NEW YORK, August 24, 2009 — CRM magazine, the industry's leading publication, announced the winners of its 2009 CRM Market Awards here today, in conjunction with the magazine's CRM Evolution 2009 conference.

Watch some of our winners accepting their award.

With its eighth annual CRM Market Awards, CRM magazine honors the vendors, consultants, and end-user companies that focus on customer relationships and the customer experience through the sophisticated integration of people, processes, and technologies. In each of 10 categories, the magazine named one Market Winner, denoting the highest score compared to its peers. Each category also produced four Market Leader awards and "One to Watch."

"To stay competitive in a challenging economy, companies must come up with innovative ways to improve their customer relationship efforts. This is exactly what the recipients of the 2009 CRM Market Awards have done," said David Myron, CRM magazine's editorial director. "Congratulations to this year's award recipients for their achievements over the last year. May their CRM efforts continue to succeed."

Recipients were determined through an extensive three-month process and a proprietary rating formula that involves industry analysts, financial and corporate information, product and functionality assessments, and scores reflecting customer satisfaction.

• Enterprise Suite CRM - Winner: Salesforce.com
  Leaders: Microsoft, Oracle, RightNow Technologies, SAP
  One to Watch: NetSuite

• Midmarket Suite CRM - Winner: Salesforce.com
  Leaders: Microsoft, Oracle, RightNow Technologies, Sage
  One to Watch: NetSuite

• Small-Business Suite CRM - Winner: Salesforce.com
  Leaders: Maximizer Software, NetSuite, Sage, Zoho
  One to Watch: SugarCRM

• Sales Force Automation - Winner: Salesforce.com
  Leaders: Microsoft, Oracle, RightNow Technologies, SAP
  One to Watch: NetSuite

• Incentive Management - Winner: Xactly
  Leaders: Callidus Software, Merced Systems, Synygy, Varicent Software
  One to Watch: Makana Solutions

• Marketing Solutions - Winner: SAS Institute
  Leaders: Alterian, Eloqua, Silverpop, Unica
  One to Watch: Marketo

• Business Intelligence - Winner: IBM's Cognos Software
  Leaders: Information Builders, Oracle, SAP BusinessObjects, SAS Institute
  One to Watch: Microsoft

• Data Quality - Winner: SAS Institute's DataFlux
  Leaders: IBM Information Integration Solutions, Informatica, SAP, Trillium Software (Harte-Hanks)
  One to Watch: Pitney Bowes Business Insight

• Open-Source CRM - Winner: SugarCRM
  Leaders: Compiere, Concursive, SplendidCRM, xTuple
  One to Watch: vTiger

• Consultancies - Winner: Deloitte
  Leaders: Accenture, Capgemini, Hitachi Consulting, IBM Global Business Services
  Ones to Watch: Appirio and Bluewolf

Eight members of the CRM community were named by the magazine as 2009 Influential Leaders:

• Marc Benioff, cofounder, chairman, and chief executive officer at Salesforce.com;
• Chris Brogan, president of New Marketing Labs and social media thought leader;
• Tony Hsieh, chief executive officer at online-retailing trailblazer Zappos.com;
• Guy Kawasaki, author and cofounder of aggregation site Alltop;
• Anthony Lye, senior vice president for CRM at Oracle;
• Ross Mayfield, chairman, president, and cofounder at collaboration specialist Socialtext;
• Tim O'Reilly, founder and chief executive officer at publisher and event producer O'Reilly Media; and
• Jeremiah Owyang, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.

The magazine also named six Rising Stars for the year:

• social networking behemoth Facebook;
• search-engine giant Google;
• InsideView, which aggregates third-party data;
• Jigsaw, which relies on its own community to cleanse contact information;
• Lithium Technologies, a community-platform provider; and
• Visible Technologies, which offers brand monitoring and social media analysis.

Last, but perhaps most imporant, the magazine named four customer implementations as winners of its CRM Elite Award:

• ISS Belgium, for a large-scale Microsoft Dynamics CRM rollout;
• NBC Universal, for a sales and marketing effort using Salesforce.com;
• ShipServ, for its holistic use of Marketo, Salesforce.com, and social media; and
• Wrigleyville Sports, for its NetSuite e-commerce success.

The 2009 CRM Market Awards are being presented at the CRM Evolution 2009 conference at the Marriott Marquis in New York (http://www.destinationCRM.com/evolution). An expanded version of the results have been published in the September 2009 issue of CRM magazine — available in print and, as of September 1, 2009, in digital NXTBook format (http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0909/index.php) and online at http://www.destinationCRM.com.

About CRM magazine

CRM magazine is the leading publication of the customer relationship management industry, covering sales, marketing, customer service, and strategy. The magazine also administers and hosts the annual CRM Evolution conference. Each of these properties is designed to serve customer-centric business initiatives, and leaders who recognize CRM as a key strategy for creating enhanced customer value in any industry. For more information about the magazine, its editorial calendar, or CRM in general, please visit us on the Web at http://www.destinationCRM.com, or on Twitter at @CRM (http://twitter.com/CRM) and @destinationCRM (http://twitter.com/destinationCRM). The destinationCRM Web site (which is updated daily) and the monthly magazine are properties of CRM Media, a division of Information Today, Inc.

[Editors' Note: Earlier versions of this article misstated the name of Chris Brogan's firm. It should read -- and now does read -- "president of New Marketing Labs." The editors regret the error.]