Unica Corporation announced the pricing of its initial public offering of common stock at $10.00 per share and started trading on August 3, 2005. Shares of Unica are trading on the Nasdaq National Market on August 3, 2005 under the symbol "UNCA."

SSA Global Technologies, a provider of enterprise solutions and services announced the signing of a definitive agreement under which SSA Global will acquire Epiphany. The transaction has a gross value of $329 million or $4.20 per share for the shareholders of Epiphany.

Quantum Corporation has selected Talisma’s CIM solution to better serve their rapidly growing base of customers. By broadening the communication channels they offer in their support organization, Quantum gives its customers more choices as well as faster and more personalized service. Talisma Knowledgebase enables Quantum’s customers to find fast, accurate, and consistent answers on Quantum’s Web site 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

KANA Software announced that it has forged a partnership with TIBCO Software, a software company that enables real-time business. As part of the agreement, KANA will embed TIBCO® BusinessWorks into its offering. TIBCO BusinessWorks will provide KANA with an extensible integrated services environment and a service-oriented architecture platform upon enabling KANA customers to integrate KANA Resolution with existing applications in the call center.

Siebel Systems has been recognized as the global market share leader on a revenue basis in the CRM applications market. According to market research firm IDC, Siebel Systems captured 10.7 percent of the worldwide CRM applications software market in 2004 compared to the closest competitor, which captured a 6.8 percent market share.

Salesforce.com announced that GeoTrust has automated many of its customer support processes using Supportforce. GeoTrust is also using Supportforce to generate more detailed metrics regarding its customer support issues, making it easier to escalate and respond to these concerns in a timely manner. In addition, Supportforce is enabling GeoTrust to track case growth.

High Street bank Bradford & Bingley, a UK-based financial services business, announced that it has chosen Talgentra’s Tallyman system to manage its customer revenue and collection processes. Tallyman will enable Bradford & Bingley to adopt the techniques for ensuring that recovery rates for mortgages are kept as high as possible.

Amdocs completed the acquisition of Longshine Information Technology Company Ltd., a privately-held vendor of customer care and billing software in China. This acquisition expands Amdocs' global presence and marks its entry into mainland China.

Pervasive announced that Pivotal will collaborate to extend integration of Pivotal's customer relationship management (CRM) systems with leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, helping America's homebuilders maximize customer interactions. Pivotal joins a growing number of independent software vendors (ISVs) using Pervasive's integration technology and services to add connectivity solutions for legacy applications.

Onyx revenue for the second quarter of 2005 was $15.5 million, compared to $14.8 million in the second quarter of 2004 and $14.1 million for the first quarter of 2005. License revenue in the second quarter of 2005 was $4.3 million, a 21 percent increase compared to $3.6 million in the second quarter of 2004. License revenue in the first quarter of 2005 was $3.9 million.

  "OUR TAKE" (more)

8/8/2005 - Outsourcing Best Practices II I have to say that I very much appreciate the great advice many of our readers have freely shared. I hope you can use at least one best practice in your own organization. Today I want to share another one.   One reader wrote, "I think outsourcing can work if processes are well defined and the 'mother' company carefully monitors them. Mystery shopping will make sure what you want/mapped is done correctly.   Reminds me of the old saying, "trust but verify."   Gary Lemke, Publisher (Share your thoughts)