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Microsoft and Alcatel expect to deliver a product next month that will target mid-sized companies with contact centers around the world. The two companies announced their intentions on Wednesday. The new product will be based upon Alcatel's OmniTouch Contact Center Premium Edition and Microsoft Dyna...

The relationship between CRM vendor and its channel ecosystem has slowly been changing over the last two years, driven by a number of industry trends. Once seen almost as a commodity, a vendor's ecosystem -- its resellers, independent software vendors, systems integrators with certifications for the...

After a few false starts in 2004 and 2005, the service-oriented architecture services market appears poised to experience significant growth, according to a new report by IDC. As it does, it will have a larger affect on such IT spend categories as systems integration, consulting, application managem...

Success stems, in part, from the values, wants and needs that are interwoven within individuals and an organization, and the ways in which the individuals and the organizations resolve the many differences and conflicts that are an ongoing part of every organization in these diverse pursuits. Of cou...

The hosted contact center subsector is the fastest growing in the hosted CRM space, suggest new statistics compiled by Frost & Sullivan. It is increasing at a rate that is at least as fast as the rate of expansion seen in the hosted CRM industry during the early 2000s, Frost & Sullivan Progr...

It's opening day in many Major League Baseball stadiums today, and in addition to wondering who's throwing out the first pitch, how much the beer will cost, and whether that rookie shortstop can hit the curveball, competitive and committed fans of this great sport are grappling with another burning ...

Cognos has added a number of new reporting capabilities to the latest version of its Business Intelligence application, as well as a new stand-alone search engine product that will be standard in future releases. Other new features in Cognos 8 include the ability to view Cognos 8 BI reports, analyse...

Google AdWords is the most commonly used lead generation tool in many small and medium businesses. Layer in small and medium vendors of CRM's many varieties of applications, and the dependency on precise targeting for lead generation becomes even more important, due to the highly targeted messaging...

With last year's successful IPO and two recent acquisitions, Unica has positioned itself to ride the next wave of marketing automation technology development: the emergence -- finally -- of enterprise marketing management. Analyst firms such as Gartner, AMR Research and Forrester have been predictin...

If you're ever starved for conversation at a cocktail party, bring up the subject of computer support. It's sure to start a buzz in the room, since almost everyone has a horror story to tell about the topic. The reason everyone has a terrible tale is that customer service in the PC industry is at a ...

Kana has updated Response, its e-mail response management application, and Response Live, its live chat and Web collaboration module. The new versions provide better integration across customer touch points, along with additional functionality that allows desktop agents to answer customer questions ...

I don't do endorsements -- that's for ball players. For me to endorse a product would be the end of my credibility. All I look for is what works and, if it does, I'll point it out. If something doesn't live up to the hype, I follow my mother's advice and say nothing. That's why I was surprised wh...

Microsoft is pushing distributors and resellers to enlarge its CRM market share through the introduction of two new initiatives: a new professional Dynamics CRM edition for service providers that has been enhanced to make both hosted and on-premise deployments easier; and new prepackaged connectors ...

The contact center and software and service market continues to remain fragmented, according to Gartner's latest report on the industry, with various applications in the space addressing only a portion of users' needs. In large part, that is because the leading functions users want from such applica...

In the coming year, there will be a new focus on partnerships among SaaS vendors, and large ISVs will spin off on-demand versions of their products. Those are among the trends most likely to manifest, says analyst firm IDC in its new study, "Top 10 Predictions for 2006: Software as a Service." The t...