Hewlett-Packard plans to acquire IT asset and service management software vendor Peregrine Systems in a cash deal for $425 million. By integrating Peregrine's products into its HP OpenView systems management suite, HP said it hopes to position itself as one of the market leaders in asset management software.

ATG announced the availability of its new Wisdom-enabled ATG Service Suite and unveiled ATG Wisdom, its strategy for enabling enterprises to create a more relevant and consistent experience for their customers, across the Web, e-mail, call center, and mobile channels; and throughout the marketing, commerce, and service lifecycle.

Nortel introduced its 'Expert Anywhere' Contact Solution, making it possible for companies to tap experts across an organization, expanding the pool of customer service agents without the high cost of maintaining centralized and regional contact centers or setting up expert knowledge workers as formal contact center agents.

CyberTech Telecom Development in The Netherlands introduced a new method of Voice-over-IP (VoIP) recording whereby the voice- and call-data packets are retrieved from a data network, simultaneously. This incoming data-stream is then processed in real-time, such that the resulting voice-stream can be stored together with the call-data in one Voice Recording System.

Sprint and Avaya have announced a joint agreement for development and delivery of hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony wireline and wireless services for the North American marketplace.

Siemens and Genesys announced a new integration of technologies - using open next-generation session initiation protocol (SIP) standards - to bring a single, centralized platform of rich contact center and communication solutions to large enterprises. The integration includes the SIP-based Siemens HiPath 8000 Real-Time IP System and the SIP-based Genesys 7 portfolio of contact center management applications.

Teradata and Siebel announced availability of the complete suite of Siebel Business Analytics applications optimized for Teradata Warehouse.

Cast Iron Systems and salesforce.com announced the availability of the Cast Iron Systems Application Router for Appforce. Integrated with Salesforce via the Appforce on-demand platform, and available to salesforce.com customers, the Cast Iron Systems Application Router connects enterprise systems to salesforce.com.

Webcom and salesforce.com announced the availability of WebSource CPQ for AppExchange. Bridging the gap from opportunity to order, WebSource CPQ allows users to configure, price, quote and propose their offerings across multiple sales and distribution channels, anytime, anywhere.

Intervoice announced an expanded alliance with BEA Systems in which the company has agreed to enable its existing voice portal offerings to work with BEA WebLogic Workshop and BEA WebLogic Portal 8.1 and 9.

  "OUR TAKE" (more)

9/21/05 - The End of Siebel OnDemand? Since Mr. Ellison owns a stake in hosted providers NetSuite, Salesforce.com and Oracle has its hands full making sense of the non-hosted enterprise applications, it certainly begs the question about how much Oracle will invest in Siebel OnDemand.   How prudent for Mr. Ellison to have bets covering three of the leading hosted CRM solutions? Who wouldn't want to be in that enviable position as an investor? But does it make sense for him to continue to keep his investment in all three? Of the three, he has most control over Siebel OnDemand.   And if the Siebel technology platform migrates or evolves to something new, what does that mean for Siebel OnDemand? Am I being an alarmist? Perhaps, but remember that Siebel OnDemand is the child of a Siebel/IBM partnership. Since IBM and Oracle are not the best of buddies, it makes sense that Siebel OnDemand as we know it today will not remain intact.   Gary Lemke, Publisher (Share your thoughts)