By David Sims

David at firstcoffee d*t biz

 

The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is Jerry Jeff Walker, including such immortal songs as “Where Is The D.A.R. When You Really Need Them?” and “Up Against The Wall, Redneck:”

 

Back from a week in Cappadocia, in central Turkey, probably the weirdest landscape on Earth. I can’t imagine dropping LSD out there, it’d be redundant. And to step inside these caves carved out of the soft rock — no not Dire Straits — and see 1,000-year old church frescoes astonishingly well-preserved, except for anti-iconic vandalism (euphemized as “atmospheric deterioration” by government tour guides), is staggering.

 

Let’s start off in Muscat today, where the Khaleej Times — I know, it’s already on your daily bookmarks — is reporting that Muscat Municipality “has launched its new Customer Relations Management (CRM) system.”

 

The system, “a comprehensive software program,” is set up to connect “the Municipality’s computer network to all departments that provide services to the public, particularly authentication of lease contracts, follow up of health licenses, health and technical inspection, building permits and other licenses,” the report said.

 

The Times reported that “Abdullah bin Abbas bin Ahmed, Chairman of the municipality, presided over the launch ceremony,” telling reporters that “the new arrangement would enable Muscat Municipality to make use of the latest technology to provide better, efficient and speedier services to the public, while also reducing bureaucracy.”

 

The chairman estimated that benefits of the new system “will be evident” in a month.

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We fly next to the Emerald Isle, where IrishDev is reporting that SugarCRM, fresh off establishing a base in Dublin on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, “have added their support to the Irish Open Source community by sponsoring the Irish Open Source Technology Conference,” which will be held from June 18th to 20th.

 

IrishDev reports that John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM, is an “avid” U2 fan. Roberts participated in the first conference of 2008, the Irish Web Technology Conference in February, delivering a presentation titled “The Global Language of Sharing.”

 

At the Irish Open Source Technology Conference, “SugarCRM will be represented by Clint Oram, Co Founder and VP of Open Source Relations, who leads their office in Dublin,” IrishDev says, adding that Oram “will discuss how cloud computing, Web platforms, mashups and open source development models, all results of the Web 2.0 world that we live in, are becoming mainstream,” and “how open source is being used to access infrastructure through these models and allow users to build SaaS.”

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Now over the Irish Sea to London — hope you signed up for the frequent flier program — where BSkyB “has increased its budget for its lawsuit against EDS over a large CRM system implementation,” according to industry observer Leo King.

 

King notes that the case is bogging down in technical minutiae, reporting that “the parties argue in court over increasingly fine details of the case.” Hence BSkyB “expects to spend a further £3 million ($6 million) from the £18 million previously announced, after it said it had already spent £17 million in the nine months so far,” he reports.

 

The fight is over Sky’s claim that it paid EDS £709 million for what it says was a failed implementation. It spent £9 million on the case in the financial year to June, 30 2007.

 

The case, King said, is delving into “increasingly fine detail over what Sky’s expectations for the CRM system were, how well EDS delivered, and what financial damages any failure could have caused.” Originally scheduled to finish around March or April, the court case could drag on through the summer, King says, unless a settlement is reached.

 

Sky’s contention appears to be that EDS didn’t have the right resources in place to deliver the system. For its part, King reports, EDS says “Sky did not know what it wanted from the system, and has argued that it was difficult to deliver on such grounds.”

 

But not difficult at all to keep cashing the checks. I’m sorry, but First Coffee comes down on the side of the customer in such cases — if the vendor doesn’t know what he’s doing for the customer he has no business taking the customer’s money. Sure Sky’s at fault for not defining objectives clearly at the outset, but EDS should have realized that and said let’s not start until we have a clear job here.

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Seat belts fastened? Tray in the upright position? Good, because we’re off to Melbourne, where Kent Transport Industries, an Aussie privately-owned removals and storage company, has chosen networks provider Uecomm to replace its existing frame-relay network with a metro Ethernet WAN.

 

Kent’s new CRM program and storage area network application will consist of more than 8,000 file transfers per day, Kent officials say, which will require fast and reliable access across the entire WAN. The increased bandwidth from the Uecomm product will also allow Kent to implement a records management system, letting the business transfer its hard copy documents to electronic copies.

 

The four year $800,000 plus contract involves a fully managed router product and the delivery of 1:1 uncontested Ethernet services across Kent’s entire WAN, consisting of its six regional offices including ones in Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra, as well as its major Sydney office and head office in Clayton, Melbourne.

 

A Uecomm fiber optic network will be deployed between the two major offices in Melbourne and Sydney, with the regional offices connected via SHDSL, ADSL and E1 links, providing the business with an increased bandwidth of 16Mpbs, up from 2Mbps.

 

According to Kent Transport Industries IT manager, Craig Prestt, the motivation to upgrade to an Ethernet WAN was the business benefits that could be achieved with a more reliable, scalable service with greater capacity.

 

“We were looking for a network infrastructure product that would provide a higher quality of service across the WAN and that could also support voice, video and data intensive applications,” Prestt explained, adding that “our existing frame-relay network simply didn’t offer these benefits. Network additions were slow and costly and the capacity didn’t allow us to take advantage of newer bandwidth-hungry applications.”

 

The network design will also allow a failover at the head office in case of disaster. Kent plans to make its Sydney office a redundant site for its head office.

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NetSuite has announced operating results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2008, characterizing it as “record revenue” for the first quarter ended March 31, 2008.

 

Total revenue for the first quarter was $34.1 million, a 47 percent increase over the first quarter of 2007, and an eight percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2007. The first quarter of 2008 marked the 34th consecutive quarter of increased revenue for NetSuite, company officials pointed out.

 

On a GAAP basis, net loss for the first quarter of 2008 was $(2.0 million), or $(0.03) per share, compared to $(9.3 million), or $(1.24) per share in the first quarter of 2007, “an improvement of 78 percent,” NetSuite officials said.

 

Net loss on a non-GAAP basis for the first quarter of 2008 was $(420,000), or $(0.01) per share, compared with $(2.3 million), or $(0.04) per share in the first quarter of 2007, 82 percent better.

 

Revenue from the Americas for the first quarter of 2008 was $27.8 million, while revenue from international regions outside of the Americas was $6.3 million.

 

Based on information as of May 1, 2008, NetSuite is providing the following outlook for its second quarter of 2008 and its full fiscal year 2008:

 

Q2 FY08: For the second quarter of 2008, NetSuite expects total revenue in the range of $36.0 million to $36.7 million. Non-GAAP net loss, which excludes the impact of stock-based compensation expense, is expected to be in the range of $(1.0 million) to $(250,000). Non-GAAP net loss per share is expected to be in the range of approximately $(0.02) to $(0.00).

 

Weighted average shares for the quarter are estimated to be approximately 60.6 million shares.

 

For the full year 2008, NetSuite expects total revenue in the range of $154 million to $157 million. Non-GAAP net loss is expected to be in the range of $(2.5 million) to $(0.5 million).