The Week in Review: April 9, 2004

In the news... NetSuite announced a 99.5 percent guaranteed availability of its Web-based applications, applicable across the entire NetSuite family of application services. Under the terms of this guarantee, NetSuite customers will receive a credit for that month's service if NetSuite does not deliver its application services with 99.5 percent uptime, as measured on a customer-by-customer basis. Dendrite International has completed its acquisition of Medical Data Management (MDM), a provider of physician databases, market research, and sales force support services to pharmaceutical companies in Hungary, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine. The acquisition is expected to provide Dendrite with improvements in sales and marketing services, geographical expansion and access to new customers, and management and operational experience. Hitachi Consulting announced its acquisition of business intelligence specialist Aspirity LLC. "Our clients are looking to gain better leverage of their information resources, whether customer, enterprise, or supplier centric," says Carr Krueger, vice president and head of Hitachi Consulting's national business intelligence practice. "Aspirity's skills and experience allow us to take those solutions to more clients in more industries." Keynote Systems, a provider of Web performance measurement and management services, made public the acquisition of NetRaker, a developer of online customer experience management solutions. Keynote has integrated NetRaker's solutions in online opt-in and directed customer experience management with its WebEffective, a solution to capture and understand the behavior of site visitors, creating the Keynote WebEffective Intelligence Platform (WIP). WIP measures and tests e-business performance by delivering market research, usability, and Web analytics -- either as a managed research application, or as an appliance that can be hosted internally by the client. Identitech has recast itself as FYI Corporation, a move that reflects the company's plan to focus exclusively on interactive data visualization for the real-time enterprise. The company has also released the FYI Visual 1.5, the newest version of its solution allowing organizations to transform high volumes of complex data into usable information. Deals of the week... Hawaiian Airlines announced that it will deploy Salesforce.com's on-demand solution, integrating it with Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel applications. Justice Technology Services (JTS), the IT sector of the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, has selected Cognos solutions to monitor IT service performance and compliance. Cerado, a provider of sales force information services, announced that Paxonix, a packaging development technology company, has chosen Cerado's Sales Force Information Service as the basis for its sales force information strategy. Unica has announced that Dollar Bank, an independent bank, has chosen Unica's Affinium 6 to increase personalization across its multichannel marketing campaigns. Experian, a global information solutions company, announced that its Truvue linkage technology has been selected by The J. Jill Group to provide a 360-degree view of its customers and prospects. Executive changes... Supplementing Hitachi Consulting's recent acquisition of Aspirity, Hilary Feier, president of Aspirity, and Michael Luckevich, executive vice president of Aspirity, will become vice presidents in Hitachi Consulting's national Business Intelligence Solutions practice. Responsys, announced that former Modem Media executive Dan Springer has joined the company as its CEO. Michael Liess has been appointed president of GlobalWare Solutions. Liess had most recently served as chief operating officer of T/R Systems.