The Week in Review: September 5, 2003

In the news... PeopleSoft Thursday held a meeting with analysts to discus the way the company will market products now that its merger with J.D. Edwards has closed. The former J.D. Edwards mid-market product suite will be branded PeopleSoft EnterpriseOne, while its enterprise suite has been dubbed PeopleSoft Enterprise. Kevin Parker, PeopleSoft CFO, said that the merger is expected to result in annual cost savings of up to $207 million, earnings of up to 95 cents per share, and annual revenue for 2004 of nearly $3 billion. Craig Conway, president and CEO at PeopleSoft, notes that the merger is not the only thing fuelling PeopleSoft's momentum: "The story of PeopleSoft in 2003 is not just about J.D. Edwards," he says. "We released eight brand new CRM products as well." HP this week announced it will acquire Talking Blocks, a privately held Service Oriented Architecture and Web-services management software company. HP says the move will add more functionality to HP's Web Services Management Framework, a key tool in the company's integration initiative it is calling the HP Adaptive Strategy. A California district court this week dismissed a patent infringement case Business Objects sought against business intelligence vendor MicroStrategy, stating that the charges were unfounded. Business Objects was seeking $100 million in damages, alleging that MicroStrategy infringed United States Patent No. 5,555,403, entitled "Relational Database Access System Using Semantically Dynamic Objects," owned by Business Objects. Elix, a provider of contact center solutions, today announced the launch of an online benchmark study specifically designed for contact centers. This Web-based benchmark study, available on Elix's website, www.elixonline.com, enables contact center managers to enter specifics about their contact center and quickly obtain comparative results with other contact centers, worldwide. Executive changes... iPhrase Technologies, a provider of self-service search and navigation software, has announced that Daniel A. Keshian, venture partner with Greylock, has been named chairman of the board and CEO of the company. Inquisite, a provider of Web-survey technology and services, has appointed three key executives to lead its global sales, marketing and operations. Meg Murphy will serve as president, and Dan Easton will become vice president. Murphy succeeds Jim Martin, who was appointed to the newly created position of CEO. Prior to joining Inquisite Murphy held several key positions at Datametrics Systems, while Easton was a consultant for Catapult Systems. Prior to joining Inquisite Martin managed the product-development team for Advanced Solutions International. TuVox, provider of Conversational Voice Response applications for call centers, has appointed Christoph Mosing vice president of professional services. Prior to joining TuVox, Mosing was executive vice president enterprise solutions at Convey Software.