The notion of a “rising star” can take many forms: the brazen upstart, the popular youngster, even a revitalized giant. The common thread is that these are companies that are having—and will keep having—an impact on the rest of the CRM marketplace, whether they intend to or not. In fact, several of this year’s Rising Stars aren’t even CRM companies at all—not by any strict definition, that is. But they’re all innovators in their own right—and they reflect and embody the CRM industry’s commitment to excellence.

The magazine named eight Rising Stars for the year:

    * Apple, a burgeoning player in the industry;
    * Marketo, a software firm bridging sales and marketing;
    * platform developer nGenera (which recently acquired Talisma);
    * Ribbit, a provider of voice services (recently acquired by BT);
    * social-networking developer Trampoline Systems;
    * the microblogging site Twitter; and
    * billing-as-a-service providers Aria Systems and Zuora.

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