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IP Telephony and SMBs: A Question of Security Though the IP telephony quality issues that had concerned SMBs have largely been solved, more than half are still wary of IP telephony security issues, according to a new study by the Computing Technology Industry Association. The research on security concerns is contained in a study on a variety of telecommunications and data conversion issues. The survey of 350 companies with 500 or fewer employees found that just 50 percent of those businesses trust the security offered today by IP telephony product and solution vendors. That's a slight improvement from a year ago, when 48 percent of those surveyed said they trusted IP telephony security. But IP telephony still lags behind traditional telephony systems (82 percent), Ethernet data networks (72 percent), and wireless LANs (60 percent) in the security confidence level these businesses have, according to the survey.

Avaya Begins an Ascent Avaya, a provider of Internet protocol telephony systems, announced that it will be tailoring its fit for the retail industry. With the new solution, Avaya Integrated Management for IP Office, the company extends its retail focus to help growing chains reduce costs while improving customer service. As part of the release, Avaya has come out with separate products for both very large and midsize retail chains. The release marks one step in Avaya's product plan to develop solutions specifically targeted to individual industries.

Salesforce.com Keeps Its Apex Promise Salesforce.com hit its deadline with the release of the Apex on-demand platform. Apex, which will be delivered with Salesforce Winter '07, was announced in October 2006 at the company's Dreamforce conference. According to the company, the release of Apex will advance both the depth and breadth of on-demand business applications by making it less risky and expensive for smaller companies to develop on-demand applications. Now that Apex has become available, the market will see whether the platform and code will truly jump-start a fully on-demand world or if it will stand primarily as a tool for small businesses.

Infor Is the Top Performer in Performance Management The performance management market is maturing, and leaders are beginning to emerge and consolidate their positions, according to the "2007 Performance Management Vendor and Product Scorecard," a research report from Ventana Research. Results of the research show Infor to be the overall leader in the field, scoring 97 percent compliance with Ventana's PerformanceCycle methodology. Close on Infor's heels were Cognos and Symphony-Metreo, tied for second place with 94 percent overall. Business Objects, with its 90 percent score, rounded out the top end of the competition.

High-Tech Wages Are on the Upswing The battle for attracting high-impact talent in tech-based industries is showing no signs of coming to a halt in the new year--it's expected to continue in 2007, leading to rising wages, according to market analysis from talent and outsourcing services provider Yoh, a unit of Day & Zimmermann. Particularly in the software development space, Yoh contends that there will be demand for Business Objects, Java, and MS developers, as well as SAS programmers. The firm also says that a steady stream of upgrades by ERP vendors and enhanced adoption of standardized enterprise SOA platforms are creating substantial demand for talent like Oracle and SAP consultants and experienced database administrators. (For the full stories and more news, visit destinationCRM.com.)

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