By Fsbof Do,d

That's how my name looks using the touch-type method when you move your fingers one key to the right. Anyway welcome to First Coffee, I'm your host David Sims, and the music is a great discovery I made out of the blue on iTunes last night -- don't you love it when that happens?

Here's something for nothing (not that the respect and adulation my millions of readers shower upon me is "nothing," you understand) -- you know when you're on iTunes, looking up a record, and there's that feature on the right of the screen, "Listeners Also Bought?"  Check out those records once in a while if you've never heard of them. I did, and ended up downloading It's A Beautiful Day, the 1969 San Francisco "progressive rock" classic. I've listened to it about four times since -- and this from a guy who doesn't like repeating music listenings, San Francisco or prog rock. And frankly, Let It Bleed aside, wasn't all that crazy about 1969 either.

I think it's mainly because you get the feeling their guitarist never really wanted to be in a San Francisco prog band, listening to him you suspect there's a guy who was on his way to his metal band rehearsal when he was abducted by David and Linda LaFlamme and forced to play in their ahtistik band and is flashing SOS messages via guitar the whole time. It's a great dynamic given the virtuosity of the rest of the band -- David LaFlamme was violin soloist for the Utah Symphony before moving to San Francisco and starting the band -- and saves it all from being a rather precious affair.

Don't believe the Coffee? Get It's A Beautiful Day's 1971 live album Creed Of Love and cue up "Don & Dewey." Forget twee proggies, there wasn't any guitarist anywhere rocking harder.

One of the classic album covers of all time, too:

CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation and a vendor of CRM and other enterprise software applications, has announced its investment in Business Intelligence Consulting de México, SA de C.V. (BI), as part of its previously announced Franchise Partner Program with selected partners in certain international regions.

Earlier this year, CDC Software launched its Franchise Partner Program, which includes $20 million designated for investment in channel partners. Under this program, CDC Software provides direct cash investments, equity investments, lines of credit and a combination of these, to distribution partners in high-growth geographies, including Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, India, China and Asia/Pacific.

BI is the third partner selected into the Franchise Partner Program in recent months. According to the agreement with BI, CDC Software will acquire a 19 percent equity stake in the company, with the option to acquire 100 percent of the company in three years.

For more than four years, BI has been a partner of CDC Software in Mexico and Central America. Mutual customers of BI and CDC Software include Sky Chefs (Mexico and Venezuela), Schenectady, Torrecid de Mexico, Kluber Lubrication Mexicana, TechData, Hewlett Packard, Consorcio AGA, Polikon and Embasador AGA.

Business Intelligence Consulting, founded in 1998, provides collaborative business solutions for the process manufacturing industry, with expertise in systems information, manufacturing, distribution and finances, as well as network wired structures.

"We have established a successful partnership with CDC Software over the last four years through our sales and support of the Ross Enterprise applications," said Manuel Larios, managing director of Business Intelligence Consulting.

"Through the Franchise Partner Program, CDC Software is expanding its global footprint," said Oscar Pierre, senior vice president of Latin America for CDC Software. "By using our significant cash reserves, our Franchise Partner Program allows us to invest in key partners globally which not only benefits both companies, but customers."
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Got a nice note from the SugarCRM folks yesterday:

… thought you might be interested in the latest milestone to be reached by commercial open source CRM provider, SugarCRM. Though it's not necessarily viewed on par with salesforce.com, yet, SugarCRM is on a similar growth path.

Amongst Sugar's new customers is Starbucks Corporation. Starbucks is using Sugar Professional On-Demand to manage the front-end of their HR applicant-tracking process.

[Insert your own "cream or sugar?" joke here.]

SugarCRM was founded in April 2004 on the notion that open source is a fundamentally better software development model that is less expensive than entrenched proprietary solutions and that frees customers from vendor lock-in. SugarCRM is very excited to announce [exciting news under embargo until Monday].

Sterling PCU, provider of specialized equipment for the appliance and automotive industry switched from salesforce.com to SugarCRM after getting fed up with hidden costs. Sterling expects to save $18,000 annually, paying $239 per user with Sugar instead of $780 per user with salesforce.com.

"Things were fine with salesforce.com until we tried to do a second database back-up," said Christopher Edwards, General Manager of Sales at Sterling PCU. "That is when salesforce.com started to charge us an arm and leg for backing up our own data. It's just not acceptable. It is our data, they do not own it, we do. We moved from salesforce.com to SugarCRM because Sugar gives us twice the functionality at half the price. SugarCRM also gives us the flexibility we need to grow as a business."

Since switching to Sugar, Sterling has achieved a 90 percent user adoption level. The company is currently using Sugar On-Demand but will most likely move customer assets to Sugar On-Premise in the future, a flexibility salesforce.com cannot provide.

Just thought you'd like to know.  Stay tuned for Monday's milestone.
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PacificNet Inc., a vendor of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), mobile internet, e-commerce and gambling technology in China, has announced it has acquired an additional six percent interest in PacificNet Games Limited (PacGames).

Prior to this, in connection with the acquisition of Able Entertainment previously announced during the Q3 earnings conference call, PacificNet owned 45 percent of PacGames. PacificNet now owns 51 percent of PacGames.

Tony Tong, Chairman and CEO of PacificNet, said in recent board and management meetings "we evaluated the early success of our gaming technology operation and were very satisfied with the rapid progress and financial performance of the gaming operation. The board of directors and management team has approved our new strategy to focus on the rapidly growing gaming market in greater China, Macau, and Asia."

In September 2006, PacificNet opened an office in Macau to focus on the rapidly expanding gambling and entertainment industries in that region.

Macau is one of the fastest-growing gambling markets in the world and is predicted to surpass Las Vegas in total revenues by 2007. According to recent statistics provided by Macau government, in 2005, Macau's gambling revenues reached $5.8 billion, second only to Las Vegas gambling revenues of $6 billion.

Macau borders Zhuhai City of Guangdong Province of China, one of the country's wealthiest and most developed regions and is an hour away from Hong Kong via ferry. The number of tourists visiting Macau reached 18.7 million in 2005, of which 56 percent or 10.5 million visitors were from mainland China. By 2010, the number of tourists is expected to double to nearly 30 million visitors per year.
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From the Poetic Justice Department: ZDNet is reporting that a former UBS PaineWebber employee, Roger Duronio, was "sentenced to eight years in prison on Wednesday for planting a computer logic bomb on company networks and betting its stock would go down.

"The investment scheme backfired when UBS stock remained stable after the computer attack and Roger Duronio lost more than $23,000."

Duronio, 64, was sentenced 97 months in prison and ordered him to make $3.1 million in restitution. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving idiot.

David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.