July 5, 2005

IN THE NEWS Concerto Software will purchase Aspect Communications for approximately $1 billion dollars. Under the terms of the agreement Aspect shareholders will receive $11.60 in cash for each share of common stock. The transaction will form the largest company solely focused on contact center products and services. The merger will combine Concerto's reputation in predictive dialing and unified contact center systems with Aspect's experience in contact center workforce management applications and performance analytics. "With greater resources and scale, we will offer customers a more robust product suite, an expanded services and support infrastructure, and increased investment in research and development making the new company uniquely positioned to be the contact center solutions provider of choice," says Concerto President and CEO James D. Foy in a statement. The transaction has been approved by Aspect's board of directors and is expected to close as early as September 2005. Aspect will no longer be publicly traded after the deal goes through. Amdocs has acquired DST Interactive, a provider of customer care and billing solutions to broadband media companies, from DST Systems. The acquisition is an all-cash transaction in which Amdocs has acquired all common stock of DST Innovis for approximately $238 million. NPD Group, a provider of consumer and retail information, has acquired STS Market Research, a market research company serving the fashion industry. As part of the acquisition, NPD has also acquired the STS longitudinal research panel, AccuPanel. The transaction was completed July 1, 2005. Because of this NPD will now offer longitudinal tracking through AccuPanel. DST Innovis will operate as the Broadband Cable and Satellite division within Amdocs and will have global responsibility for the broadband media market. NEW PRODUCTS SmartCompany has released SmartCompany 4.0, which includes productivity improvements for SMBs. Enhancements include new email integration to allow users to compose and send email attachments, the ability to attach emails to accounts, contacts, projects, opportunities, and orders. Users also will have the ability to send email blasts to designated contact groups in support of marketing. Infomill and Cognito have formed a partnership program in which they will deliver a mobile solution providing customers with an integrated system for real-time parts identification and remote ordering. The agreement will integrate Infomill's flagship product, PartsArena, which allows technical information to be stored and accessed on a Pocket PC, and Cognito's Activus, a managed mobile data product suite. IBM has released a new solution to help banks renovate their back offices. The new Core Systems Transformation solutions are a comprehensive portfolio of transaction processing platforms and services from IBM. The solution allows banks to migrate their back-office systems to an on-demand format. .ON THE MOVE Network Intelligencehas appointed Keith Bartlett to the position of vice president of business development. Prior to Network Intelligence, Bartlett headed enterprise sales for GeoTrust, a provider of identity verification and trust services for e-business. CUSTOMER WINS Parature will provide California College for Health Sciences with an answer to the institution's support requests over the phone and through email. Parature will provide the college with a multichannel, self-service on-demand solution to enable students to answer their own questions via self-service programs. Related articles: The 2005 Service Excellence Award IBM Partners With SaaS Providers Amdocs Dials Up Telecommunication Integration