Significant Industry Announcements

Frontrange (9/28/04) announced the acquisition of Cayo Communications, a contact center solutions provider. The move is intended to fortify FrontRange’s delivery of its Contact Center solutions family and the IP Contact Center module within the solutions family.

Salesforce.com (9/29/04) announced Supportforce.com, with the support of contact center infrastructure providers including Avaya, Cisco Systems, Alcatel, Aspect Communications and Genesys. According to Salesforce.com executives, companies now can manage and share customer service and support information on demand through call centers, contact centers, help desks, virtual at-home agents and other customer service operations.

Best Software (10/4/04) introduced SalesLogix for Pocket PC with real-time wireless support. The product supports account, contact, opportunity and service ticket management functionalities, allows sales reps to create, add and update contact and account information, including opportunity data and service tickets, and manage activities with a visual drag-and-drop calendar.

Salesnet (10/4/05) announced new on-demand products including global and offline editions, data duplication and cleansing services, and an industry-specific application for automobile dealers. Other general product enhancements include infrastructure improvements for additional scalability, system redundancy and performance, and security.

Pragmatech (10/4/04) announced the release of ConnectionCenter, a solution that provides bidirectional integration between the company’s sales productivity solutions and CRM applications. With this bidirectional information exchange, organizations gain visibility into the volume and content of sales documents generated by their sales force.

Callidus (10/5/04) announced a five-year extension of its OEM agreement with Actuate Corporation, a maker of enterprise reporting applications. The partnership provides Callidus customers with reporting and analysis tools and a set of configuration and scalability options.

Siebel Systems (10/5/04) announced a five-year agreement with IBM to create a global delivery center. IBM and Siebel will create a delivery environment that uses methodologies and a range of tools from IBM and Siebel Professional Services implementation practices to deliver CRM solutions on a worldwide basis.