Fine morning to all, yes, a fine morning to all, today's show on Radio CBM 98.6, all Jimmy Buffett all the time, is being broadcast on location from a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean, and as soon as we clear away all the umbrellas and straws from the glasses in the captain's—ex-captain's—quarters, we'll figure out just where, and get this tub back to somewhere civilized with a decent Starbucks.
First up this morning we note that Star Trac, a new talent show that... what's that? Oh, sorry, a vendor of fitness equipment, has chosen Oracle over SAP and Microsoft [1] products to "rebuild, integrate and automate a wide array of systems across the company, including HCM, CRM, financials and Supply Chain Management," according to the Star Tracers.
Jeff Kuckenbaker, VP of Information Systems and Technology, Star Trac, said the Oracle offerings were "kind of flabby, really, didn't have the muscle tone we were looking for." Kuckenbaker described Microsoft's options as "on steroids, man."
Edward Abbo, Senior Vice President of Application Development Oracle, said the vendor was "looking forward" to the implementation, which will be overseen by Buffy after a full fitness diagnostic test.
In politics, President Barack Obama has said from now on he wants to be referred to as "His Excellency The President." The White House press corps stood as one and applauded the change for three minutes. Afterwards several media members said the altered form of address "won't change our impartial, hard-hitting style of reporting on the last great hope for the Western world."
In what NetSuite officials said was "purely coincidental" timing, the company announced [2] that Distribution Video & Audio, GestureTek and Schaeffer Oil are now using NetSuite's enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management and e-commerce offerings "at a fraction of the cost and administrative overhead of SAP."
They also offered research from Macro 4, a UK-based global software company, showing "a high degree of risk and complexity involved in most major SAP upgrades."
When reminded that their announcements come during SAP's user conference, Sapphire, NetSuite officials looked at each other and shrugged. "Didn't know that, man. We just didn't want to clash with Kentucky Derby week," they said before dissolving in giggles.
NetSuite also promises to hold an online NetSuite Career Fair [3] for former Sage UK employees recently let go as part of abut 600 cuts this year. Sage officials say they want to reduce annual costs by an estimated £50 million.
NetSuite officials attributed the voluntary redundancy to "the declining demand for on-premise software," as well as "the fact that Sage software causes random crashes, plunging profits, customer deaths and demon possession."
They said they would hire former Sage employees after "a thorough re-education and delousing."
In politics His Excellency The President Barack Obama decreed that from henceforth journalists were to only ask questions for him selected from a list prepared by his staff. Several media members said that while the change "won't inhibit our impartial, hard-hitting reporting on the pres- excuse me, His Excellency The President, it will help us more fully appreciate the stunning genius of this man, the greatest political savior in the history of mankind."
It's summer at Salesforce.com, as Summer '09 [4], the company's 29th generation release, will be available in June.
The Salesenforcers say the new release has a feature which lets customer service agents collaborate with third-party service partners on a case, letting everyone see the same information at the same time. Salesforce.com Head Cool Dude Mark Benioff said Summer '09 is a "major product breakthrough at no additional cost."
The Service Cloud, according to the Salesenforcers, is cool because it brings Google, Facebook and Twitter in with traditional contact center channels like phone, e-mail and chat. "The inclusion of Twitter is huge," one company official said. "Man, I can't go five minutes without checking Twitter. Hey excuse me for a sec, man, be right back with ya."
In sports there are a whole lot of playoff series going on now in basketball and hockey, which may or may not be over by the time the World Series starts and the NFL starts play. NBA, NHL, MLB and NFL commissioners are negotiating a Combined All-Sports Playoff to run 51 weeks of the year, where league champions and selected wild card entries will compete for the title of MegaSports Champion.
Details such as what rules and equipment would be used are under negotiation, with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell saying "I've always thought it'd be cool to play golf using carts like polo ponies, you know?" NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said he thinks figure skating would benefit from having all contestants perform their routines on the ice at the same time and allowing NHL-style checking.
More good news for CrackBerry addicts: there's even less reason to have a life away from your BlackBerry, since you can now access SAP Customer Relationship Management on your BlackBerry [5].
The BlackBerry Sales Client for SAP CRM lets sales reps get customer information in SAP CRM with basically the experience they get from BlackBerry smartphones. It can push customer data updates in the SAP CRM system to the user, push sales leads to the sales representative's BlackBerry smartphone inbox with one-click access, and there's a local cache system which lets users access certain information even if the user is outside of network coverage.
His Excellency The President Barack Obama has handed down a decree that from henceforth journalists are to submit all stories to the Democratic National Party headquarters for approval and editing before publication. Several media members said that the new policy "won't inhibit our impartial, hard-hitting reporting on His Excellency The President Barack Obama, The Chosen One, The Messiah, since pretty much all we run about him could have been written by Democrat party officials anyway."
Bozeman, Montana's very own RightNow has announced that the U.S. Air Force Personnel Center is moving its on-premise RightNow tool [6] to a Department of Defense SaaS product. The move helps power the AFPC Web site with a self-learning knowledge foundation, monitor constituent feedback, disseminate consistent information, update content and, in a pinch, coordinate Predator strikes over Pakistan.
That's the show for today, we're off to check the snake filters [7] around here.