The Week in Review: July 3, 2003

In the news... The new Yankee Group research report, "Enterprise Instant Messaging is All About Integration" finds that instant messaging as a form of communication within and between enterprises and their clients, prospects, and partners is growing steadily. But companies offering instant messaging technology and platforms are unlikely to succeed unless they can integrate messaging seamlessly with other enterprise applications, the report warns. "The killer app of enterprise instant messaging is the integration of the presence-awareness functionality into other forms of mission-critical applications used inside the corporation," Paul Ritter, program manager for Internet Business Strategies at the Yankee Group, said in a statement. "Companies, such as AOL, IBM Lotus, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, have made enormous investments in their own technology and infrastructure, and the success of their instant messaging initiatives is related to how well each of them can align with the right partners and integrate presence awareness seamlessly into a variety of other applications." Impact Information Technologies, an IBM value-added reseller, announced that it has expanded its software portfolio with the acquisition of Arcidea, a software developer specializing in CRM and ERM business solutions for the energy, transportation, medical supply, manufacturing, and financial services industries. With clients throughout North America, Impact IT also expands its geographic presence beyond its traditional East Coast--target markets. Amdocs announced the completion of its previously announced acquisition of Bell Canada's ownership interest in Certen for Can$89 million. As part of this transaction Certen will extend its billing-operations outsourcing agreement with Bell Canada by three years, to December 2010. Executive changes... Pivotal has added Eric Rosenfeld to its board of directors. Rosenfeld is currently president and CEO of Crescendo Partners, an investment firm. The Help Desk Institute (HDI) this week announced the appointment of Harold Goldberg, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Remedy, to the HDI Strategic Advisory Board for a one-year term. Dunnhumby USA, an analytics provider, has appointed Steve Goodroe as CEO of the company. Goodroe most recently served as vice president of global customer marketing at P&G. The Jerome Group, a provider of direct marketing and CRM solutions, has opened new East and West Coast offices. Michael Newman will serve as vice president for the western region, and Rob Renick will be vice president for the eastern region. Newman is a 25-year direct marketing and advertising veteran who has held a number of executive direct-marketing positions, while Renick is an 18-year industry veteran and has held numerous business development and sales positions, most recently with O'Neil Data Systems.