula Group. The new hires are part of what Israel-based Formula
characterizes as an “expansion of its North American operations.”
…
LogicaCMG is announcing a contract with Batelco,
a telecommunications provider in the Middle East, to upgrade its existing LogicaCMG mobile messaging platform to an
IP-based Next Generation Messaging product.
Batelco’s upgrade to a Next Generation Short Messaging Service Center will,
according to company executives, allow it to “expand its mobile messaging capacity
and reduce time-to-market” for new services that are to be announced at a later
stage.
The company wants to upgrade customer service, improving
delivery of messages during peak traffic times.
…
Judith
Miller is but the tip of the iceberg as The
New York Times, the newspaper of Walter Duranty, Jayson Blair, Paul
Krugman and Howell Raines
(and those are just the ones who’ve been caught) bleeds yet more of whatever credibility it has left. Those of you
reading this off the blog page will want to hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
to get the links on those names for some quick, colorful reading.
The search for a new national paper of record is on. First
CoffeeSM nominates The Wall
Street Journal.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content.
