CRM News Feed

Looking to leverage the latest trend toward continuous, disk-based backup, Microsoft unveiled this week its Data Protection Manager and said its solution was available in storage servers and appliances from Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu and others. Microsoft touted a lower-cost backup and recovery capability that is also faster and “near continuous protection” with DPM, which departs from existing tape backup. The software giant also indicated integration with Windows servers would provide an integrated storage solution for customers.

This is the first in a series of presentations from the Dreamforce User and Developer Conference. We are going through one by one, synching up the audio with the slides, and posting them on the successforce.com site. Enjoy this…

For those of you who haven’t heard of Konfabulator it’s a Yahoo! company which makes widgets for your desktop similar to those widgets you might have seen on Macs. There are post-it note widgets, widgets for the weather, and…

How To Make Your CRM DeliverCompanies will spend $13 billion this year on customer-relationship management (CRM) initiatives worldwide, predicts Forrester Research in a recent report.

India’s technology hub, Bangalore, experienced a 20 percent growth to 90 billion rupees (US$2.05 billion) in its software and back-office outsourcing exports in the April-September half-year period, an official said today. Also, 57 foreign companies opened offices in the city and had invested a total of 9.2 billion rupees ($209 million) through Sept. 27, when the figures were calculated.

It’s worth taking another look at the Siebel-Oracle merger from a different angle. Too often we make a snap judgment in this kind of situation and it becomes fixed in the mind never to be seriously re-examined. Rather than that, I did a thought experiment the other day starting with the presumption that Larry Ellison has a grand strategy and that the strategy will work.

Worldwide spending on research and development will reach US$1 trillion in 2006, according to a survey released yesterday by Battelle and “R&D Magazine.” The survey, which Battelle, of Columbus, Ohio, has been conducting annually for more than 40 years, showed that much of the growth in R&D is being fired by the Asian region. Rapid R&D growth in that region has been going on for 10 years, the survey noted, and is expected to go on for 5 to 10 more.

A San Francisco judge has declined to approve Oracle honcho Larry Ellison’s controversial US$100 million insider-trading settlement and instead has scheduled another hearing on the matter for November. The ruling, by San Mateo Superior Court Judge John G. Schwartz, means that Ellison and Oracle shareholders will have to wait for a resolution in the long-running case involving Ellison’s 2001 sale of $900 million in Oracle shares one month before an earnings shortfall caused Oracle’s stock to tank.

To people in Europe and North America, the call center operators, data entry clerks and telemarketers performing outsourced work for the West may seem like the sweatshop laborers of the information age, toiling long hours for meager pay. But an international alliance of unions that wants to organize them is finding a very different reality in India: Many think of themselves as members of a relatively well-paid, respected professional elite in no need of a union’s protection.

Sales and marketing can’t make use of the collaborative features available in CRM solutions unless they have already made human collaboration a part of their process, writes Janet White.

May you never have to walk into a meeting and hear from your salespeople, “We would have made our numbers if only we’d had better leads and support from marketing,” hopes Ron Hubsher.

There are lessons to be learned from Hollywood, writes John Aiello. Follow the lead of filmdom’s Jerry Maguire and Rod Tidwell, and your victories in the field will follow.

On Friday the Personalized Account Review was sent out to all Salesforce.com Administrators and those opted in to the Admin Newsletter. If you didn’t receive the Personalized Account Review and want more information on opting in, click here. We’d…

Our good customer Jennifer Wobser of FFF Enterprises spoke at our Dreamforce Conference in a session called “Customforce 101, Using Custom Objects Tabs ( Other Tools) to Extend Salesforce.com.” She was asked by 40 some customers the following question…

Today we added two great presentations from day two of the Dreamforce User and Developer Conference in San Francisco. If you’re interested in disruptive technology you’ll really enjoy listening to Chris and Adam explain what’s driving the success of on…

Siebel users concerned about the possible takeover of the CRM company by Oracle should sit tight and relax. So says a panel of JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.

Siebel users concerned about the possible takeover of the CRM company by Oracle should sit tight and relax. So says a panel of JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.