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Thanks to the increased processing power of today's microprocessors and significantly improved data access and storage technology, it has become easier than ever to apply some rather sophisticated statistical analyses to better understand both business processes and customer behavior. However, the r...

In the not-so-distant future, the mundane will become borderline miraculous. The home washing machine will order its own repairs and the sprinkler system will call you on your cell phone to say the lawn service has broken one of its water spouts and it is now wasting water. The car will tell you to ...

Autonomy has introduced a new contact center application, the Intelligent Contact Center, which provides a range of higher-end capabilities, including the ability to detect anger or emotion in a call, multichannel analysis at the point of interaction and real-time agent support. The rollout, Autonom...

In almost every industry, new entrants are constantly facing an uphill climb to take market share away from established players. Companies entering the Software-as-a-Service space can count on having additional challenges, according to a new report by Tier1 Research. Right now, there are more than 1...

In late November, AT&T's Sterling Commerce acquired Comergent, a competitor in the e-commerce/order hub management platform market, for $155 million in cash. The merger brought together two industry leading companies, though they operated on different orders of magnitude. In this interview with ...

Amdocs has overhauled the functionality in its flagship CRM-billing suite with the release of Amdocs 7 on Tuesday. Providing telcos with support for new convergence technology and services is chief among the new capabilities in the application. The system does not exclude any providers or service of...

I always chafe at the saying, "The proof is in the pudding" in part because it is a truncation of a longer phrase, but mostly because it means nothing by itself. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" is how the phrase really goes, and it is the one thing that came to mind when I heard about SA...

2006 was a quiet year for buyers and sellers of enterprise applications. There were no startling leaps of new functionality; no dramatic bids for competing vendors; and no large plunge in revenues thus prompting vendors to give way at the negotiating table. The year wasn't as quiet for small and me...

A year and a half after its first foray into the on-demand space, Kana has introduced the third leg of its Software-as-a-Service CRM suite -- a self-service application. This release is available as a stand-alone product or as part of an integrated suite of previously released SaaS applications that...

I had meetings last week with each of the big three on-demand CRM vendors -- Salesforce.com, RightNow and NetSuite -- and made some observations. Sometimes I get complaints from some of them when I mention more than one in an article because they like to pretend that they are unique. My grudging con...

Oracle on Tuesday upgraded its self-service offering with the release of Siebel Communications Billing Manager 5.1.1 and Siebel Communications Billing Analytics 5.1.1 -- applications built on Siebel's acquisition of eDocs in 2005. New changes to the systems will give users increased online access to...

In looking back at the last few years for the CRM industry, 2001 was the year Siebel reigned supreme; 2002 was the year the recession took hold and companies held off on new CRM and other IT investments; 2004 was the year of mergers and acquisitions; and 2005 was the year those firms that remained s...

Oracle on Tuesday released a new Critical Patch Update addressing 51 security flaws across a variety of its products. The release was Oracle's ninth such quarterly update, and was the first to be preannounced. The release was initially announced last Thursday. Included among the patches are securit...

SAP has introduced the next version of its mid marketing application, All-in-One. In this version, mySAP ERP 2005 has been used as the platform allowing for better implementation and integration of the CRM and SOA tools, Doug Merritt, executive vice president and general manager for suite optimizati...

Microsoft Dynamics is readying for this summer's launch of its next major CRM application -- a Software as a Service application that will be delivered on a multi-tenant platform. The rollout will enhance the competitive position of the division's CRM tools in the small and medium-sized businesses s...