The Week in Review: February 6, 2004

In the news... Oracle on Wednesday raised its unsolicited takeover offer for PeopleSoft to $26 per share, up significantly over its previous offer, which it had extended several times, of $19.50 per share. This brings the offer price to roughly $10 billion, reiterating just how serious Oracle is in its attempt to acquire its rival. However, the Department of Justice has yet to rule on the legality of such a transaction, so Oracle's attempts may prove fruitless once the DOJ makes its ruling. A vast majority of companies (89 percent) moving IT, business processes, and contact center work offshore reported that they are satisfied with their offshoring initiatives, according to new research findings by the Weissman Center for International Business, at Baruch College, and The Paaras Group. However, many challenges abound. Knowledge transfer and internal commitment were identified as the major challenges in launching offshore initiatives, which companies said need to be addressed early on to ensure success. Companies cited cost savings as the main goal of offshoring in 2003, followed by accessing skilled resources and improving quality. Verity, a provider of intellectual capital-management software, has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Cardiff Software in a transaction worth approximately $50 million in cash. "With this acquisition, Verity has the opportunity to leverage its leadership in the search, classification, and recommendation categories of intellectual-capital management and extend it to content capture, e-forms and business process automation," Anthony J. Bettencourt, Verity's president and CEO said in a statement. "We view the ability to market Verity products into Cardiff's installed base and Cardiff's products into Verity's, to be a tremendous opportunity to cross-sell." RIM announced this week that it has reached a major milestone: The company's BlackBerry wireless platform now has more than one million active subscribers. Deals of the week Sprint and IBM this week announced a five-year, multibillion dollar customer-service agreement between Sprint and IBM Business Consulting Services, wherein IBM BCS will help Sprint provide the best possible service to its customer base. Interface Software announced that First Albany Companies, an investment bank with over 400 employees, has selected Interface Software as the centerpiece of the firm's CRM strategy. Liberty Wireless has selected an outsourced, automated customer-care system from BeVocal. Vitria, a provider of business process integration solutions, has chosen NetSuite to automate a portion of its sales and marketing operations. Executive changes Macdonald Consulting Group has announced that Charlie Kemmerer, former president of Kemmerer & Associates, has joined MCG as vice president of CRM practice. Cincom Systems announced that Brian Huff, former lead analyst of Datamonitor's U.S. technology practice, has joined the company as marketing manager for its customer experience management technology group. Rockwell FirstPoint Contact has named Stephanie Dietz regional vice president for the northeastern region of the U.S. She comes to Rockwell from Nortel, where she served as vice president of sales.