The news as of the second coffee this morning, and the music is that sprawling, glorious freeway crash of an album from The Clash, Sandinista!. Where their self-titled debut was the machine gun drive-by and London Calling the perfectly-placed rifle shot, this is the sometimes-brilliant, sometimes slack-jawed stupid double-barreled shotgun blast of an album:
DynamicsExchange.com has announced the availability of a large online video collection for users and prospective buyers of Microsoft's Dynamics CRM software.
With over 100 videos already categorized for CRM users' various learning needs and buyers' decision support needs, contained in a dedicated Web 2.0 environment, the offering adds resources to the Dynamics CRM platform and global community.
Three sections still in beta include "Demonstrations and Trial" in the "Buyer Resources" area that includes videos on Microsoft Dynamics CRM and related technologies, plus optional product videos from Microsoft Certified Partners from around the world.
The "How To" section of the "User Resources" area offers dozens of training videos in categories such as Analysis, Configuration, Sales, Marketing, Service, Learning, and General. The "Case Studies" section of the "Buyers Resources" area also provides professional produced customer experience videos to support buyers' decision process.
Although still in a beta release, the DynamicsExchnage.com "has over 10 man years of .net and Silverlight Web 2.0 custom development based on Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 and Commerce server," Your Friends From Redmond would like you to know, adding that the product is set to release in late 1st quarter of 2009.
DynamicsExchange.com allows viewing over 150 Dynamics CRM aggregated blogs, a new community Wiki, product specifications, literature, demonstrations, access trials, as well as many products available for Dynamics CRM.
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Industry observer Amy Schurr wrote recently on how IT leaders "in need of updated applications but can't swing the capital investment" should look at SaaS. If you're looking for customer relationship management delivered via SaaS, of course Salesforce.com is the heavyweight, but there are lots of other worthy products worth a look, primary amongst them SugarCRM, the primary open source SaaS option, and RightNow.
She cites the much-quoted Gartner report forecasting that the worldwide enterprise SaaS market will surpass $6.4 billion this year, up 27 percent from 2007, adding "you may remember the hype over application service providers at the beginning of the decade, but SaaS is not the same as application hosting or application outsourcing."
First Coffee does remember that hype. First Coffee helped spread that hype.
"The popularity of the on-demand deployment model has increased significantly within the last four years. Initial concerns over security, response time, and service availability have diminished for many organizations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become pervasive," says Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner.
In fact, Schurr writes, "Gartner forecasts the SaaS market to hit $14.8 billion in 2012. What's driving deployment are the tough economy, better broadband, and a need to rapidly deploy software to meet a specific business need."
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Stepping back and taking the Broader View of the world around this world we call CRM:
Demand pushing against physical and logical limitations is "stressing the Internet," according to Nemertes Research's study titled "Internet Interrupted: Why Architectural Limitations Will Fracture the 'Net."
The upshot is that Internet demand continues to outpace growth in network capacity at the access layer, and IP addresses are quickly depleting.
A follow-up to last year's report "The Internet Singularity Delayed: Why Limits in Internet Capacity Will Stifle Innovation on the Web," - nobody accuses Nemertes of Pollyanna tendencies - the latest study finds demand continues to grow swiftly, driven by more Internet-connected devices and new bandwidth-hungry applications: "Traffic is migrating away from the public core of the Internet and onto private and semiprivate overlay networks," the study finds.
"The Internet is shape-shifting," says Ted Ritter, research analyst with Nemertes Research, commenting on the fact that traffic appears to be moving off the public Internet onto paid or private overlay networks. "Content providers-such as NBC, which used Limelight Networks to stream the 2008 Olympics-are driving the trend toward a flattening, and shifting of the Internet."
The result for users? Improved service quality for favored content and, over time, the performance distinction between "favored" and "general-delivery" content increasing. But it's not a Doomsday scenario: "None of this means the Internet will abruptly stop working," says Ritter. "Instead, the slowdown will be in the area of innovation. Ultimately, access bandwidth limitations will hamper deployment of next-generation applications."
The study's take is that the Internet is rapidly running out of addresses to assign to new networks and devices - "85 percent of addresses already are allocated," it says, although one wonders if the pool of address possibilities has been delimited that allows a calculation of 85 percent occupied. "Address exhaustion will occur before 2012 in the face of the accelerating growth of the number of Internet-enabled devices and of machine-machine communications."
The report dismisses IPv6, the presumed successor to the current Internet Protocol addressing scheme (IPv4), as "too little too late," finding that only one percent of IT decision-makers participating in Nemertes benchmark, Advanced Communications Services 2008, are deploying IPv6.
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Insight Now has been awarded a contract to provide Vertex, a global business process outsourcer and IT services company, with a suite of software to enable real-time tracking of customer experience and first call resolution within its contact centers in the UK. The vendor specializes in using real-time customer experience and employee engagement surveys to optimize service delivery and business performance. The company was selected based on the fit of its product to the requirements set out by Vertex, including the ability to offer surveys via all media channels and to capture the customer, agent and team leader perspectives of each call being surveyed, Vertex officials say.
Vertex has identified one of its clients to be an early adopter, and is currently rolling out the new Insight Now product. The Vertexians say they intend to "socialize" the new service product "progressively to its other clients and prospects in the near future."
In practice, client customers contacting Vertex-managed centers are given the opportunity to rate various aspects of the service they have received using Web-based, Interactive Voice Response and mobile phone technology. Responses are analyzed and the results sent to the advisor, their team leader and senior management.
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CRM vendor Epicor has announced "expense reduction initiatives" throughout the company.
The company has undertaken a series of cost reduction initiatives, including a reduction in its workforce, stricter controls on discretionary spending, and technology initiatives designed to "improve efficiencies and reduce operating expenses," according to the Epicorians, who say they're hoping for annual savings of between $16 million and $20 million.
The vendor is expected to incur restructuring charges of approximately $4 million during the fourth quarter related to these actions.
"A thorough review of our global organization identified areas where we could increase efficiencies through streamlined operations and technology initiatives," said Thomas Kelly, Epicor President and CEO, referencing "the current economic environment."
