How are things?
Microsoft challenges Salesforce in hosted CRM
VNUNet.com - Mar 30, 2006
com in hostedcustomer relationship management (CRM) systems, by announcing a new version ofits own Dynamics CRM product to be hosted by members of its global partnercommunity. The Dynamics CRM Professional Edition for Service Providers, announced atMicrosoft’s Convergence event in Dallas, will feature the same roles-based userinterface and integration with Outlook as the on-premises version, and willprovide enhanced manageability, said Dynamics CRM product marketing directorKevin Faulkner. Microsoft has been working with service providers, software vendors andresellers on an early-adopter programme since it announced its decision totarget the sector last December, according to Faulkner. The product shares the same code base and business logic as the on-premisesversion, enabling firms to migrate easily from one to the other, as theirbusiness needs change.
http://www.vnunet.com/itweek/news/2153093/microsoft-challenges-salesforce
Microsoft building out hosted CRM capabilities
InfoWorld - Apr 3, 2006
0 product last week, dubbed the Professional Edition for Service Providers. Unveiled at Convergence, the Microsoft Business Solutions Group’s annual customer show, the new release includes application connectors to Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and Siebel, as well as to Microsoft’s own Dynamics GP, NAV, and AX business applications. In addition, the connectors can be used in a hosted single-tenancy mode, which will allow service providers to provision the CRM package prior to an on-site customer installation. “With this pre-provisioning you can set up a system and configure it to Exchange server before you even know who the customer is,” said Kevin Faulkner, product marketing director for Dynamics at Microsoft.
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/06/04/03/76892_14NNmscrm_1.html&source=searchresult
PC World - Partners Craft Office Live Add-ons
PC World - Apr 5, 2006
Microsoft has said Office Live will be available in three flavors. Office Live Basic is a free, ad-supported service that will give small businesses a basic Web presence and e-mail accounts. Office Live Essentials, which will cost about $30 a month, adds collaboration capabilities and 22 applications such as CRM, project management, calendaring and employee management. A third service plan, Office Live Collaboration, is for companies that already have their own Web presence, but want all of the collaboration and applications. It also will cost about $30 monthly. Building Block for Business Roger Otterson is president of Qualitec, a consulting firm in San Diego that specializes in small businesses that also is working with Microsoft to provide add-on applications for Office Live. Some Microsoft partners may see Office Live as a service.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125318,00.asp
SugarCRM offers support to open-source users
InfoWorld - Apr 5, 2006
As part of that deal, SugarCRM is due to release version 4. 5 of its CRM software under the Microsoft Community License. The license is part of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative, a program for sharing source code with customers, partners and governments. 5 is in "middevelopment right now," and should appear in June with support for Microsoft's SQL Server database according to Roberts.
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/06/04/05/77146_HNsugarcrm_1.html
Keeping Up with the Googles
BusinessWeek - Mar 30, 2006
's Windows Vista operating system until next year makes the software giant look like a dinosaur stuck in the tar, but that's not the whole picture. Its efforts to match the Googles of the world with fast online innovations.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2006/tc20060330_055915.htm
The move to open source is good for BZ Results
InfoWorld - Apr 3, 2006
He cites the frequent, fast security updates available for Apache servers as an example of how the open source community delivers faster than traditional providers. Although many commercial application vendors and service providers offer low-cost options, Lackey doesn’t trust them. He compares the operational stability and reliability of the open source MySQL database and SugarCRM application to the problems he had using an earlier, proprietary CRM server, which went through seven updates before it functioned correctly. Likewise, he’s dubious about the reliability of SaaS (software as a service), a misgiving he feels the multiday outages that Salesforce. com experienced earlier this year confirmed. BZ delivers online marketing workflow management platforms for auto dealerships to help them serve customers via the Web. As such, Lackey says it’s critical for his company to have a strong technology platform... For example, a key advantage of SugarCRM was the portability of its data set. “We need to share with other tools. We’re not restricted to whether the Salesforce API is up or down, and we don’t have to worry about what platform we have, as we would for Microsoft SQL.
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/06/04/03/76518_14FEosscasebzr_1.html
SAP Bulks Up - Forbes.com
Forbes - Apr 3, 2006
How big of a threat do they pose to your business?I see them as a huge threat to themselves. You have a company that has obviously run out of ideas in their core business, which is their database business--that's their DNA. When they realized that it was becoming commoditized, prices were beginning to drop, strong competition from market leaders like Microsoft (nasdaq:.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/04/03/sap-oracle-ellison_cx_df_0403sap.html
Dear Subscriber to TheStreet.com Stocks Under $10,
thestreet.com - Mar 31, 2006
Now let's take a look at the portfolio and some of the
moves we made this week. One quick note: Ones are stocks we would buy now, while
Twos are stocks we would buy only on a pullback from
current levels. And as a reminder:
-- A Game Breaker is going to change the landscape of an
industry, as Intel, Microsoft and Wal-Mart did in their
sectors. Investors can make big money in these stocks by
getting in before the crowd. -- Inflection Point stocks have a broken business model
that's on the mend but has yet to be recognized by the
market. Investors who recognize a turnaround early can
pocket strong returns. -- Stealth Stocks are often unknown names to the general
public, but can be hugely profitable investments,
especially when they score well in the Alpha component of
our proprietary rating system... 87, 300 shares,
4. 25%, Stealth Stock): The company is an emerging player
in the on-demand customer relationship management (CRM)
space. On Monday, the company announced that its on-demand
CRM technology being used by the U. Department of
Agriculture's Farm Service Agency (FSA) has enabled the
agency to cut its email volume from 3,000 per week to 40
per week by filtering out spam. RightNow has been boosting
its customer base and sales in each of the past few years
and is on track to deliver nearly 50% sales bookings
growth in 2006, based on management guidance from its
fourth-quarter earnings conference call. This strong
growth will increase earnings and cash flow in 2006 and
beyond, which should drive the stock closer to $20 a share
in the coming 12 months.
http://www.thestreet.com/k/su/_googlen/archives/200603311656.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN&cm_cat=SU&cm_ite=003966
Shunra's network-testing crystal ball gets better
InfoWorld - Mar 31, 2006
I finally got it installed on a clean XP PC without any trouble. Shunra’s magic starts with VE Modeler. VE Modeler uses Microsoft Visio as its drawing board for the test topology, and has custom Visio shapes to define end points, multi-network gateways, QoS gateways, and WAN clouds. All of these symbols have user-definable properties so that they accurately represent each part of the WAN to be tested. For instance, the WAN cloud defines latency, packet loss and other link faults, and the gateways define link speeds, queuing options, and bandwidth utilization. IT can link any number of symbols to create as simple or complex a WAN simulation as needed. This release features a couple of new shapes that really spice up WAN simulation.
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/06/03/31/76789_14TCshunra_1.html
See you later.
