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CA to Acquire Eurekify
CA, Inc. announced it has signed a definitive agreement with Eurekify for CA to acquire Eurekify, a pioneer in identity and role management. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. CA has successfully collaborated with Eurekify for the past several months on the integration and sale of Eurekify technology as part of the larger CA Security Management Business Unit solution. The CA-Eurekify solution addresses the growing demand for a new generation of identity and access management (IAM) solutions that are business-centric. With this acquisition CA can deliver deeper product integration, and continued development and extension of products, particularly those that facilitate role-based, business-driven identity management and access control.

RightAnswers Launches Support Analyst and Self-Service Portal Version 5.0 for Their Unified Knowledge Suite
RightAnswers, Inc., a provider of knowledge-based self-service and support analyst solutions, announced the release of Support Analyst and Self-Service Portal version 5.0 for their Unified Knowledge Suite. With more than 100 enhancements, the new version enables organizations to improve their IT help desk and self-service operations, and empower users with knowledge-driven tools to find and resolve all types of issues. The RightAnswers Unified Knowledge Suite provides a "personalized" knowledge-driven self-service environment by capturing, combining, and enhancing an organization's diverse knowledge, and then delivering it in a consistent and accessible format.

Oracle Social CRM Momentum Continues With Oracle CRM Gadgets for Sales
Oracle unveiled Oracle CRM Gadgets for Sales - the first of the new Oracle CRM Gadgets that provide secure access to enterprise application data and services, as well as deliver a productive user experience through a combination of personal information, Internet content, phone conversations and enterprise data. With the unique capability of combining corporate data from an organization's CRM system and public data from the Internet, Oracle CRM Gadgets for Sales keeps the sales force better informed and manages user data seamlessly. The gadgets enable access of enterprise data even when disconnected from the network and updates user data automatically once a network presence is sensed.

Convergys Announces Intervoice Voice Portal 6 and Enables Mobile Self-Service
Convergys Corporation, a provider of relationship management solutions, announced Intervoice [R] Voice Portal 6.0 (IVP 6) and the introduction of its next-generation application creation environment -- Interaction Composer. With IVP 6, clients can now create highly personalized speech solutions, leveraging a set of rules and policies that can be easily constructed by integrating with the Convergys Dynamic Decisioning Solution. With this release, Convergys empowers enterprises to think differently about the customer experience by introducing a voice portal platform designed to facilitate the development of multimodal applications that enable mobile self-service.

Webinar: 7 Ways to Cut Costs and Improve Customer Service in a Down Economy

November 19, 2008 -- 11:00am PT/2:00pm EDT

In any economic situation, it's important that organizations continuously strive to improve the ways in which they deliver effective, efficient and high quality service and support to their customers.

Based upon current best practices and customer success stories, industry experts Pete McGarahan of McGarahan and Associates and Gary McNeil of Parature will present a prioritized checklist on how service and support organizations are delivering high quality - yet cost effective - services in our challenging economy.

Register Today!

All attendees will receive a copy of the white paper "7 Ways to Cut Costs and Improve Customer Service in a Down Economy".

Worldwide IT Spending Growth to Slow Significantly, But Remain Positive, in 2009
Worldwide spending on information technology will slow significantly in 2009 as a direct result of the global financial crisis that began in September 2008. According to a newly revised forecast from IDC, worldwide IT spending will grow 2.6% year over year in 2009, down from IDC's pre-crisis forecast of 5.9% growth. In the United States, IT spending is expected to decline to 0.9% in 2009, much lower than the 4.2% growth forecast in August.

On a regional basis, spending growth in Japan, Western Europe, and the United States will hover around 1% in 2009. In contrast, the emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America will continue to experience healthy growth, but at levels notably lower than the double-digit gains previously forecast. On a sector basis, software and services will enjoy solid growth while hardware spending, with the exception of storage, is expected to decline in 2009.

Looking beyond 2009, IDC expects IT spending to make a full recovery by the end of the forecast period with growth rates approaching 6.0% in 2012. Despite these gains, IDC estimates that more than $300 billion in industry revenues will have been lost due to slower spending over the next four years.

In light of the uncertainties associated with the ongoing financial crisis, IDC also developed a downside scenario to help executives plan for a situation where the impact of the crisis is more pronounced. In this scenario, IDC lowered the forecast for worldwide GDP growth in 2009 to 0.3%, which is 1.5% lower than the current forecast and worse than any year since World War II. This produced a forecast of 0.1% growth in worldwide IT spending in 2009 with negative growth in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.

More...

New Report From the PELORUS Group Projects Global Sales of Contact Center Recording Systems to Reach $1.37 Billion in 2012
The PELORUS Group announced the release of 2008 World Contact Center Recording Systems Market. Based on interviews with all major vendors and exhaustive secondary research, the report shows that world demand reached $795 million in 2007 up 45% from $550 million in 2005. The PELORUS Group forecasts sales to grow to $1.37 billion in 2012. This is a slower growth rate than experienced over the past two years, due to many factors including severe economic problems in the financial services and insurance industries.

Some significant trends include:

• Rapidly growing sales to the Asia-Pacific and Caribbean and Latin America markets – sales to these geographies nearly doubled between 2005 and 2007 while sales to Canada and the USA increased by 25%.

• The solutions suite model has been widely adopted by the industry. Ten of the 26 vendors examined now offer suite solutions.

• About 30% of interaction recording sales are now VoIP-compliant and this has been a strong driver for industry sales. Two applications rarely seen in our 2005 and 2006 studies; speech analytics and automated surveys, are now offered by 13 and 9, respectively, of the 26 vendors examined.

• The industry has grown even more concentrated over the years. Autonomy etalk, NICE Systems, and Verint Witness Actionable solutions now account for approximately 90% of industry sales. However, this has not dissuaded new entrants, many of whom are doing very well by concentrating on the fast-growing small to mid-size contact centers.

Source: Contact Professional

More...

"New-Generation Workers" Want Technology Their Way, Accenture Survey Finds
Millennial generation students and employees (those aged 14 to 27) expect to use their own technology and mobile devices for work and are increasingly choosing their place of employment based on how accommodating companies are to their personal technology preferences, according to a survey released by Accenture. In addition, more than half (60 percent) of Millennials are either unaware of their companies' information technology (IT) policies or are not inclined to follow them.

The survey, which queried more than 400 U.S. students and employees across three age groups -- 14-17 ("younger Millennials'), 18-22 ("mid-Millennials") and 23-27 ("older Millennials") -- found an increasing demand for high-tech devices to connect with colleagues, peers, friends and family, rather than face-to-face contact. The findings point to a disconnect between the technology that organizations provide their workers and how young workers actually want to use technology and collaborate in the workplace.

The survey's key findings highlight specific workplace implications for today's employers that affect corporate IT:

Millennials want to choose their technology. Young people both in the workplace and in school say they expect to use their own technology and mobile devices for work rather than those supplied by their employer. In nearly every category of workplace technology, more than 20 percent of the respondents stated that employer-provided technologies did not meet expectations, while one-third of the mid-Millennials said they expect not only to use the computer of their choice, but also to access the technology applications of their choice once in the workforce (32 percent and 34 percent respectively).

No need to seek corporate approval. When asked which technologies they currently use or access for work-related activities that are not supported by their employers, mid-Millennials cited mobile phones (selected by 39 percent), open source technology (19 percent), instant messaging (27 percent), online applications (12 percent) and social networking sites (28 percent). Similarly, they regularly download non-standard technology from free public websites such as open source communities, "mashup" and "widget" providers. For example, three-quarters of the mid-Millenials report that they have accessed online collaborative tools (75 percent) and online applications (71 percent) from free public websites when those technologies were not available at work or not meeting their expectation.

Lack of workplace education on corporate policy. Only 40 percent of all respondents said that their employers have published detailed policies related to posting work or client information on public websites. Nearly one-third (31 percent) of respondents said they don't know if their company has such a policy; 17 percent said their employer hasn't published such a policy, 6 percent said that whatever policy their company has published is too complex to understand, and 6 percent said they will post work or client information on public sites regardless of any policy, at least when communicating with colleagues.

Younger employees insist on state-of-the-art technology. More than half (52 percent) of all Millennials surveyed said that state-of-the-art technology is an important consideration in selecting an employer. More than half (56 percent) of the mid-Millennials and two-thirds (67 percent) of the older Millennials still in college claim that whether or not an employer has state-of-the-art equipment will be an important factor when choosing where to work.

Organizations will need to provide new communication and collaboration channels. Millennials expect employers to provide communication channels such as online chat, instant messaging, mobile text messaging and RSS feeds to communicate with their customers and clients. However, only 6 percent say their organization provides online chat and instant messaging, while 21 percent say they should and similarly 5 percent said their organization supports text messaging, though 18 percent felt they should since it is an important channel. In addition, just 5 percent said their organization provides RSS feeds versus 12 percent who felt they need to.

Privacy may be melting away. One out of four (26 percent) working Millennials said that they write openly about themselves and friends online, and one in six (17 percent) share openly details of their life online.

Coming to the end of e-mail as we know it. While older Millennials say they spend an average of 9.5 hours a week writing or receiving work-related emails, mid-Millennials already in the workforce spend only 7.7 hours a week on e-mail. High school and young college students spend less than two hours a week e-mailing, instead preferring text and instant messaging and communicating on social networking sites.

Blogging is more myth than reality. Regardless of age, Millennials spend an average of only 30 minutes a week blogging. This is far less than the time they spend searching for information on the Internet, listening to portable devices, text messaging, instant messaging, communicating on social network sites or interacting in virtual communities.

More...

Worldwide Web Conference and Team Collaboration Software Market On Pace to Grow 22 Per Cent in 2008
Technology convergence and consolidation, coupled with an increased emphasis on workplace communities, are the key forces keeping the worldwide web conference and team collaboration software market revenue on pace to reach $2 billion in 2008, according to Gartner, Inc. This represents an increase of 22 per cent growth in worldwide software revenue compared with 2007.

In Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), the total market for web conferencing and collaboration software market revenue is set to grow 28.6 per cent to reach $500.3 million in 2008, with strongest growth from Eastern Europe, which is on track to increase 55.3 per cent from 2007. Western Europe, which holds 90 per cent market share of the web conference and collaboration market in EMEA, is expected to grow 26.5 per cent while the Middle East and Africa will increase 45 per cent year-on-year.

Cultural differences also play a strong role in adoption of collaboration technologies. It is more common in North America and Europe to have meetings and other forms of interpersonal communications supported by collaboration tools. In Latin America and the Middle East and Africa, e-mail is used as the primary mode of communications in lieu of horizontal collaboration technologies. In Asia/Pacific and Japan, face-to-face meetings are preferred, and at times, business travel for meetings is seen as a prerequisite.

Although, it is difficult to measure the business value of interactions, a strong and growing demand exists within organizations for real-time and team-based collaboration technologies. Technologies such as instant messaging (IM) are increasingly viewed as birthright technologies, akin to email. Gartner anticipates that IM will become as popular as email by 2010. Videoconferencing will evolve to the desktop to support ad hoc conversations and become better integrated with web conferencing, IM and voice over IP (VoIP).

More...

All Roads Lead to the Customer
Organizations on every continent face business challenges as diverse as the regions they call home, but they all have one thing in common: a reliance on customers for survival. Those customers are demanding a better experience and expect the companies they do business with to understand their needs. Savvy companies around the world are finding ways to profitably deliver on customers' expectations.
Full Article...

Questioning Software's Usability
The main reason software applications fall short of their potential is because they're poorly designed: Most are cumbersome to use, and some prove impossible. So, whether you're purchasing new software, developing an in-house system or assessing the application tools you already have, be sure to ask the questions that rarely get asked.
Full Article...

IT Spending: 2009 Under the Knife
The 43rd installment of the Goldman Sachs IT Spending Survey shows a challenging market ahead for IT vendors. This article presents an excerpt that highlights the topline findings of the study which surveyed 100 managers with strategic decision-making authority at multinational Fortune 1000 companies.
Full Article...

Blurring Consumer And Enterprise Lines
The boundaries between consumer and enterprise products are beginning to blur as new technologies begin flooding into the market, creating a slew of tension points that CIOs will face over the next several years. At stake are issues as fundamental as whether corporate messaging needs to be centralized, whether social networking can be utilized as a marketing strategy and whether the security risk can be effectively managed.
Full Article...

Secrets for Surviving a Layoff in a Down Economy
It's easy to view a layoff as an end-of-the-world situation, especially when the economy is bad. But a negative attitude will only hurt your chances of finding a new job. To help you mentally and emotionally, a career coach offers his seven tips for surviving a layoff and finding a new job.
Full Article...

Outliers: The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell

In his new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Find out more information here.

2008 Service & Support Metrics Survey Results
Supportindustry.com has announced the release of a free white paper outlining the results of the 2008 Service & Support Metrics Survey. This annual survey explores the state of enterprise service and support -- current industry trends, future plans, technology adoption, workforce issues, benchmarking strategies, metrics and other areas.
Get your free copy of the survey results today!

Visit the SupportIndustry.com Blog
The SupportIndustry.com Blog is another way stay on top of the service and support industry. Our blog, updated at least once a week, is dedicated to covering the latest topics related to service and support, call center management, customer experience management, web-based support, help desks, workforce optimization and more.
Check it out today

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Carolyn Healey, Editor - chealey@supportindustry.com

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