October 11, 2005

IN THE NEWS Allen Bonde Group and eVergance Partners have agreed to deliver end-to-end consulting services for CRM optimization and Web self-service. As part of the agreement ABG's president and founder, Allen Bonde, will join eVergance as the firm's new senior vice president of strategy and marketing. "We started focused on the vendor side and [on a] boutique analyst model, where we would track vendors, trends, and publish research," Bonde says. "But over the last year, the mix of our business has shifted more to helping banks [and] telcos with their strategy for self-service." ABG's advisory services, industry research, and vendor scorecards will now be provided as part of the ABG Insights service from eVergance. ABG will have an expanded set of studies, according to Bonde, and will focus more on self-service readiness and strategy initiatives with end-user companies. Oracle has acquired Finland-based Innobase, a developer of open source transactional database technology. Oracle intends to continue developing Innobase technology and to expand its commitment to open source software, according to the company. InnoDB, Innobase's flagship product, is a distributed part of the MySQL database. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. BEA Systems acquired ConnecTerra, a privately held provider of RFID middleware technology. The deal is designed to immediately extend the range of the BEA infrastructure portfolio to easily integrate RFID and other device data to a company's business unit, applications, and processes. Financial terms were not disclosed. Exact Software has completed the acquisition of Vanguard Solutions Group. The deal will enable Exact Software to fully address the growing needs within the midmarket for business analytics capabilities. Vanguard Solutions will become a division of Exact Software North America. Vanguard will continue to develop and distribute the Vanguard Graphical Performance Series solution. Microsoft has acquired certain intellectual property assets from Unveil Technologies, a developer of enterprise call center technology. Microsoft will incorporate the Adaptive Learning and Conversation Assist components of the Unveil Conversation Suite into future versions of Microsoft Speech Server. NEW PRODUCTS Siebel Systems has launched CRM Index for SMBs. It is based on data from independent research conducted by Datamonitor. The CRM Index is a benchmark solution that will provide ongoing performance metrics for the SMB market, according to the company, along with an online tool that enables SMBs to understand and measure how well they attract, manage, and service their customers. It will allow any organization to benchmark its CRM practice against 1,000 other companies. ON THE MOVE Fluency Voice has appointed Jacob Abboud vice president of product development. Abboud will head the development and management of the Fluency's technology. Related articles: Big Blue and Siebel Bolster Their SOA Do It Yourself Self-service done right--in the right enterprise--can return some real benefits. Here, a review of the five top vendors with robust, integrated solutions.