The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Steve Earle's 1990 album The Hard Way album. Visiting my folks in Richmond over Thanksgiving we went to the Ft. Lee thrift store where I found the CD for sale, and snapped it up for a buck or so. It's an album you rarely see in stores, it's the only album of his you can't find on iTunes, which puzzles me because I always found it his most interesting album. Yeah the first side of Copperhead Road is his best stretch -- by far -- but the second side's really, really weak.

Nothing he's done since kicking drugs is worth much (hm, same could be said for a few other acts as well), the self-important, look-at-how-concerned-about-you-commoners-I-am stance he affects these days is trite, but on The Hard Way he's got The Dukes in fine form, some of his more compelling songs -- you may have heard "Billy Austin," it's one of the best one here along with such gems as "Regular Guy" and "West Nashville Boogie" -- and the last five songs are worth the price themselves:

There's a part of First Coffee that really enjoyed working with ad people back when I was doing that kind of thing, say what you want about advertising but you meet a lot of smart, creative people who don't take themselves too seriously. Others took themselves way too seriously, but you find that everywhere (see above). But one great thing about the ad business is you run across companies with names like Holy Cow. Here's betting they at least called Phil Rizzuto for the first-year anniversary party.

Holy Cow Branding has been named the Public Relations Agency of Record for Business IT Professionals, Inc. (Biz IT Pro). Holy Cow will work with Biz IT Pro to "develop and implement a P.R. strategy that will put them on the map as experts in Customer Relationship Management (CRM)" and other technology-based business products, according to Holy Cow officials.

"Working with Holy Cow Branding will be a terrific endeavor to catapult Biz IT Pro to the next level," says Steve Noe, president of Biz IT Pro. "I've worked with Lorana Price [CEO of Holy Cow] over the years."

First Coffee loves this next line in the press release: "Biz IT Pro partners with businesses to solve problems using strategies, technology and common sense, which will reduce expenses and increase revenue for them."

Oh right, the PR firm's name: "After working with the firm, clients will be able to say, 'Holy Cow!' about the designs and services they have received," says Price.

Bond Art and Science, a digital consulting firm based in New York City, announced today that industry veteran Hyo Yeon has joined the firm as a Senior Partner. Ms. Yeon joins Bond Art and Science from FCBi, the digital, direct and CRM-focused business unit of Foote, Cone & Belding (now DraftFCB), where she was Executive Vice President, Managing Director of the New York office, and Chief Strategy Officer of FCBi WorldWide.

Yeon has held senior management positions at CKS (March First) and Studio Archetype (Sapient). More recently, Hyo spent six years at Razorfish New York, where she was Managing Director of the New York office, built the global strategy practice, and oversaw the firm's industry verticals as well as its mobility and broadband practices.
Open Solutions Inc. has announced that Infolink Services Ltd. has implemented Open Solutions Canada's POSH switch, secure switching for processing ATM and Point of Sale transactions.

ISL is a joint venture corporation equally owned by four major commercial banks in Trinidad and Tobago. It functions as a private clearinghouse and was established to enable these financial institutions to enhance their self-service banking products through the implementation of financial transaction switching technology.

Sounds like an international thriller novel just waiting to be written, doesn't it?

The technology will help the four institutions efficiently process, settle and reconcile electronic funds transfers.

"We installed POSH back-end this year, which will drive the ATMs we've introduced to the Caribbean market," said Helen Llanos, assistant general manager of ISL.

POSH provides real-time authorization and, through its stand-in processing module, is designed to provide availability during both planned and unscheduled downtime.

Open Solutions' POSHnet Processing Center drives Canada's largest ATM network and a large and growing POS environment. POSHnet can be implemented as a regional, national and/or international processing and switching center.

Glenn Hofmann, a former executive at HSBC Finance Corp., has joined Integras, the advanced analytical services division of Claritas Inc., as Assistant Vice President of Location Research.

In this position, Hofmann will be responsible for managing the location research group, as well as working with major consulting clients.

As an Analytics/CRM Manager at HSBC, Hofmann was responsible for the development of new analytic tools for customer analysis and targeting. One notable project directed by Hofmann involved the data integration and predictive modeling of a 10 million customer portfolio to improve marketing return on investment and profitability.

Most recently, Hofmann held the position of Director of Modeling at ID Analytics, Inc., a San Diego-based Identity Risk Management company, where he managed a group of scientists in the development of statistical models to both detect and prevent identity fraud.

A new report from Gartner Inc. on the 2005 global contact center market shows that Avaya Inc. is the market leader with 39.1 percent of all contact center agents -- more than triple the share of the company's closest competitor.

The Gartner report also shows that Avaya leads each region of the global contact center market, including:

 * Asia Pacific with a 54 percent share (44.4 points ahead of the closest competitor).

 * North America with a 41.1 percent share (28.1 points ahead of the closest competitor).

 * Latin America with a 32.8 percent share (10.1 points ahead of the closest competitor).

In related news Empirix Inc. has announced that its Hammer On Call automated testing service is compliant with contact center solutions from Avaya.

Hammer On-Call is based on Empirix's Hammer technology, which drives a high volume of calls into an application or network while measuring performance at every step. The hosted application is now compliance-tested by Avaya for compatibility with Avaya Interactive Response 2.0, a standards-based self-service platform for contact centers.

Empirix Hammer On-Call is part of a broader set of Hammer Performance Assurance services that enable automated testing of large Avaya contact centers with 100 or more agent seats.

Through a reseller agreement with Empirix, Avaya now offers Hammer On-Call services as part of its comprehensive support portfolio for enterprise contact centers.

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