Search

Dashboards and similar tech tools within the performance management sector are growing in popularity, according to a new survey by AMR Research. Overall performance management spending will increase to nearly US$23 billion in 2006, forecasts the firm's report, "Trends in Performance Management Spend...

Salesforce.com is extending its AppExchange network to mobile devices with the introduction of AppExchange Mobile. The new feature was developed using proprietary software from Sendia, a wireless business platform company, which Salesforce.com announced it would acquire for US$15 million in cash. Th...

Few events are likely to have a more devastating effect on a company -- or even the industry it represents -- than being exposed for deliberately misleading customers about the safety of its products. The sunscreen industry may be forced to crawl out of a ditch due to this sort of deception. Last mo...

The global outbound dialing market -- dominated by equipment vendors including Aspect, Avaya, Genesys, Nortel and Cisco -- not only is saturated in many regions, especially North America, but also is facing stiff headwinds, according to a new study by Frost & Sullivan. These challenges include a...

Genesys has announced plans to acquire VoiceGenie, a provider of self-service voice applications -- a move that is expected to solidify the drive to determine which standard will dominate the industry. The acquisition of the privately held firm, which is expected to close in a few weeks, will also a...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

Two years ago or so, a handful of upstart companies entered the CRM market offering open source technologies designed specifically for this space. At the time, open source CRM was neither mature nor relevant enough to corporate deployment needs to make much of a dent in the CRM space. Fast forward t...

CDC has made another proposal to buy Onyx following its failed attempt in January. At the same time, it announced plans to form a new company to manage the various enterprise applications under the corporate umbrella. While the corporate restructuring is not directly related to its new offer for Ony...

Amdocs continues to leverage its telephony roots to expand into retail banking, introducing three vertical applications for the financial services market under an approach called Dynamic Banking. The new products are Dynamic Pricing and Product Bundling, Customer Communications, and Mobile and Micro...

Microsoft is formalizing a trend that has been front and center in the CRM arena for years; the integrated suite approach to customer service is already a staple of most enterprise applications. Now, though, it has trickled down to the mid-market and even small business spaces. Last week, with much ...

More than 200 former PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and Retek customers have moved to SAP via its Safe Passage program since its introduction January 2005. The program was set up to entice companies worried about the uncertainties associated with Oracle's acquisition of their main enterprise applica...