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Microsoft Dynamics Update Promises 'CRM Anywhere' February 06, 2012 Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its forthcoming service update to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which will be released in Q2 2012. The service update will build on Microsoft's rollouts last year in such areas as social CRM and mobile. "We are on the path to deliver a significant new set of capabilities," said Craig Dewar, director of Microsoft Dynamics CRM's product management group.

CRM Players' Accolades and Upgrades February 06, 2012 TeleTech has been placed in the "Leaders" quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant: Customer Management Contact Center BPO, Worldwide, 2011, and Yesmail has announced the release of its "Look Book" in celebration of its recent awards for mobile-scalable email design. Meanwhile, West Interactive and VBrick Systems have released major upgrades.

3 Painfully Common Misuses of CRM February 02, 2012 Every tool has a purpose. That's never more clear than when you see a neophyte do-it-yourselfer trying to use a tool for a purpose other than what it was designed for. For instance, anyone wielding a hammer while trying to fix a car's engine is probably not going to succeed.

Oracle Adds RightNow to Cloud Wars Arsenal January 30, 2012 Oracle has closed on its $1.5 billion acquisition of RightNow, developer of a cloud-based customer self-service application. Oracle announced the deal in October 2011. For Oracle, the deal makes eminent sense: It fills in a missing gap in its cloud-based CRM functionality and gives it a broader base from which to compete against Salesforce.com.

Big Data's Big Challenges for Content Management January 25, 2012 As many know, content is getting bigger -- way bigger -- and this is scary to many technologists. At the same time, it's also getting smarter. Applications are growing more complex, challenging IT pros as never before. How will these changes impact content management technologies? It's difficult to predict exactly, but there are insights to be found and used to plan for the future.

It's Showtime for CRM January 23, 2012 CSC and Infovisionix announced a new agreement at Retail's BIG Show 2012 in New York City. Under the agreement, Infovisionix's suite of retail reporting and analysis tools will be incorporated in CSC's Retail Enterprise Intelligence offering. The new capabilities will help retailers understand and improve key operational and customer performance metrics.

Blackbaud Gears Up for Next Enterprise CRM Release January 20, 2012 This was a big week for the Nasdaq-listed Blackbaud: The company announced its plans to acquire Convio, which offers a fund-raising application for nonprofits, for $275 million. The feature sets of the Convio application and Blackbaud's CRM software for the nonprofit space are complementary, to a large degree. The newly acquired technology will help Blackbaud further develop its user base.

IBM Hones Social Enterprise Tools January 17, 2012 IBM continues to carve out its own stake in the social enterprise app space -- a market forecast by Forrester Research to grow 61 percent each year to reach $6.4 billion by 2016 -- with the beta rollout of the next release of its enterprise social networking platform, IBM Connections.

Ensuring Software Quality Across a Global Supply Chain January 16, 2012 Companies commonly rely on a myriad of software suppliers, from internal teams that share and re-use code to third-party commercial software suppliers and outsourcing development partners. Companies are increasingly being held accountable by their customers for the quality and security of the complete product. Yet third-party code typically isn't tested with the same level of rigor as internally developed code.

Avaya Mobilizes Smooth Collaboration in IP Office 8.0 January 13, 2012 Avaya has released its IP Office 8.0 -- the latest iteration of its trademark unified communications platform for small and mid-sized businesses. The new application comes with a number of new features, some of which focus on the company's core competency of communications, collaboration and presence.

Oracle Makes Bold, Risky Move With Big Data Appliance Launch January 11, 2012 Oracle has released its Big Data Appliance, which it announced last year at Oracle OpenWorld. With no release date promised, the industry was surprised by its relative speed to market. Less surprising was Oracle's enlistment of Cloudera -- the leading provider of Hadoop system management tools -- to provide an Apache Hadoop distribution and tools for the appliance.

Ballmer Phones In Final CES Keynote January 10, 2012 Microsoft's Steve Ballmer delivered his final Consumer Electronics Show keynote in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Ballmer talked up Windows 8 and discussed additions to the Xbox platform and new Windows-based Nokia devices. The presentation, which featured "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest, kicked off the annual show.

Gartner Dims Growth Expectations for Global IT Spending in 2012 January 06, 2012 Gartner has released its global IT spending projections for 2012: It is forecasting a 3.7 percent increase from 2011 to $3.8 trillion. This forecast is a downward revision from its earlier 2012 outlook of 4.6 percent growth. Last year, IT spending clocked in at $3.7 trillion, which was up 6.9 percent from 2010 levels.

Oracle's Downward Spiral January 05, 2012 Let's be frank: The main reason Oracle's latest quarterly revenues nosedived was backlash from users fed up with two years of price hikes on products, technical support, maintenance and licensing contracts -- and not because of a correction in the overall server hardware market. Yes, it's true that the latest quarterly financials of other high-technology bellwethers also disappointed.

Microsoft Washes Its Hands of CES December 21, 2011 January's Consumer Electronics Show will be the last one Microsoft will attend. Announcing its decision on Wednesday, Microsoft's Frank Shaw said the company's product news milestones generally don't align with the timing of the show, which is regularly held in January.

Solving IBM's IT Conundrums: 'Integration' Is the Word December 20, 2011 If it's late November or early December, I'm usually traveling to or from Westchester County, New York, home of IBM and its Software Group and Systems and Technology Group's annual IT analyst confabs. In practical ways, these events tend to mirror one another; past strategies and solutions are trotted out for a quick going-over, current efforts are polished and examined, and future plans are discussed at some length.

The Role of CRM in Logistics Companies' IT Strategies, Part 3 December 19, 2011 The logistics industry is facing challenges in adopting a sustainable and profitable CRM strategy, and there is inertia when it comes to replacing or augmenting disparate CRM solutions adopted by different business units, like retail, as well as various channels, like phone, Web, email, etc.

Zoho Offers CRM Users an Easy Way In December 16, 2011 Zoho has rolled out a major update to its CRM app, completely redesigning the user interface and adding new social and productivity features. It is a massive overhaul, Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna told CRM Buyer -- one the company plans to extend to other applications throughout its business suite of products.

Top 5 Linux Predictions for 2012 December 13, 2011 Linux continues to grow both its reach and credibility among enterprise IT users and customers, bringing competition, price and time-to-market pressure and options to key markets such as cloud computing and mobile software. Looking at the coming year for Linux, these are the key areas to watch: cloud computing, Platform as a Service, Android, the automobile industry -- and not the desktop.

The Role of CRM in Logistics Companies' IT Strategies, Part 2 December 12, 2011 The mainframe application forms the core of the system where the bulk of the order processing takes place. The traditional mainframe UI in, say, SCOBOL (Screen COBOL) is being augmented/replaced through the front-ending applications built in VB, ASP, .Net, etc. The front-end screens fetch the customer account and order data from the mainframe database through custom connectors built in Java J2EE.