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The big news when Saleforce.com released its latest version of what is hot in the CRM space -- Winter '08 -- was Force.com. The immediately understood subtext was that Salesforce.com had officially begun its migration to a platform on-demand company, launching the first salvo in what Denis Pombriant...

Just a couple of weeks ago, two terms, on-demand and Software as a Service (SaaS), were used interchangeably -- it was truly a difference without a distinction -- but a lot has changed in a short time. First, Salesforce.com introduced Force.com, and a day later SAP announced a long awaited on-demand...

IBM made several developments in its RFID partner and product platform that should make software and hardware integration of the technology easier for firms, the company said. For starters, standards organization GS1 EPCglobal has certified the IBM WebSphere RFID Information Center as fully complian...

RFID has been a highly touted technology in recent years, but concerns about high costs and actual benefits have hindered its adoption. That's gradually changing as developers and vendors focus on systems design, development and interoperability of specific applications in the public and private sec...

The Oracle v. SAP intellectual property infringement lawsuit moved a step forward Tuesday, as Judge Martin Jenkins of the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California assigned a trial date and made other procedural decisions in the first case management conference between the two parti...

Thieves were able to breach the corporate databases of TJX Companies and steal millions of credit card numbers because the company retained too much information that was not properly secured, according to a report released Tuesday by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. TJX is the paren...

Customers who shop online at Walmart.com may soon have no way to speak with a live person over the phone to ask questions. Thanks to a new "Customer Contact Reduction" program, the retailer by next week will remove its toll-free customer service support number, according to a Tuesday report in the N...

With an eye toward minimizing its carbon footprint, Wal-Mart Stores will partner with the Carbon Disclosure Project to measure the amount of energy used to create products throughout its supply chain. An initial pilot project will focus on seven commonly used product categories -- DVDs, toothpaste, ...

SAS added a new application to its lineup of customer service analytical offerings. SAS Real Time Decision Manager embeds analytically driven decision logic at every customer interaction. The Decision Manager tool was introduced during Gartner's CRM conference this week, along with an updated versio...

The familiar adage that the consumer is always right has taken on a new meaning in the Internet age. Rather than talk with a store manager, consumers are now making their feelings about different products known on message boards and blogs. "Many companies tried to ignore the online forums, but most ...

SAP, which has developed and acquired a number of applications for small and medium-sized companies, added yet another to its line up. SAP Business ByDesign is an on-demand enterprise suite aimed at companies with 100 to 500 employees that do not have strong internal IT support. The application prov...

Analytic software provider Verint released the first update of its Audiolog application since its acquisition of Mercom last year. A call recording and monitoring application designed for small and medium-sized business contact centers, Audiolog incorporates enterprise-level features that have been ...

Salesforce.com added two functional areas to its CRM and introduced its Force.com platform with the rollout of its Winter '08 release. The new product lines are Salesforce.com Content and Salesforce.com Ideas, which provide content management and a Web 2.0 environment for collaboration in the enterp...

The contact center has become the focal point of customer interaction. The method by which the customer interacts with the contact center dwarfs all other modes of interaction. Whether it occurs via phone, chat, e-mail, self-service Web or self-service IVR, the customer is inundating the contact cen...

Bank of America has quietly raised ATM fees it charges noncustomers to $3. The bank has more than 16,000 national branch location machines; of these, some 6,000 are located in such public places as malls, movie theaters and stadiums. Fees to use these ATMs will remain $2. The bank raised its fee to ...