News in Brief

Gartner has reviewed the top midsize CRM vendors in its latest Magic Quadrant study. Onyx, Pivotal, and SalesLogix landed in the leader quadrant, while Salesforce.com, Microsoft CRM, and Oncontact were all named visionaries in the space. Challengers in the market were Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft. Gartner also identified a number of key niche players, including Epicor, FrontRange, and NetLedger. According to the report, to be included in the ranking the suites must have support for sales, customer service, and marketing automation. Gartner has also released two not-so-promising reports. One study claims that while executives are seeing a need to make the move toward enabling the real-time enterprise, most do not fully understand the concept. "A general intent to do everything a bit quicker will not only be a poor substitute, it will be damaging. Focus is key and companies can't afford to waste precious IT resources on generalizations," warns Mark Raskino, research director at Gartner. The other study claims that at least 50 percent of business intelligence projects under way in 2003 will be failures. The study says that understanding of the projects and adoption across the board will help drive higher success rates in the future. More than 60 percent of retail companies anticipate a significant increase in their expenditures for CRM during the next two years, according to the CRMretail Survey, conducted for the National Retail Federation by Gartner Dataquest, in conjunction with Ogden Associates. The study also found that 80 percent of retailers are endorsing CRM as a strategy to extend business, up from 74 percent last year. Also, 64 percent of retailers are using CRM to boost current initiatives, up from 62 percent last year. "This year's survey results show excellent progress on the CRM front, especially considering the harsh economic climate retailers have been facing," said Janet Murphy, president of Ogden Associates. "Retailers are continuing to invest heavily in CRM with loyalty programs and consumer-specific marketing." The speech recognition market is projected to increase to $897.8 million by the end of 2003, up from $677 million in 2002, says Allied Business Intelligence (ABI). Over the longer term the speech recognition market is forecasted to grow to $5.3 billion by 2008, according to a recent ABI study. According to Edward Rerisi, director of research at ABI, as users become more aware of the technology and recognize its benefits, "demand will help drive applications in carrier and embedded markets."