The Week in Review: May 16

In the news... NetLedger has announced a strategic partnership with Net Return, an online service provider in Australia, to bring NetLedger's hosted business management application, NetSuite, to Australia. NetLedger is looking to capitalize on what it feels is an underserved market in Australia in terms of integrated front-office and back-office applications. Unica Corporation, a provider of enterprise marketing management solutions, today announced it acquired Marketic, a campaign management software vendor and a subsidiary of Groupe DDB of France. Through the acquisition of Marketic, Unica will gain more than 100 customers in such verticals as financial services, retail, and telecommunications. Unica will continue to sell Marketic solutions, which include software for campaign management and loyalty marketing. In addition, Marketic's customers will benefit from Unica's Affinium Suite's capabilities, including predictive analysis, data mining, multichannel campaign optimization, real-time event triggers, and marketing content management, the company says. KANA, a provider of enterprise customer support and communications applications, announced the results of two recent examinations of the state of online customer service. The studies found that the public sector continues to lag behind private sector organizations in responsiveness to customer emails, and in availability and access to information online. The studies also reveal that the high-tech industry leads all other industries when it comes to using customer self-service technologies. The Sphaero Alliance was launched this week to meet the increasing information and service demands by corporate decision-makers in the United States who may be interested in outsourcing contact center operations to companies in the Caribbean, based on such requirements as level of proficiency, preparedness of its peoples, and geographic proximity. Contact center members include ICT Group, AllianceOne, Touchpoint Centers International, Technion Caribbean, DirecOne, St.Kitts SKG, Helen IT, and Atlantic Tele-Center, a fully owned subsidiary of Atlantic Tele-Network. Included in the charter members are telecommunications technology providers Nortel Networks and Avaya. Executive changes... Oracle Corporation announced that software industry analyst Charles Phillips will leave Morgan Stanley to join Oracle as executive vice president in the office of the CEO. Salesforce.com has announced that Lawrence Tomlinson, senior vice president and treasurer for Hewlett-Packard Company, has been elected to Salesforce.com's board of directors. SEDONA Corporation, a provider of Internet-based CRM solutions for small and midsize financial services organizations, announced that its board of directors has named David Vey as chairman of the board. Nuasis, a new software company in the emerging Internet Protocol contact center market, has announced the appointment of Karen Smith as vice president of sales. Unveil Technologies, a developer of customer self-service software applications for contact centers, announced that Joseph Murphy has joined the company's senior management team as executive vice president of worldwide sales and service. Willow CSN, a provider of virtual contact center management solutions through the use of home-based customer service representatives, announced this week that Michael Williams has joined the company as the senior vice president of business development. Made2Manage Systems, a provider of enterprise software for small and midsize manufacturers and distributors, announced the appointment of Scott Heil to vice president, development.