CUPERTINO, Calif.–SugarCRM, the leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, today announced that SugarCRM Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Corporate Development Nick Halsey will participate in a panel discussion sponsored by Microsoft at the O’Reilly OSCON Open Source Convention in Portland, Ore. Also planned is a session by SugarCRM Software Engineer John Mertic.

Session Details:

Customer Driven, Vendor Supported Interoperability

Topic: Interoperability impacts businesses, institutions and government agencies the world over. This session will focus on the value and benefits of customer driven, vendor supported interoperability. A series of short presentations will be followed by an interactive panel discussion to address the direction of interoperability in the changing IT landscape.

Participants: Andrew Aitken (Olliance Group), Fabio Da Cunha (Microsoft), Frank Rego (Novell), Nick Halsey (SugarCRM), Jay Lyman (The 451 Group)

Date and time: Thursday, July 22, 2010, 4:30 p.m. PT

Location: E143/E144, Oregon Convention Center, Portland

Developing Easily Deployable PHP Applications

Topic: Here’s the scenario: you’ve written a PHP application that is designed to run on Linux, Apache and MySQL. Now you have a customer that wants to run it on Windows. Or using Oracle. Or they like Memcached instead of APC. How do you do it, without sacrificing performance, stability, simplicity and your own sanity? This session will explore how SugarCRM approached this problem and what lessons were learned in the process.

Participants: John Mertic

Date and time: Thursday, July 22, 2010, 5:20 p.m. PT

Location: Portland 251, Oregon Convention Center, Portland

OSCON is the premier gathering place for the Open Source community where the contributors come together to not only display their work in this field, but also to learn from each other. For more information about OSCON 2010, visit: http://www.oscon.com/oscon2010.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM makes CRM Simple. As the world’s leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, SugarCRM applications have been downloaded more than seven million times and currently serve over 600,000 end users in 80 languages. Over 6,000 customers have chosen SugarCRM’s On-Site and Cloud Computing services over proprietary alternatives. SugarCRM has been recognized for its customer success and product innovation by CRM Magazine, InfoWorld, Customer Interaction Solutions and Intelligent Enterprise.

Raleigh, NC –  GFI Software, a market leading provider of software infrastructure products for small and medium-sized enterprises, announced today that it has acquired Sunbelt Software and specifically its VIPRE® product suite. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition will allow GFI to merge VIPRE technology into GFI’s email security and web security solutions group, and will provide GFI with new security products consisting of world-class and innovative technology. The assets of Sunbelt’s software distribution business, started over 16 years ago and separate from the technology side of the company, will be divested into a separate entity and the company is exploring other strategic partnerships.

“Over the past several years, we have looked extensively for the best technologies, the best developers and the best management teams that will allow us to expand our current product offerings and to provide the best service we can to our customer base. We were impressed by the high quality and innovative technology that underlies Sunbelt’s VIPRE line of products and immediately saw strong synergies between the two companies. We have acquired a good, growing and cash-flow positive business that fits well within GFI’s strategic vision to consolidate our products and grow our business,” said Walter Scott, GFI’s CEO.

“Furthermore, Sunbelt’s technology is backed by a reliable, committed customer support team that provides great service – something so important for us. We see this investment in Sunbelt and its VIPRE technology as an excellent opportunity to increase our install base, drive the software globally through our international partner channel and also build our consumer market, which has a powerful drag-along effect on the SME and SoHo markets,” Mr. Scott added.

“The technologies developed by both companies are highly complementary and I have a hard time imagining a better combination,” said Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software. “Additionally, GFI and Sunbelt are rooted in similar business principles, with similar markets and a commitment to superlative customer service.”

About Sunbelt Software

Headquartered in Tampa Bay (Clearwater), Florida, USA, Sunbelt Software is a leading provider of Windows security software including enterprise antivirus, antispyware, email security, and malware analysis tools. Leading products include the VIPRE® and CounterSpy® product lines, Sunbelt Exchange Archiver™, CWSandbox™, and ThreatTrack™.

About GFI

GFI Software provides a single best source of web and mail security, archiving and fax, networking and security software and hosted IT solutions for small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) via an extensive global partner community. GFI products are available either as on-premise solutions, in the cloud or as a hybrid of both delivery models. With award-winning technology, a competitive pricing strategy, and a strong focus on the unique requirements of SMEs, GFI satisfies the IT needs of organisations on a global scale. The company has offices in the United States (North Carolina and California), UK (London and Dundee), Austria, Australia, Malta, Hong Kong and Romania, which together support hundreds of thousands of installations worldwide. GFI is a channel-focused company with thousands of partners throughout the world and is also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

Newport Beach, CA – July 13, 2010 — LiveTime Software, a leading provider of Web, SaaS and Cloud-enabled ITIL 3 Service Management (ITSM) and Service Desk software, today announced it has achieved PinkVERIFY certification of 11 ITIL V3 Processes. This most recent milestone demonstrates LiveTime’s commitment to open standards and best practices to help businesses deliver more effective, efficient, and auditable customer service and support.

LiveTime 6.1 now includes Financial, Release and Deployment Management as part of the overall solution — at no additional charge. Financial management includes the ability to model the cost of services and perform what-if scenarios for forecast modeling. Complete hierarchical cost modeling allows charge backs by cost center for holistic financial management to assist with business planning and budgeting processes. Release and Deployment management extends the Change Management functionality and manages the delivery of changes to end users.

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 not months!

Available On Demand (SaaS) or On Premise (software, hardware or virtual appliance), LiveTime is based on open standards and supports any operating system, any browser, and any database.

Focusing specifically on usability and tight integration across all processes, LiveTime Service Manager 6.1 enables organizations to roll out Service Catalog and Service Portfolio Management as easily as Incident, Problem, and Change Management. LiveTime Service Manager 6.1 has been certified for Request Fulfillment, Incident, Problem, Change, Release and Deployment, Financial, Service Level, Knowledge, Service Catalog, Service Portfolio, and Service Asset and Configuration Management.

Pink Elephant’s PinkVERIFY assessment is recognized as the IT service management industry’s original program for certification of software that supports the definitions and workflow requirements defined by ITIL. For over ten years, PinkVERIFY has offered customers, who value the adoption and implementation of ITIL best practices, the assurance that they are selecting optimal, value-based IT service management solutions. With the release of ITIL V3, Pink Elephant has developed a new PinkVERIFY certification regime to reflect support of 14 processes within the Service Lifecycle.

About Pink Elephant

Pink Elephant is proud to be celebrating 20 years of ITIL experience – more than any other service provider. Operating through many offices across the globe, the company is the world’s #1 provider of ITIL and ITSM conferences, education and consulting services. For more information, please visit www.pinkelephant.com

About LiveTime Software

Headquartered in Newport Beach, California, LiveTime Software, Inc. is a vendor of Web 2.0, ITIL service management, help desk and support software for medium to large enterprises. Many global 2000 organizations and educational institutions use LiveTime’s vendor-neutral solutions to lower their costs and improve customer satisfaction. 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

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 — code-named "CRM5" — includes stronger integration with Microsoft Outlook and Office, new visualization and collaboration features, and a more prominent role for partners.

Microsoft made the announcement at its Worldwide Partner Conference today. The software giant also said that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will be available in 40 markets and 41 languages by the end of the year.

The company will launch Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace in September, promising an easier way for partners to market and distribute solutions to Microsoft Dynamics customers. Customers will be able to search for applications and solution extensions from Microsoft and its partners for their CRM and ERP implementations. Dynamics Marketplace will be integrated within CRM 2011 so customers can search for applications from within their CRM environments.

As part of the October launch of the Microsoft Partner Network, companies registered in the network can receive 250 seats of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online at no charge for internal use.

CRM 2011 will "take full advantage of native Outlook functionality, including previews and conditional formatting," Microsoft said, while a new contextual CRM Ribbon for Outlook and browser clients will offer consistent Microsoft Office navigation.

SharePoint users will be able to provision SharePoint document repositories and embed directly within CRM 2011.

Inline data visualization will let users create and share inline charts "with drill-down intelligence to visually navigate data and uncover new insights," Microsoft said, while real-time dashboards can help monitor business performance and improve decision-making.

Role-based forms and views will give users fast access to information that they need while preventing them from seeing data that they are not authorized to view, and the new version will also offer personalized views.

Businesses will also be able to define key performance and business indicators to track and measure progress against organizational goals.

More information on the CRM beta can be found at http://crm.dynamics.com/crm2011beta.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

Organizations of all types have adopted Sugar 6 to take advantage of cool new features and an enhanced web 2.0 user experience. These include leading firms such as: Advanced Glazings; Aloe Software Group L.L.C.; BNSF Logistics, L.L.C.; BrandLogic; Castle Branch; ConvaTec; Delphi Construction; Direct Dental Plan of America, Inc.; Elite Meetings International, Inc.; Enermodal Engineering; Front Rowe, Inc.; Kemper America, Inc.; MedSave USA, Inc.; Milsoft Utility Solutions; Momentum Dietary Solutions; Mountain Care Pharmacy; Octo Consulting; Orange Leap; RealEstate Business Intelligence; Sound Pure; Techworld Language Solutions, Inc.; and the Utah Flash.

“Sugar 6 is awesome! We love the look and feel, and it is so easy to navigate,” said Drew Sellers, vice president of operations with NBA affiliate team the Utah Flash. “It was a quick and seamless upgrade – and the new user experience is a great addition to the existing benefits we are seeing with SugarCRM.”

“The design of Sugar 6 is so logical, with such a better flow of information through the system,” said Katherine Burstein, solutions engineer at Orange Leap, a provider of software solutions for nonprofit organizations. “Everyone has welcomed the move to Sugar 6 and is already totally happy with the system.”

“The upgrade to Sugar 6 was a breeze and our marketing team is using Sugar 6 for sales and marketing automation and reporting,” said Brad Saunders, systems engineer with BrandLogic Corporation. “We are very impressed with the UI overhaul and simplified navigation. The whole package also seems faster. You have made a truly excellent product even better!”

“I have been a Sugar user for years, and this new interface is the best yet,” said Stan Wagner, business manager at Enermodal Engineering, a creator of energy efficient buildings. “It is a great addition to the existing simplicity of Sugar in terms of seamless upgrades and the easy web-based nature of the application.”

Sugar 6 is generally available today. For more information, visit www.sugarcrm.com or to take a free trial of Sugar 6, visit http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ondemand_eval.html.

About SugarCRM

SugarCRM makes CRM Simple. As the world’s leading provider of open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, SugarCRM applications have been downloaded more than seven million times and currently serve over 600,000 end users in 80 languages. Over 6,000 customers have chosen SugarCRM’s On-Site and Cloud Computing services over proprietary alternatives. SugarCRM has been recognized for its customer success and product innovation by CRM Magazine, InfoWorld, Customer Interaction Solutions and Intelligent Enterprise.

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.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

An alarming percentage of ERP software initiatives fail due to poor software selection and poor implementation practices. A key driver for the success of an enterprise system implementation is selecting the best fitting software for a company based on its industry focus, size and business model. The optimal ERP solution needs to go through a documented process to ensure that all the key criteria are met and that the proper steps are taken to ensure an acceptable ROI is achieved.

“Comparing the hundreds of product on the market is daunting and its helpful to have a simple guide to help get the process started on the right foot” says Shayne Fraeke, General Manager for Premiere TV in Santa Monica, California.

The simple ERP Software Selection Checklist™ tool, available to all ERP.com members was released to provide yet another helpful ERP software selection tool to the enterprise resource planning community. ERP.com also offers a Software Selector Tool to help ERP practitioners to filter through hundreds of ERP software solutions based on features, functionality, company size and industry.

What is ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning?

Enterprise Resource Planning is a company-wide information technology system developed to connect all business processes, activities and data in every department of the organization. For more information, please visit: www.erp.com or contact us at info@erp.com. For sales and partnership opportunities contact: sales@erp.com. For affiliate marketing and PR questions contact: affiliates@erp.com.

About ERP.com

Based in Los Angeles, California, ERP.com is a professional community site focused on offering the most up to date and relevant information on enterprise resource planning and a forum for ERP practitioners to collaborate, share information, market and develop sales leads the hi-tech business community.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

FGH – UK arm of Otto Group, the world’s largest mail order group and the second largest retailer on the Internet – has deployed KXEN analytics in its credit risk team after three years using the solution in marketing. Now, with bad debt propensity scoring that relies on internal customer data as well as third party information, FGH is set to reduce customer debt by as much as one third according to predictions.

“We’d used KXEN successfully in marketing for three years and saw no reason to consider a different solution for credit risk modeling,” says FGH head of customer management Andy Bryan. “The target was to improve our ability to predict which customers would default. The new KXEN scorecard has significantly improved our authorization process and retrospective analysis suggests we can cut debt by as much as 33% with only a 3% lower acceptance rate for credit.”

Combining three of the biggest names in the UK home shopping market, FGH holds a dominant position with some 1.5 million customers and sales of more than £250 million in its last financial year. Its customers come from all age groups and many of them are fiercely loyal, having shopped with FGH for years. The availability of credit to people who unable to get it through other sources is a key USP.

“We’re still accepting a similar number of credit orders. The big difference is that now we’re accepting more orders from good customers and fewer from bad customers. That’s because with KXEN we’re able to use things we know about how customers have managed their accounts with us in the past, rather than having to rely on a single external score,” says Andy Bryan. “It also means that our long-standing customers who have built up a level of trust with our brands are being treated fairly.

“Now we can be much more granular in our approach to credit scoring. We have a better way of making decisions and a better way of limiting our exposure,” says Andy Bryan. “It’s having a major impact on debt but only a minor impact on overall sales.”

About KXEN

KXEN, The Data Mining Automation Company™ delivers next-generation Customer Lifecycle Analytics to enterprises that depend on analytics as a competitive advantage. KXEN’s solutions for CRM lifecycle analytics drive significant improvements in customer acquisition, retention, cross-sell and risk applications. KXEN’s solutions are based on patented innovations and have been deployed at over 400 customers including Bank of America, Barclays, Cox Communications, Lowe’s, Meredith Corporation, Overstock.com, Rogers, Vodafone, and Wells Fargo. KXEN is headquartered in San Francisco, California with field offices in the US, Paris and London. Find out more by visiting www.kxen.com.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

Cordys, the leading provider of software for business process improvement, will be hosting its annual Business Process Management and Cloud Computing conference – Cordial 2010 – in the Netherlands from 14 – 15 September 2010. The agenda includes keynotes by Manfred Kets de Vries, professor at INSEAD and expert on leadership and organisational behaviour, Stefan Ried, Senior Analyst at Forrester and expert on Cloud Computing and Derek Miers, Principle Analyst at Forrester and expert on Business Process Management.

Now in its 7th year, Cordial 2010 is an exclusive forum for leading business and IT professionals from around the globe.  This year’s conference will provide access to educational opportunities that will show how organizations can accelerate time to value by reducing IT complexity and focus on serving business initiatives through next generation Business Process Management and Cloud Computing.

Jan Baan, Founder and CEO of Cordys said: “In spite of huge investments in enterprise software over the past two decades, many organisations remain pretty inflexible and, therefore uncompetitive because they are not able to change their business processes fast enough to either meet or drive market conditions. Inflexible business processes put the brakes on intellectual capital. The unique combination of BPM and new Cloud Computing technologies allows companies to embrace change and be able to accelerate time to value, take advantage of infrastructure elasticity and reduce operational expense”

Agenda highlights include: -

• Opening keynote with Cordys CEO and Chairman, Jan Baan
• Detailed customer case studies by leading organizations from around the globe
• Keynotes from leading management school professor Manfred Kets de Vries, industry analysts, customers and strategic partners of Cordys
• Keynotes by Cordys executives Per Jonsson (President & COO) and Theodoor van Donge (CTO)

During the two-day conference there will be a number of visionary keynotes, informative presentations, hands-on demonstrations and partner exhibits. In addition, Cordys will highlight the go to market strategy, showcase the latest technology updates and industry solutions for various verticals. The conference will be hosted by Cordys in the beautiful and relaxing surroundings of the 17th century castle ‘De Vanenburg’ in Putten, The Netherlands.

For more information or to register for the conference please visit http://cordial.cordys.com

About Cordys

Cordys is a global provider of software for business process improvement. Global 2000 companies worldwide have selected Cordys to achieve performance improvements in their business operations such as increased productivity, reduced time to market and faster response to ever-changing market demands. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Cordys is a global company with offices in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. Visit www.cordys.com

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

New York, NY and Oslo, Norway – Confirmit has launched a new SMS Survey extension, allowing Confirmit users to make immediate use of SMS surveys to engage with people for ‘in the moment’ feedback.

Built by Confirmit, the SMS Surveys extension is an ideal way to reach more people with tailored text-based cell phone surveys. With mobile devices now outnumbering PCs by a factor of 5 to 1 worldwide, and with most of those mobile devices capable of sending and receiving SMS messages, this method of engagement has high potential reach.

Pat Molloy, Chief Strategy Officer at Confirmit, commented: “We see this as a natural extension to Confirmit, in a world that is increasingly mobile and in which instant feedback is often an important part of an overall research and feedback effort.” 

Particularly suited to short feedback surveys, such as Point-of-Sale or customer service experience, SMS surveys enable organisations to get closer to respondents by contacting them in a way that is quick and convenient for them. Integrating SMS into multi-mode research projects also provides more scope to create engaging surveys and gather feedback that is more representative.

The SMS Surveys extension is the latest in a series of applications built on Confirmit Flex, a framework designed to help users get the most out of the Confirmit platform and add in new capabilities for greater flexibility. Confirmit Flex allows for rapid development and deployment of new data collection modes and other extensions to the Confirmit platform, and already offers applications for iPhone surveys, e-mail opt-out handling, and geolocation.

Survey authors use the familiar Confirmit Authoring environment to create these SMS surveys in the normal way and in fact SMS can be simply thought of as another mode, fully integrated into the mixed and multi-mode environment that Confirmit offers.

Data is collected in the secure and scalable back-end of Confirmit, and can then be processed, alerted on and reported on using all of the powerful tools available in the platform.

Molloy continued: “By tightly integrating SMS into Confirmit, we are able to take advantage of all of the benefits of the rest of the platform—such as its security and reliability for example, and the new mode sits seamlessly alongside Web, CAPI, CATI and Paper.”

About Confirmit

Confirmit is the world’s leading SaaS vendor for Customer Feedback, Employee Feedback, and Market Research applications. The company has more than 200 employees and offices in Oslo (headquarters), Guildford, London, Moscow, New York, San Francisco, and Yaroslavl. Confirmit’s software is also distributed through partner resellers in Barcelona, Kuwait City, Madrid, Milan, Pattaya, Sydney, and Tokyo.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.

United Kingdom – Axios Systems, the world’s leading provider of ITSM Software, today reveals the results of a survey conducted during recent UK ITSM industry events*.

Respondents were asked what the key drivers for their IT departments were over the next year. An overwhelming majority (64 per cent) stated that improving the service they provide to the business was their main focus, followed by reducing the cost of service provision (43 per cent).

In order to meet these challenges, 41 per cent of organizations are looking to upgrade or find a new ITSM solution, with 53 per cent of those surveyed, who do not currently have an ITSM solution, planning on implementing one within the next year.

This trend has been confirmed by Forrester Research. In the recently published Market Overview: IT Service Management Support Tools (March 30, 2010), Evelyn Hubbert stated, “2009 was a difficult year for IT operations professionals, as many organizations struggled in response to the downturn in the economy and many service desk technology projects were deferred or cancelled. Forrester sees this trend being reversed in 2010, with companies freeing up funds to improve facilities for their service desk groups that were either neglected or on hold for the past 12 to 18 months.”

The organizations surveyed have also identified that another way to reduce costs and increase user buy-in is through a self-service portal, which can reduce incident resolution time and free up Service Desk staff to tackle more complex issues. 44 per cent already have a self-service portal facility, with 31 per cent of organizations who do not have one in place, intending to implement one within the next 6 months.

In addition, organizations also see the value in having a Service Catalog in place to offer a central repository for all services, which has been confirmed by the success of the Axios Systems’ Service Catalog webcast series. 44 per cent of respondents have intentions to start a Service Catalog project within the next 12 months. This follows a similar survey carried out by Axios Systems at the end of 2009 where 64 per cent of organizations were planning to implement a Service Catalog in the next 6 months. Both surveys indicate that Service Catalog is high on organizations agendas, although the projects may have been slightly delayed due to external economic factors or that it has taken longer to convince business decision makers to the advantages a Service Catalog can bring.

Ailsa Symeonides, Sales and Marketing Director at Axios Systems says, “We are pleased that organizations can see the true benefit of ITSM software, such as assyst, and the associated features such as self-service and Service Catalog. assyst has helped our existing customers to not only remarkably improved their IT service provision and reduce costs, but also to gain control over their IT estates and streamline services offered by other departments such as Facilities and HR. Our Service Catalog workshops also help organizations to define their services before embarking on such a project.”

*The study was conducted in April and May 2010 and is based on over 500 IT professionals from large organizations.

About Axios Systems

Axios Systems is the world’s leading provider of Service Desk Software and Enterprise ITSM software. Benefiting from more than 20 years of development and investment, Axios Systems’ core solution, assyst, intuitively steers users through the ITIL processes.

Available in SaaS and on-site delivery models, assyst optimizes IT infrastructure efficiency, resulting in a low total cost of ownership (TCO). Axios also offers a comprehensive set of consulting and training services to support ITSM best practices.

Copyright ® 2009 by CRM HELP DESK Software .com. All Rights Reserved.