CBM News: NetSuite Disses Sage, Cable Guy Causes Recession, Comverse and Infor Partner

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NetSuite is offering current Sage partners in the U.S. and U.K. 50 percent revenue sharing for NetSuite products for the first twelve months, and training for NetSuite's accounting, Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management and e-commerce programs.

The NetSuitors say they expect this program will find "a warm reception in a Sage channel partner community wracked with fear, uncertainty and doubt" about the future of on-premise applications and "the ability of Sage to lead them to the new world" of cloud computing.

"Demand for on-premise software is diminishing across the board," NetSuite officials said, adding that "recent news of involuntary staff reductions at Sage and the abrupt bankruptcy of the company's leading reseller, MIS Group, are cause for additional concern among Sage channel partners."

Saying they're not trying to sow doubt about Sage or use scare tactics, a NetSuite spokesman said "all we're doing is trying to inform folks that by the time the bloody corpse of Sage washes up to rot on a deserted beach to be picked clean by buzzards, they might want to have other options in place."

Research has finally identified who's responsible for the economy cratering—the cable guy.

Harris Interactive and TOA Technologies conducted a national survey in June, finding that long wait-windows are costing consumers and service providers money: "Nearly one of every five consumers have taken unpaid time off to wait for the cable guy or some other service in their home in the past six months," TOA officials said, adding that "One third of consumers have taken a vacation day or sick time to wait for the cable guy or some other service in their home in the past six months."

In fact, the research found, "since January 32 percent of Americans have lost personal time off waiting for a home appointment, and 18 percent have had to take unpaid time off."

TOA CEO Yuval Brisker said the study found that 82 percent of all Americans say they wait on average at least one day per year in their homes for service or deliveries.

In politics, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said a vote on President Barack Obama's sweeping health care reform will be delayed until the fall, "after I've had my gall bladder operation."

Zoho officials have announced that they will comply with a federal court order and integrate the Zoho Mail Add-on for Zoho CRM. The National Guard was called out by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to ensure a smooth integration.

Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist, said the add-on gives users "contextual integration of information... letting information flow throughout multiple applications." For instance, Zoho CRM users searching for contact information within Zoho CRM will also see Zoho Mail e-mail exchanges with that contact.

The Zohovians say with the Zoho Mail Add-on, "Zoho bridges the divide historically separating e-mail and CRM systems. It's truly a great day for civil liberties in this country."

CRM systems which have suffered from segregation for years were overjoyed at the news. "I've been waiting my whole life to see this," one CRM system said with tears in her eyes. "I just wish Siebel could be around for this historic day of freedom and equality for all."

Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL e-mail users are included in the integration, making it "truly a landmark day for the dream of a fully integrated country," a Zoho spokesman said.

EGain Communications are chalking up another customer, as ASOS.com, an online fashion and beauty store, selected eGain Mail to replace Microsoft Outlook.

Matt Hiscock, Head of Operations at ASOS.com, said in the eight weeks since adopting eGain Mail, e-mail response times "have gone from 20 percent of e-mails correctly answered within one day to 95 percent correctly answered within one hour."

Independent observers marveled that any company answering 80 percent of e-mails incorrectly or late survived at all.

With over 5.2 million visitors coming to the site every month, ASOS.com officials say that since the company operates solely online, providing good online service "is something we should probably take a look at."

Comverse and Infor have announced a partnership to expand the Comverse ONE Billing and Active Customer Management to include capabilities from Infor CRM.

The new Comverse ONE embedded features include sales, marketing and services functionality to help operators with subscriber acquisition, retention and campaign management capabilities.

Launched last year, Comverse ONE lets operators manage "any subscriber, any service on any network, with any payment type," supporting "all customer touch points—call center, Web, handset, other mobile device, singles bar, whatever."

The partnership with Infor is intended to add CRM capabilities such as Sales Force Automation and Case Management and "improve the 360-degree view of customer-centric activities. Other activities can probably get by with a 180-degree view, or maybe just an obtuse angle."

That's the show for today, we're off to switch back to our old mattress.