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Dreamforce 2009 Opening Keynote – Notes from Underground #DF09

CRM Help Desk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:14:09 +0000

Technology people must love the Rolling Stones. Bill Gates of Microsoft used the song “Start me up” for their Windows 95 launch because of the infamous “Windows start” button.

Today, the Salesforce.com song was clearly “Get off my Cloud”.

If you were standing outside of the Moscone Center, SugarCRM were handing out books “Behind the Smoke Screen” where their song could have been “Can’t Get no Satisfaction”.

The take home message in today’s Opening Keynote was clearly Chatter and “the death of Microsoft SharePoint”.

The four clouds in the Salesforce enterprise are Sales, Service, Custom (to be discussed in Thursday’s Keynote), and the new Chatter Collaboration.

Let’s forget about the hype or selling job of Mr. Benioff and look at the benefits of each of the clouds presented.

Service Cloud 2

The Service Cloud 2 comprises of several tools, including knowledge base, the Call Center, email & chat, customer portals, communities, Google Search, social networks.

Twitter and Facebook now integrates into the Service Cloud 2. In the past, you needed several windows or browsers open to have your information pipelined into one.

Salesforce Answers is very similar to Facebook Answers (from a Fan Page) with the answers tab where you can vote or “like” at the click of a button. Thus the customer can decide for themselves which solution is right for them.

For the next generation of customer service or the service desk, knowledge is no longer locked in the company.

The Shift in Customer Support

Instead of customers calling or emailing a company for support, either (1) the customer finds their own way to find the answer, or (2) the company goes out to find unhappy users in the social networks and resolves them to fruition.

All of a sudden, companies now care what people are saying about them. That’s the power of going viral in today’s social network. It’s that powerful.

Sales Cloud 2

The success of consumer web tools has now shifted to the business world where the Sales Cloud 2 takes the best ideas and transforms it.

Several analogies were presented including ebay Quotes, Evite email and calendaring (and the new Salesforce for Outlook), iTunes Genius (i.e. the guide or playbook to win more deals), Mobile apps, web analytics (charting and report builder – real time with dashboards), Flickr (shared data), and finally Twitter (for tracking conversations)

The cloud scheduler now integrates with Outlook, Gmail, and Lotus Notes.

Like the Service Cloud, you now have a collection of tools to be more productive, and ultimately, make more sales.

Chatter

When managing content in the cloud, you don’t have to worry about file servers and email clogging. This can include any document whether it’s a word, spreadsheet, PDF, PowerPoint, photo or video file.

With a robust integrated content library, I can see this as the death of SharePoint. (My only concern is the performance, as that was a hot topic in the Backstage Pass “A Look Inside the Force.com Infrastructure” breakout session)

Benioff proclaimed users are productive in their personal lives (via email, instant messaging or social networks), but not in the business world. In the Salesforce model of content, apps and people, content and apps were clearly missing or separated.

And thus Salesforce Chatter was born keeping the content, apps and people model all under one umbrella.

His take home message was: Follow your own employees, along with your content and apps. Yes, your content and apps will talk to you. Just like SharePoint when someone uploads a newer version of a workgroup document.

Add some Business Intelligence (BI) to that mix and you have a great business tool.

If you missed the opening keynote, you can watch the entire 7 parts are available on Salesforce TV – YouTube.

Dreamforce 2009 Keynote 1 [VIDEO] #DF09

CRM Help Desk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:10:01 +0000

Salesforce.com introduced the ultimate internal collaboration tool for businesses that it dubbed a “Facebook and Twitter for the Enterprise” along with a range of cloud-based offerings.

The product, Chatter, was unveiled at the Dreamforce developer conference in San Francisco. Salesforce said it’s aiming at competing software products such as Microsoft’s SharePoint and IBM’s Lotus Notes.

Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff said, "In the past, the file sharing metaphor has dominated collaboration, but now this is a new opportunity to take the Facebook metaphor and use it for enterprise collaboration"

Below is the entire Wednesday’s Opening Keynote in 7 parts:

Part 2 on Salesforce TV – YouTube

Part 3 on Salesforce TV – YouTube

Part 4 on Salesforce TV – YouTube

Part 5 on Salesforce TV – YouTube

Part 6 on Salesforce TV – YouTube

Part 7 on Salesforce TV – YouTube

LiveTime Releases New SaaS based ITIL 3 Service Management and Help Desk

CRM Help Desk — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:55:32 +0000

LiveTime 6 includes optimized SaaS framework, federated CMDB, optimized search engine for Help Desk and 9 process ITIL 3 Service Management.

Newport Beach, CA — LiveTime Software, a leading provider of Web based ITIL 3 Service Management and Help Desk software, today announced the release of LiveTime 6. This release features more than 100 new features and is based on LiveTime’s open standards based ITIL 3 SaaS framework, available for public or private cloud computing. This hybrid approach allows LiveTime to be deployed seamlessly into any enterprise environment and supports any operating system, any browser, and any database.

Available On Demand (SaaS) or On Premise (software, hardware, or virtual appliance), LiveTime is based on open standards and lowers service delivery costs while improving customer satisfaction. Out of the box enterprise integration with Authentication, Asset and Inventory Management, and Event Management has enabled customers such as Lockheed Martin, Verizon, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, and Wellpoint to implement LiveTime within a matter of weeks!

Focusing specifically on usability and tight integration across nine ITIL 3 processes, LiveTime Service Manager 6 enables organizations to roll out Service Catalog and Service Portfolio Management as easily as Incident, Problem, and Change Management. LiveTime Service Manager 6 has been certified for Request Fulfillment, Incident, Problem, Change, Service Level, Knowledge, Service Catalog, Service Portfolio, and Service Asset and Configuration Management.

LiveTime 6 includes a new optimized search engine with support for Office 2007 file formats for Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Also new in this addition is support for Visio and log files so that technicians can readily search within attached documents across any request or knowledge base article. LiveTime 6 also supports Microsoft Project export within sequenced requests.

LiveTime’s new Federated Configuration Management CMDB allows users to map distributed asset information from independent sources into a single Configuration Item (CI) to provide a more holistic view of the company’s infrastructure. This information is important when managing Requests, Incidents, Problems and Changes within the business. Having up-to-date information leads to more efficient and rapid problem solving, as well as more satisfied customers.

LiveTime 6 also includes 12 pre-integrated connectors supporting Loginventory, LANDesk, Tivoli Discovery, Novell ZENworks Desktop, Asset and Configuration Management products, Spiceworks, Express Software Manager, LANrev, Microsoft SMS and SCCM 2007, as well as Centennial.

About LiveTime Software

Headquartered in Newport Beach, California, LiveTime Software, Inc. is a vendor of Web 2.0, Open Standards based ITIL service management, help desk and support software for medium to large enterprises such as Verizon, NEC and the United States Department of Defense. Founded in 1999, LiveTime Software is a privately held firm with offices in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. For more information visit www.livetime.com

Fujitsu Launches New Desktop Managed Services

CRM Help Desk — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:10:51 +0000

CIOs found to be increasingly underwhelmed by industry’s current break-fix approach

London – Fujitsu is challenging the current status quo for commoditised desktop managed services (DMS) with the launch of its new DMS offering, available in the UK from today. The service has been developed in response to the demand from customers for desktop managed services to be significantly more strategic than they currently are; offer increased cost reductions; give greater peace of mind, and bring considerably improved flexibility.

The effectiveness of the desktop environment is critical in ensuring end-user productivity. Research by Fujitsu found that nearly three quarters (74%) of CIOs either agree or strongly agree that the reputation of IT within their companies is founded on that end-user experience. However, Fujitsu believes that IT service providers are ignoring the opportunity for the desktop management to be a significant strategic service and are leaving customers and ultimately end-users underwhelmed by a largely ‘break-fix’ model. The research, conducted amongst CIOs in the private sector, found that only 37% felt that their 3^rd party desktop support was either good or very good and nearly half (46%) sat on the fence stating they were neither happy or unhappy with their service.

CIOs now expect more – how Fujitsu is delivering

Fujitsu, which currently manages over 1 million desktop users across the UK and was recently positioned in the Leaders’ Quadrant of Gartner, Inc’s "Desktop Outsourcing, Western Europe, Magic Quadrant"(1), will be using its new Active Service Management (ASM) architecture at the core of its DMS service – elevating the expectations of what a desktop managed service can bring to an organisation.

At the heart of ASM is:

Cost transparency and optimisation – typically customers do not have visibility of the granularity of their desktop service costs. Indeed only a quarter of those surveyed felt they had a clear and transparent view on costs. Fujitsu’s commitment to Total Cost Clarity (TCC) ensures that all customers have a fully transparent, shared and living-detailed cost model for their desktop service. This helps the drive for financial improvements at every opportunity – including calculating year on year cost reductions and mechanisms for gain sharing.

Continuous improvement – as the industry’s approach to desktop management has matured so too has the approach from IT service companies who often show great service improvements in the first six months of the contract as well as the last six months as the contract comes up for renewal – but very little in the years between. Very rarely are desktop managed contracts awarded a second time to a supplier, as customers often believe the only way to see improvements is to go elsewhere. In fact 80% of CIOs admit that continuous improvement is either focused on only ‘in part’ or ‘not at all’ by their desktop partner. Fujitsu’s Office of Continuous Improvement and Innovation (OCII), which is part of every DMS contract, is a way of delivering on improvement every day of the contract using Fujitsu’s lean IT methodologies.

Ian Bradbury, solution design director at Fujitsu UK & Ireland said: "We are on the cusp of a sea change in the delivery of desktop managed services. Although underlying services must have commodity attributes – low cost, highly standardised and flexible – these services must also be continuously and rigorously managed, tuned and refined for each customer to deliver significant improving benefits and reducing costs. We believe that 2010 will be the year for the revival of desktop managed services – particularly as we move into a more virtualised environment and customers are now challenging how they are running their desktops."

For further information please go to: http://dms.efficiencyandagility.com/index.htm

(1) Gartner, Inc. "Magic Quadrant for Desktop Outsourcing, Western Europe" by Frank Ridder, Gianluca Tramacere, Claudio Da Rold 18 May 2009

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2009 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Fujitsu

Fujitsu is a leading provider of IT-based business solutions for the global marketplace. With approximately 175,000 employees supporting customers in 70 countries, Fujitsu combines a worldwide corps of systems and services experts with highly reliable computing and communications products and advanced microelectronics to deliver added value to customers. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.6 trillion yen (US$47 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2009. For more information, please see: www.fujitsu.com.

Don’t Lay-off Employees for SaaS – Go Open Source

Jimson Lee — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:43:18 +0000

I’m going to get in trouble for writing this…

Here’s an idea. Don’t lay-off your employees in favour of SaaS. Keep them and go Open Source and support their training costs. This isn’t a shameless plug for the Obama/Harper economic stimulus plan.

Sure, good software is expensive, but it doesn’t always have to be. And that is the driving force behind the success of SaaS.

When you factor the cost of commercial software, especially good CRM software, what used to cost $3000 per year 10 years ago now averages about $1500/user/year. SaaS offers that same service at a fraction of the cost.

I remember the day when we laid off our Senior Exchange admin, in favor of using Jamcracker’s hosted Exchange solution. The logic was, why pay him $85-90K (plus office space & capital costs plus benefits totalling up to 40%) when you can get the same service for $40-50K per year? There are several variables, depending on the size of the company, number of mailboxes and storage space.

Today, I would use simply use Google Apps, of course.

So here’s a thought.

Don’t Lay-off Employees for SaaS – Go Open Source

Keep you employees, retrain them to configure and customize your open source software deployment! I know I’m targeting expensive ERP or CRM or Support Desk software, but you get the picture.

Guidelines

You must follow the same process as commercial software. That includes every process from evaluation to product selection.

An ITIL approach with consistent change management must be in place. It’s too easy for the “tech guys” cowboys to fix code on the fly. You have to schedule a downtime or outage. You have to treat this the same as any of your commercial production servers.

You also should have proper development servers in place to emulate your production environment. You should be able to rollback to the previous configuration. Hey, the software is free, right?

VMWare or other virtualization software makes this possible at a fraction of the cost. And space.

Open Source Service Desk Ticket System

For an Open Source Enterprise Grade Ticket System, the two front runners are OTRS or Request Tracker.

Florian Treml started a project to connect SugarCRM with OTRS. If you use OTRS and SugarCRM you will be able to sync OTRS Tickets with Sugar Cases using Zuckersync4otrs.

When Free isn’t Free

Open source is free, But what about support? Like comfort food, people want a comfort zone. An 800 number. Calling the Calvary. Someone to call when the chips are down. And that’s where the extra cost comes in. Red Hat Linux and SugarCRM are good examples.

Of course there’s the fallacy about Open Source software being more prone to hackers because they know the source code. Uh, last time I checked, every second Tuesday of the month I am forced (or highly advised) to update my Windows desktop and Server OS.

Do you want to see my invoices for my Microsoft software products? It’s not free.

Open Source CRM and ERP packages

For Open Source CRM packages, Sugarcrm and vTiger immediately come to mind with Concursive and Splendidcrm right behind them.

For Open Source ERP, there’s Compiere, xTuple PostBooks Edition, Openbravo ERP, OpenERP, Opentaps and ERP5 Community.

I hope the above commentary will give HR and Senior executives a second look before sending out pink slips.

Salesforce.com Releases Service Cloud, the Next-Generation Solution for Customer Service

Jimson Lee — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:00:34 +0000

Salesforce.com releases Service Cloud, the next-generation solution for customer service

Salesforce.com rolled out its next-generation solution for customer service. The Service Cloud is built on their existing Force.com platform and leverages the benefits of cloud computing, something SFDC has been tooting their horns for the last 10 years.

How can this help Customer Service?

Traditionally, the Customer Service agents were the experts. (God help me when I go to Future Shop and buy something… )

However, your peers are always the best source of information. Even when choosing a movie, your will always listen to your friend’s advice, regardless if you go to the movie or not!

LinkedIn and Facebook started this trend a few years ago. To some degree, even Yahoo answers gets some credit. All you have to do is ask your peers, “What is the best in-house CRM package?” or “What is the best backup software?” or “What is the best training book for Microsoft Dynamics?”

The Service Cloud will capture customer service and service desk conversations with the goal of empowering companies to leverage the expertise of partner Cloud sites such as Google and Facebook.. The peers extends from customers, service desk agents, and partners.

Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud connects people where the knowledge already existed. They have connected the dots. Because of the cloud model, the location in irrelevant. This is good if your customer service is off-shore!

“The Service Cloud is the first customer-service solution that empowers companies to join and manage all service conversations happening in the cloud,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. “This has been made possible through the emergence of native cloud-computing platforms like Force.com that are built to harness the power Relevant Products/Services of other clouds like Facebook, Google and Amazon.com.

The 7 components identified by Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud are chat, community, e-mail, partners, phone, search and social.

The Service Cloud packages start at $995 per month, which includes:

set up a contact center with up to five agents
unlimited usage for up to 250 customers
connect with exisiting cloud-computing sites such as Facebook and Google
invite up to five partners to participate in the service cloud

Toll-free, Cheap or Free Conference Calls and Web Presentations

Jimson Lee — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:01:51 +0000

With today’s economy, we all need to try and save money. My number one expense is travel costs, so if I can find a way to do some support or presentations remotely, I will.

When trying to save money, conference calling and web presentations are the best way to communicate to clients and co-workers. Of course, I always prefer a face to face interaction.

There are a few parameters to consider.

Where is your audience? Only North America, or Worldwide?

The Web portion of a web presentations is generally free as long as the recipient has high speed Internet, but it’s the audio portion that costs money. Someone has to pay for it, whether it’s the host or the guest. It could be pricey for other countries to call into USA, but VoIP has changed that dramatically.

If we look at the Amercian audience, some users will have free unlimited long distance anywhere in the USA or North America with a VoIP plan which costs as low as 1 or 2 cents a minute, so it’s negligible. Some cell phone carriers such as Sprint offer packages with free nationwide calling. Otherwise they are responsible for the long distance charges.

It also depends on the size of the audience. Are you conferencing 4 people, or 400? What are you webcasting? A browser base demo, PowerPoint presentation, or an Interactive session that requires mouse and keyboard controls?

I personally use WebEx for my corporate work, but there are several alternatives that I use for my charities outside of work.

How to Save Money on International Conference Calls and Web Presentations

Here are 5 options that I have used in the past, and a few suggestions from the staff at CRMHelpDeskSoftware.com.

The following requirements vary from user to user and from company to company:

Online meetings
Remote support
Web conference
Web collaboration
Remote desktop
Audio conferencing

In no particular order of ranking:

Corporate Conference Calls

http://www.corporateconferencecalls.com/

This is a great option if you have a PowerPoint presentation and want to provide it for free to users. They get a toll free number, and you pay 4-6 cents a minute for North American calls. Only PowerPoint web presentations are available. Other formats may be available in the future.

Totally Free Conference Calls

http://www.totallyfreeconferencecalls.com/

Basically, it’s a conference bridge and everyone is responsible for their own charges. This option is a good choice if users have a free unlimited long distance plan anywhere in the USA. Otherwise, the premium service costs 7 cents a minute which gives a USA toll free number plus a $5 per month surcharge. It supports a maximum of 99 people with unlimited duration calls.

There is no catch. The company hopes that you will enjoy the quality of the free calls so that you will upgrade to the premium package.

Yugma

http://www.yugma.com/

This is targeted for presentations that require interactive desktop sharing and mouse control.

The first 10 users are free with limited control of desktop application sharing. The paid version comes complete with full desktop application sharing in 10, 20, 30 or 100 packs at a cost of $10, $20, $30, and $70 per month respectively. The pricing definitely rivals WebEx.

The audio portion of the voice conferencing is available with users paying the standard long distance plan, unless you have a free unlimited long distance plan.

Like WebEx, the client requires a software download which may be problematic if you do not have local administrative privileges on your computer.

Yuuguu

http://www.yuuguu.com/

This option is great for online meetings of up to 30 people and enables online desktop sharing. There is a client software to download. There is no catch; by providing an integrated conference calling service, Yuuguu takes a share of the revenue generated on conference calls made by our customers.

The strength of Yuuguu is the Global conference calling. USA users will call a local IOWA state 641 area code, which is no problem if you have a free unlimited long distance. European rates vary between 6.7 to 17.4 Euro cents per minute, or 6.7 British pence for UK users. Country specific dial in numbers are provided.

Vyew

http://vyew.com/

This one does not require a client download as it is browser based, with built in VoIP (push to talk), and a built in WebCam.

Voice conferencing is available with users responsible for standard long distance charges, unless you have a free USA nation wide long distance plan. It is ideal for presentations or collaboration with up to 150 people.

There is one catch, and that it is an ad based revenue model. The free version of up to 20 users will displayed ads to all users. For more users, it is $6.95 per month for 25 people, where 5 “premium” users having no ads. You can purchase packs to have everyone on an ad-free environment.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Some good choices for saving money for performing Online meetings, Remote support, Web conference, Web collaboration, Remote desktop, and Audio conferencing. Please comment below if you have used these, or if you have other solutions. Of course, free is good.

PODCAST – Shadan Malik of iDashboards

Jimson Lee — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:58:35 +0000

If you think data visualization is only for CRM or Support desk live metrics, think again.

In the real world, and in the ITIL world, you need Business intelligence and Performance Management to support the management process.

One of my previous CIO’s once quoted, “No one person fails, it’s the process that fails”. As a manager or director, you want to manage and measure your core 3 layers: day to day metrics, operational metrics, and strategic and tactical initiatives.

I wrote about iDashboards’ interactive dashboard demos in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election and the
2008 Beijing Olympic Results Tracking articles.

In the podcast, Shadan Malik, President and Chief Executive Officer of iDashboards gives several good examples on how this can be used and measured. We all know how to collect, store and analyze data; presenting it as meaningful information to make quick timely decisions is another matter.

PODCAST Info:
- Presenter: Mary Jo Nott and the BeyeNETWORK
- Duration: 14:40 mins
- File Size: 13.4 MB

[display_podcast]

Here is their press release:

iDashboards Delivers iDashboards 6.0

Exclusive interview featuring iDashboards’ Shadan Malik.

Denver, CO — Shadan Malik President and Chief Executive Officer of iDashboards, recently participated in an exclusive interview with Mary Jo Nott and the BeyeNETWORK (www.BeyeNETWORK.com). In this interview, Malik discusses iDashboards’ innovations in the presentation of visual intelligence via dashboards.

“Our team of innovative thinkers has created iDashboards 6.0 which moves the reality of broad user adoption and performance management to a new level,” says Shadan Malik, President and CEO for iDashboards.

“The customer-facing dashboards iDashboards created for the Olympics and the 2008 Presidential Election are indicative of the robust business intelligence technology available with a click of the button for all levels of users,” says Mary Jo Nott, Executive Editor of the BeyeNETWORK.

The BeyeNETWORK Spotlights are intuitive dialogues with innovative solution providers, and these spotlights provide a cutting-edge introduction to the new products and services of interest to the business intelligence community. The Network publishes six newsletters serving more than 115,000 readers across a wide variety of industries, making it the largest newsletter-based information source for business intelligence, performance management, data warehousing, data integration and data quality.

About iDashboards:

Through its award-winning engineering and patented software, iDashboards helps companies leverage information assets through visually rich, real-time and personalized business intelligence dashboards to analyze, track, and drill down through a wealth of information. iDashboards’ global customer base consists of organizations ranging from large, fortune 500 companies to small and medium-sized businesses, all of which are making quicker, well-informed business decisions with the help of iDashboards.

About BeyeNETWORK™:

The Network’s flagship site BeyeNETWORK.com leads the industry with up-to-the-minute news, newsletters, articles, executive spotlights, podcasts, expert-hosted channels and blogs. Experts include Claudia Imhoff, Bill Inmon, Craig Schiff, Colin White, David Loshin, and others. BeyeRESEARCH.com provides research and case studies from leading authors and experts in business intelligence. BeyeBLOGS.com is a business intelligence-specific community blogging site that provides an open forum about industry issues and challenges. BeyeSEARCH.com offers the first and only editor-driven directory and search engine specially built to serve this industry.

Customer Data Integration Between Open Source SugarCRM Package and 3rd-party Applications

Jimson Lee — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:09:18 +0000

One of my more interesting and frustrating projects for a software company involved integrating and customizing multiple databases, including their CRM, Call Center for support, and bug/defect tracking for all releases of their software.

The goals were simple. The Sales team wanted to initiate sales tracking with accurate sales forecasting, plus an effective lead generation along with an email marketing campaign.

The Sales database was linked to their Support database which was linked closely to their bug/defect tracking database for version control.

The results? Better reporting and an increase of $3 Million in sales.

They used Saleslogix for their CRM, SupportLogix for their Call Center, bug/defect tracking was open source Bugzilla, and one of the tools used to generate fancy reports was Crystal Reports. There was a lot of massaging and cleansing of data, and scripts were used to automate repetitive tasks. At the end of the day, any user could go to the UI interface and get the information they needed.

Sounds familiar?

This was 2002.

6 years later, we have better software, and Open source is much more widely accepted.

If you are using SugarCRM, and need to integrate your data with other applications in your organization, this press release may be of interest to you:

Apatar Accelerates Customer Data Integration Between Open Source SugarCRM Package and 3rd-party Applications

New Apatar connector enables companies to integrate SugarCRM suite with databases, flat files, other CRM/ERP applications, and top Web 2.0 destinations, all without coding.

Chicopee, MA – Apatar, Inc., the leading provider of open source software tools for the data integration market, today officially announced connectivity to the SugarCRM open source suite. The new SugarCRM connector is designed to integrate data between the popular customer relation management system and a variety of 3rd-party data sources, allowing for this data to be filtered, validated, and cleansed. Provided with Apatar’s drag-and-drop interface, the SugarCRM connector does not require coding skills and can be deployed by almost any business user.

Solving the biggest client data management challenge

Extracting and normalizing customer data from multiple sources is the biggest challenge with client data management, according to the Aberdeen Group. With the new SugarCRM connector, Apatar enables its users to easily link customer information between databases (such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle), files (Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, CSV/TXT files), applications (Salesforce.com), and the top Web 2.0 destinations (Flickr, Amazon S3, RSS feeds).

“The SugarCRM connector will help us exchange data between our existing CRM system and Zimbra open source messenger, saving thousands of dollars and reducing implementation time,” said Mark Gordon of Sonoma Creative, a full-service Web development company. “Upcoming Zimbra and SugarCRM integration will also allow us to adopt new advanced capabilities into our own Zimbra-based products,” he added.

Integrate quality data without any coding

According to Gartner, corporate developers spend approximately 65 percent of their effort building bridges between applications. With Apatar’s visual toolset, SugarCRM users can perform even a complex data integration job without having to write a single line of a code. Upgraded with the new SugarCRM connector, Apatar simplifies the integration process and allows both users and developers to synchronize data between the SugarCRM suite and other on-premises or on-demand data sources and applications.

While supporting SugarCRM data formats and types, the new connector does not require any manual coding or software developer skills, enabling even a non-developer to easily design and perform all of the required transformations. Prior to entering into SugarCRM, data can be filtered, validated, and cleansed using Apatar’s data quality capabilities. Apatar effectively eliminates data duplication, supports e-mail and postal addresses verification, and more.

Both the SugarCRM system and Apatar’s new connector are distributed as open source products. There is no doubt that many companies will significantly benefit from downloading and using these tools for free.

Completely Open Source

In today’s enterprises, most data integration projects never get built. The ROI (Return on Investment) on the small projects is simply too low to justify bringing in expensive middleware. Apatar entered this market as an open source vendor bringing the ease of drag-and-drop data integration to the companies that previously found proprietary data integration, ETL, and EAI software tools expensive and difficult to implement.

“The open source community provides business users with an option to avoid a vendor lock-in,” noted Renat Khasanshyn, CEO and founder of Apatar. “But what users of open source software really like is the total cost of ownership. When you don’t have to pay license fees for database software, data integration, and business intelligence software, this alone makes a healthy difference to your bottom line.”

Apatar Open Source Data Integration features and benefits:

- No coding! Visual job designer and mapping enable non-developers to design and perform transformations, shortening implementation time.
- Distributed under an open source model, reducing integration and maintenance costs
- Connectivity to SugarCRM, Salesforce CRM, MySQL, Oracle, MS SQL, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, GoldMine, DB2, Sybase, PostgreSQL, dBase, EnterpriseDB, Vertica Analytic Database, vTiger, InnoDB, Openbravo ERP, Compiere ERP, .CSV, XML, RSS, ATOM, HTTP queries, POP3, LDAP, FTP, WebDav, Autodesk Buzzsaw, any JDBC data sources, Amazon S3, Flickr, StrikeIron and CDYNE data quality Web services, and more
- Job scheduler and synchronization automate the data integration process.
- Improves data quality with a variety of verification, filtration, and validation features
- Platform-independent, runs from Windows, Linux, and Mac OS

Supported SugarCRM editions include version 5.0.0 or earlier for Windows, and version 5.1 or earlier for Linux/Mac OS.

Related links

SugarCRM connector Web demo: http://apatar.com/demo/web_demo_3/Apatar_SugarCRM_Connector.htm
Pre-built SugarCRM integrations: http://www.apatarforge.org/datamaps/search-for-datamaps-29.html
Apatar services for SugarCRM: http://www.sugarexchange.com/product_details.php?product=428
SugarCRM connector user guide: http://www.apatarforge.org/wiki/display/GUI/Apatar+Connector+for+SugarCRM

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM is the world’s leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software for companies of all sizes. SugarCRM easily adapts to any business environment by offering a more flexible, cost-effective alternative than proprietary applications. SugarCRM’s open source architecture allows companies to more easily customize and integrate customer-facing business processes in order to build and maintain more profitable relationships. SugarCRM offers several deployment options, including on-demand, on-premises and appliance-based solutions to suit customers’ security, integration, and configuration needs. For more information, call (408) 454-6900 or 1-87-SUGARCRM toll free in the US, email contact@sugarcrm.com, or visit http://www.sugarcrm.com.

About Apatar

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Need Support or Help Desk for Gmail? Slim and None

Jimson Lee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:00:25 +0000

Last August, I wrote about the massive Gmail outage that lasted several hours.

It’s no secret I am a big fan of Software-as-a-service, as well as cloud computing. Especially when the upfront and ongoing costs are slim or none.

You know the old joke when you buy a vacuum or encyclopedias from a door-to-door salesman? What are the chances for a refund? Slim and none. Slim is out of town, and “Nun” is gone to the convent.

A similar scenario can happen if you use Google’s Gmail. Especially with Google Apps when Gmail is hosting your corporate domain.

For those who use the Google Apps Premier Edition, the 99.9% uptime guarantee for Gmail is offered, as well as Email and phone support. The Standard free edition does not offer either, only self-support to their on-line FAQ.

Here is a good take on that scenario fron The Herald.

Can’t open your Gmail? Good luck

Logging on to Gmail or other e-mail services has become a routine of daily life, completed without a thought. What would you do, however, if you woke up tomorrow, plugged in your username and password, but then received an unfamiliar message: “Username and password do not match”?

If you are a Gmail user, what you would want to do is speak with a Google customer representative, post haste. But that is not an option. Google does not offer a live person to resolve the ordinary user’s problems.

Discussion forums abound with tales of woe from Gmail customers who have found themselves locked out of their accounts. They were innocent victims of security measures, which automatically suspend access if someone tries unsuccessfully to log on repeatedly to an account.

Tom Lynch, a software entrepreneur who lives near Austin, Texas, discovered last month that he had been locked out of the two Gmail accounts he used; he had no idea why. He received boilerplate instructions for recovering his accounts that did not apply to his circumstances, which included his failing to maintain a non-Gmail e-mail account as a backup. He said it took him four weeks – and a lawyer – before he succeeded in having service restored.

A Google spokesman placed the blame on Lynch, saying he did not follow Google’s guidelines. The spokesman characterized Lynch’s ordeal as a praiseworthy illustration of Google’s tough security: “We have had no cases of falsely recovered accounts.”

Google does provide telephone support to Gmail customers who subscribe to Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 annually and includes larger storage quotas and other benefits. Customers who use the advertising-supported version of Gmail, however, must rely solely on what Google calls “self-service online support.”

Microsoft and Yahoo similarly offer telephone support only to their premium e-mail customers. (Yahoo says it offers telephone support for its free e-mail service “in some cases,” but it does not publish the phone number. It is revealed to the user in distress only after e-mail communication fails to resolve the problem.)

As customers, we bring the same expectations to Google’s personalized information services as we do to our bank’s Web site. My bank recognizes that losing access for days at a time is unacceptable. It provides me with round-the-clock telephone support for account problems. So, too, should Google, even if I pay the company not in the form of a monthly account fee, but with my attention, which Google commercializes through advertising.

Last month, I contacted Google to see what the company had to say about my suggestion that it add telephone support. The company returned with a debate team of three: Matthew Glotzbach, who works with Google’s business customers; Roy Gilbert, who handles consumers; and Greg Badros, who is an engineering director.

Glotzbach began by saying that “one-to-one support isn’t always the best answer” because it would take Google too long to collect lots of data about a problem that was affecting many users simultaneously.

For systemic problems, data collection is important. But not for other categories. Account recovery could be slow for a locked-out customer who does not have a backup e-mail account, and who declined to provide a security question and answer because of concerns that someone else could use it to get in.

Badros argued that Google asked so little personal information of a new Gmail customer that it was hard to determine identity when the genuine user and the impostor both presented themselves to claim the account, and neither could verify their claims. He said more information could be asked of users when they signed up, but the inconvenience would dissuade them from trying the service.

Gilbert added that proving identity with only minimal information was a problem, whatever form of communication was used to reach customer support. He said, “Even if they were standing right in front of us, it wouldn’t help.”

This makes sorting out competing claims seem hopeless, although this is not the case; it simply means that standard security questions will not suffice. But if Google were to use real people to sort out identity problems over the phone, the only remaining consideration would be the one that Google’s panel of experts did not mention in our talk: cost.

Randall Stross is the author of “Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know.”