The news as of the second cup of coffee this morning, and the music is Thelonious Monk's "Brilliant Corners," a landmark album that concludes with the stirring "Bemsha Swing," an all-time jazz favorite of TMCnet Web Editor Michael Dinan:
Infogain Corporation, a vendor of CRM, ERP, Integration and Business Intelligence products today announced the expansion of its international operations with the opening of offices in the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
Investment in expansion demonstrates confidence in outsourcing growth for Oracle and Red Hat activities, according to one analyst commenting on the move.
The Los Gatos, California-based firm said the move will enable Infogain to meet the growing demand for its products in the European and Middle East markets and support its outreach to new verticals, as well as to "grow its presence among potential European and Middle East partners" and to "expand its portfolio to provide client service in key geographies."
Mark Collin has been appointed Vice President - UK & Europe, heading up European operations working with an n experienced senior management team based in Manchester.
Having previously established some presence in the UK, Infogain is now investing in what company officials are describing as a "long-term strategy to develop its European market share from the UK, strengthening its sales and consultancy presence with a new management team and a fresh approach."
In the Middle East, Neeraj Chhibbar takes the role of Manager - Sales & Business Development for the Middle East, based in Dubai, and will be responsible for markets in UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Yemen. The focus, company officials say, will be on offering end-to-end products on Oracle's Technology platform including Oracle e-Biz and Oracle Retail.
Kapil Nanda, founder and CEO of Infogain Corporation, said the expansion "reflects our confidence that we have the right service offering for these markets... to deliver integration, CRM, ERP and Business Intelligence products."
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CRM and analytics vendor Rexer Analytics has announced the results of their New England Real Estate Agent Survey showing "declining levels of sales and agent satisfaction during 2008."
Many agents remain "guardedly optimistic," the survey found, with over half projecting that the coming year will be the same or better than a typical year, and 90 percent of agents reporting that they plan to remain in the real estate field "for the foreseeable future."
In April of 2008, Rexer assessed the experiences, priorities, and challenges of New England real estate agents through an online survey. In November, the agents who participated in the spring were asked a few follow-up questions about their experiences over the intervening six months and their current outlook.
For the April 2008 study 211 agents from the six New England states participated in the survey. To qualify for the study, agents had to have at least two years experience in the field. Forty-four percent were in the field between two and six years, and 30 percent have 20 or more years of experience. Nearly half (47 percent) of those surveyed made $40,000/year or less in the previous year and just over a quarter (27 percent) made more than $80,000/year.
It's First Coffee's observation that real estate agents tend to be an optimistic group by nature, a trait borne out by the study: Despite over half (53 percent) experiencing their "worst year ever" or a "worse than average year," less than a quarter (24 percent) projected the next year to fall into these categories.
Current market pressures may be keeping many agents from being "completely satisfied" (only 30 percent indicated this highest level of satisfaction), although most do tend toward being content, with an additional 47 percent being "satisfied."
About 160 of the participants in that study who provided their e-mail address so that the survey results could be sent to them were contacted again in November for a brief follow-up survey to determine how their last six months had been and to see how their outlook was in comparison to April.
Overall satisfaction dropped notably: in April 31 percent of these agents were "completely satisfied," while in November only 13 percent were. Conversely, in April only seven percent of these agents were dissatisfied (indicated by selecting "dissatisfied" or "completely dissatisfied") while in November this number rose to 24 percent.
Agents' drop in satisfaction corresponded to their personal experiences becoming markedly worse over the intervening months, with 69 percent reporting that the past six months were worse than similar time periods in previous years (compared with 52 percent in April indicating this was the case for the previous year). While only 23 percent saw the coming year as likely to be a below average year in April, that figure rose to 43 percent in November.
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SugarCRM has announced the release of new Cloud Connectors for SugarCRM, which allow for company and contact data residing in other cloud environments to be called and presented in SugarCRM.
The product also has what company officials are calling "Sugar Feeds," which provide a rolling set of notices and alerts based on activity within SugarCRM. These features, as well as new management features for administering modules, will be generally available at the end of this month.
"This new functionality integrates business data and social intelligence from the cloud into the SugarCRM user experience," says John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM, adding that the features were intended to provide "immediacy and interaction" from Web applications."
The Cloud Connectors connect via Web Services to such third-party data service providers as Hoover's, JigSaw and LinkedIn for account and lead information. Cloud Views provide users a one-click preview of information retrieved, and Data Merge lets users select data from multiple data providers and merge it into SugarCRM.
For example: When a SugarCRM user views a new lead within SugarCRM, a pop-up Cloud View will provide information about the company for the lead qualification process. Using Cloud Views, the user can see what connections he has at the company via LinkedIn, or preview detailed company statistics from Hoover's. What he likes he can import into SugarCRM via Data Merge.
Other Cloud Connectors available now include Zoominfo and Crunchbase, which are available for download at Sugar Exchange.
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Convio, a vendor of on-demand constituent relationship management software and services to nonprofit organizations, has announced that Fred Waugh has assumed the newly created position of vice president, alliances. Waugh previously served as vice president, marketing.
"Over the past year we have opened Convio's software to third party applications, as well as using Salesforce.com's Platform as a Service for our new constituent relationship management system, Common Ground," says Gene Austin, chief executive officer of Convio.
Austin says given "the movement of nonprofits toward more choice and flexibility," Convio decided now is the time to "enhance and expand our relationships and the programs and services we provide to partners in the marketplace."
He sees Waugh as "qualified to help us strengthen relationships and programs within this community inside the nonprofit market."
Waugh is tasked with developing, expanding and strengthening Convio's strategic plans, programs and communication processes with service and technology providers, as well as third party developers who are building applications around Convio's open platforms.
He is expected to lead efforts to expand choice for the nonprofit market through integration between applications from multiple vendors via Convio's open application programming interfaces.
Waugh joined Convio in 2000, with more than 15 years of experience in technology marketing. Prior to Convio he was with Tivoli Systems, and has also held product management and marketing positions at Compaq Computer, Sun Microsystems and Farallon Communications.
He began his career as a business journalist, after which he evidently decided he'd rather work for a living.
