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EMC Announces Acquisition of Voyence
EMC Corporation, a provider of information infrastructure solutions, today announced that it has acquired privately-held Voyence - a leading provider of network configuration and change management solutions that automate critical change, compliance and activation processes. The acquisition complements and extends EMC's position in the rapidly- emerging IT Service Management marketplace.

Linden Lab Selects Parature On-Demand Customer Support Software
Parature, a provider of on-demand customer support and help desk software, announced that Linden Lab has selected Parature Customer Support Software for Gaming/Interactive Media to manage the support needs of Second Life’s rapidly growing population of Residents. Linden Lab is the creator of a revolutionary new form of shared experience, where individuals jointly inhabit a 3D landscape and build the world around them. This experience, known as Second Life, has a growing population of users from around the globe.

Google Aims to Blow Social Networking Space Wide Open
Google is getting set to make a splash in the burgeoning social networking space with the introduction of OpenSocial. Much like Google's other offerings, OpenSocial provides a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) for developers to create software that can work in any social network linked to OpenSocial. Profile information, friend information, a news feed and other features are among those for which Google is providing APIs. LinkedIn, Friendster, Plaxo, Ning and Google's own Web site, Orkut, are reportedly among those that have joined the site.

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• Demand in helpdesk positions increases by 45% compared to the same period last year.
• Demand for IT project managers has risen by 35% compared to the same period last year
• ERP/CRM skill demand have stayed the same year on year with over 7000 positions currently being advertised
• Developers positions have increased only slightly at 10% compared to the same period last year.

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IT Leaders Must Consider Alternative Delivery Models or Risk Being Bypassed By the Business Units
Gartner, Inc. has identified 14 alternative delivery models that will completely transform the IT market in the next five years. Advancements in technical areas are presenting a scenario that offers new ways to deliver, package and procure IT, and these alternative delivery models have the potential to dramatically change how IT is accounted for. IT leaders must examine these models, or business units may implement these solutions without them.

At the highest level, alternative delivery models are approaches to acquire, package and deliver IT in nontraditional ways. Traditional methods of IT acquisition and delivery are wrapped in well-honed internal processes whereby IT develops or acquires technology (hardware or software), deploys it, supports it and retires it. Even when part of the IT service is outsourced or handled offshore, the provider runs the day-to-day service and may own part of the assets. The client IT function retains most of the risk and responsibility for the overall design and management of the technology life cycle.

The 14 alternative delivery models include: business process utilities (BPUs); infrastructure utilities (IUs); storage as a service; grid computing; communications as a service (CaaS); utility computing; capacity on demand; remote management services; SaaS; Web platforms; community source; software streaming; software-based “appliances” (SBAs); and user-owned devices.

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Green IT a Natural Fit for Enterprise Executives
More than just a passing fad, Green IT is a growing, global business concern that is significantly impacting how IT executives will make technology buying decisions now and in the future. According to IDC's U.S. Green IT survey, 80% of executives say that Green IT is growing in importance for their organization, and 43% say they consider a vendor's "greenness" when selecting their suppliers.

Additional Survey Findings

• One half of survey respondents claim that “reducing their organization's environmental impact” was important or very important to senior management
• 42% of respondents said that IT will play a lead role or an important role in their organizations' efforts to reduce environmental impact
• One-third of respondents rated an IT supplier's "greenness" as important or very important
• 81% of respondents identify green products' ability to reduce operating costs as the most important reason for considering a supplier's greenness

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The Customer Service and Support Applications (CSS) Market Experienced Moderate Single Digit Growth in 2006
According to a new Frost & Sullivan report, the North American customer service and support (CSS) applications market, including the markets for customer and account management, case management, problem diagnostics and resolutions, offer management and service and customer analytics, continues the slow and steady positive growth trend of all of its constituent parts. While there is no single technological trend that drives the growth in CSS applications sales, on the whole, growth is derived from an increasing enterprise focus on customer experience, as well as new products and sales tactics aimed at penetrating the underserved small and mid-sized business community. A long-standing drive to transform contact centers into profit generating entities is causing many existing CSS customers to re-evaluate their technology and to seek out adjunct products to help agent’s cross-sell and upsell.

Interestingly, the sales model of the two leading players in the CSS market – Oracle and SAP – has diverged from the rest of the pack. Since these two market leaders also have deep inroads into enterprise back office technology stacks (including financials, human resources, supply chain, and so on), they tend to sell their CSS applications, as well as other front-office applications, as part of a larger functional suite.

Quiet significantly, on-demand CSS applications accounted for approximately one-fifth of total market revenues in 2006. On-demand implementations, for the most part, were clustered in smaller agent seat count deployments as larger contact centers shunned the model citing concerns about stability and guaranteed uptime. However, Frost & Sullivan trusts that enterprises will increasingly turn to on-demand applications as traditional on-premise CRM applications have failed to provide a 360-degree view of every customer and every interaction. Furthermore, CSS delivered as an on-premise implementation still faces numerous integration and customization problems, extremely high costs and a lack of extensibility. By the end of the forecast period, Frost & Sullivan expects the on-demand market to account for close to of one-third of all CSS revenues.

Overall, the CSS market experienced moderate single digit growth in 2006, generally in line with expectations. Due to the success of full suite CRM vendors tapping into their traditional large enterprise ERP base, the top end of the market is currently well saturated.

"This is not to say that opportunities do not exist in this space as the best-of-breed knowledge management and service resolution management specialists are moving into the space by positioning their technology as an adjunct to traditional CRM suites rather than tackling a full-on replacement game," says the Frost & Sullivan analyst. "Additionally, large enterprises are increasingly being pitched unified communications platforms by their telephony, contact center and networking infrastructure vendors." Enterprises that adopt such technologies will become sales opportunities for CSS vendors savvy enough to pitch their offerings as tools for knowledge workers and other non-contact center enterprise personnel.

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Three Tips for Creating a Business-Savvy Information Technology Staff
Without technology, you wouldn't have a business. And yet, information technology staffs often do not have an integrated view of how technology enables their company to make money. Everyone in IT has to learn how the business makes money and how to use that information to generate new innovations and revenue opportunities. Doing so helps you to increase IT's value to the organization. This article presents three ways to make that happen.
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Growing Pains: Can Web 2.0 Evolve Into An Enterprise Technology?
Forget outsourcing. The real threat to IT pros could be Web 2.0. While there's a lot of hype and hubris surrounding wikis, mashups, and social networking, there's also a lot of real innovation--much of it coming from increasingly tech-savvy business users, not the IT department.
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Software as a Serpent
You won't find a trendier concept in corporate computing these days than SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) -- the enterprise application answer to the iPhone. The early success of Salesforce.com and NetSuite, among others, has inspired a host of recent entrants into the SaaS sector. Yet despite its current appeal, subscription-based software may not be right for every company. Many business managers believe they can do better with applications that run on in-house servers. Some of that thinking is born out of less-than-satisfactory experiences with hosted software.
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Best Practices for Speech Analytics Implementation
Customer service has become one of today's top differentiators for enterprises across virtually every vertical market. As organizations struggle to balance customer satisfaction with the drive to increase revenue and minimize the cost of customer service, contact center managers and executives are increasingly exploring technologies and processes that better integrate and streamline their sales, service and support channels and operations. Speech analytics -- the technology that allows enterprises to mine a large volume of recorded customer-agent voice interactions -- are among the solutions successfully addressing this need within the context of each company's business objectives, rather than as an independent contact center entity with no relationship or tie to overall business goals.
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Technology's Pipeline is Lifeline
Technology is proving crucial as Southern California residents fight raging wildfires. They're using text messages, video, blogs, Google maps and databases to describe the chaos, find missing people and share strategies.
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The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas
by G. Richard Shell, Mario Moussa

Your projects, programs, and career turn on the difference between “no” and “yes.” Yet selling ideas -- especially the kinds of ideas that make organizations work -- is a skill shrouded in mystery. Part emotional intelligence, part politics, part rhetoric, and part psychology, selling ideas is not like tricking someone out of his money. It’s about helping others to see things your way -- engaging their minds and imaginations.

Richard Shell and Mario Moussa offer a self-assessment to determine which persuasion role fits you best and how to make the most of your natural strengths. They also share vivid stories from their experiences advising thousands of leaders, and stories about famous people like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Andy Grove, and Bono.

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