Vendors

Avaya Puts More Eggs in BYOD Basket
November 26, 2012

Avaya IP Office joined the BYOD revolution with the release of version 8.1 earlier this year. Now the company is gearing up for more changes, including a forthcoming release that will integrate video functionality into its feature set. It will continue to expand its functionality around mobility in 2013, said SVP Tom Mitchell, president of Avaya Go to Market.

Genesys One Gives Mid-Market a Second Shot
November 16, 2012

Genesys is making a play for the middle market with the release of Genesys One. The last time the company targeted the middle market was more than 10 years ago, when it was owned by Alcatel. Since then, the middle market has changed significantly. Both customer needs and buying behavior have changed considerably, observed Brian Bischoff, vice president of global offer management for Genesys.

Demandbase Finely Hones B2B Targeted Marketing
November 12, 2012

Demandbase is extending beyond its Web analytics and sales roots with a new platform that allows B2B advertisers to target and personalize display ads for specific companies. Demandbase Company-Targeted Advertising, which has been incorporated by Eloqua within its own marketing automation application, represents a shift for Demandbase.

StrongMail Lifts Weight Off Burdensome Marketing Operations
October 26, 2012

StrongMail has upgraded the latest version of its flagship email marketing product, Message Studio, now available in version 7.1. Chief among the changes is a new type of data integration with an ERP system, as well as new testing, optimization, automation and reporting capabilities. "This is our third release of the year," said Dave Cormier, VP of product marketing at StrongMail.

Nimble CRM 2.0 Adds to the Social Whirl
October 22, 2012

The name of the product is "Nimble CRM," but the "CRM" part is almost a misnomer -- if you accept the traditional sales-marketing-service definition of CRM, that is. A startup that launched early last year, Nimble CRM chooses to embrace a morphing view of CRM. This is a view of CRM driven by social media, by mobile computing -- and most of all, by savvy contact management and networking.

Dreamforce 2012: Revolution Is Out
September 20, 2012

The CRM industry is used to getting a jolt every year from Dreamforce, Salesforce.com's annual mega-event. Each year, the number of attendees swells -- this year, it's more than 70,000 -- and that makes CEO Marc Benioff's bacchanal the epicenter of the CRM industry for a week. That give Salesforce a chance to make a serious splash.

The Return of WizKids
September 12, 2012

I made a decision this week that pleased me and will drive some of my thinking about the CRM business well into next year. I opened up a contest called the WizKids Award. That might not seem like much and it might seem self-serving for me to write about it but maybe there's more. WizKids is an informal competition I have held most years for emerging companies.

Transmutation in the C Suite
August 29, 2012

My sources tell me that Salesforce.com will be handling its major Dreamforce announcements differently this year. Rather than letting us drink from a firehose at the event, they promise to tell us much of their news beforehand so that they can spend the keynotes, I assume, drilling down into more of the substance of their announcements.

Sage Charts Its Course
August 22, 2012

Pascal Houillon, the CEO of Sage North America, has been at the job for a bit over a year. He took over the reins at last year's Sage Summit where he famously introduced a new branding exercise. Houillon's idea was to make Sage a more prominent brand by de-emphasizing the individual product names, in many cases renaming them.

Oracle CRM Hits 20
July 31, 2012

Oracle has released version 20 of its Oracle CRM On Demand product. It is a major release with significant upgrades to the industry-specific life sciences vertical as well as horizontal functionality, said Anthony Lye, SVP for cloud applications strategy.

Kana Makes a Move in Customer Experience Space
July 17, 2012

Kana plans to build out its customer service experience management bona fides with its recent acquisition of contact center provider Ciboodle from the Sword Group. The point of the acquisition is to weave together Ciboodle's chief strengths -- its process-based customer contact management platform, agent desktop tools and case management expertise -- with what Kana does well.

Grid Grief Grounds Salesforce
July 11, 2012

Salesforce.com experienced a global outage early Tuesday, the second major outage in two weeks for the CRM company. Salesforce.com customers in the company's NA1, NA5, NA6, CS0, CS3, CS1 and CS12 regions lost access starting just before 1 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday. Access was restored gradually, returning to full online status by about 10:30 a.m. Pacific time.

Is Everyone Trying to Look Like Salesforce?
June 20, 2012

Last week I lamented how the legacy software establishment was focusing on the easy-to-sell parts of cloud computing without really providing the essence of cloud. Since then, I have been inspired by a couple of recent articles that point in a different though not opposite direction.

Cloud Computing vs. Real Cloud Computing
June 13, 2012

Oracle re-introduced its new cloud/social constellation of stuff last week that it had announced back at OpenWorld. If I count the analyst briefing I got in Redwood Shores in April, it was a re-re-introduction. Oracle is not the only company to follow this strategy. For example, Salesforce follows a conventional triple-tell approach too -- tell them what you're going to say, say it, tell them what you said.

CRM in a Faceless World
June 06, 2012

Salesforce.com announced it was buying Buddy Media for nearly $700 million on Monday. In any discussion, that's a lot of money, maybe more than Salesforce has yet spent on any acquisition. What's going on? As you might expect, I see economics playing an important role here, and I think there are two issues to consider. They may even boil down to one -- the cost of acquiring a customer.

Marketo Expands Its Social Horizons
June 04, 2012

The way people and companies decide what to buy is changing, becoming intractably intertwined with social recommendations, noted Sanjay Dholakia, SVP of Marketo's product marketing and corporate development. "This means that consumers and buyers have ability to educate themselves instead of going to salespeople with their questions, and they are increasingly doing so."

Customers See Red as QuickBooks Online Flounders
June 01, 2012

Many customers of Intuit's QuickBooks Online are reporting problems with accessing the service for reasons that remain unclear. "I had a problem when I was uploading data from the desktop to QuickBooks Online," Claudia Bolding, owner of accounting software and bookkeeping services company Detailed Office Services, told TechNewsWorld. "It took me three days," she added.

Salesforce's Buddy Media Buy Could Produce a Power Couple
May 30, 2012

Salesforce.com is reportedly close to acquiring social media marketing manager Buddy Media for about $800 million. Buddy Media's main business is helping corporations manage their brand presence on Facebook. It has branched out to other social media platforms, including Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn.

SAP Gets New Stairway to the Cloud With Ariba Buy
May 23, 2012

SAP has revealed plans to acquire Ariba, an enterprise e-commerce network, for US$4.3 billion as part of the German company's expansion into cloud computing. SAP will purchase Ariba for $45 per share -- about 20 percent more than its market price. Ariba's board approved the purchase unanimously. The sale is expected to be completed during the third calendar quarter of 2012, dependent on Ariba shareholder approval.

NetSuite, Transportation and the Internet of Things
May 18, 2012

This spring has seen a raft of software company events and announcements, and they've been good meetings full of real news and important new developments. It is as if these companies bided their time during the worst of the recession, building new product, thinking about the future and how customers will use their technologies.