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.

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.

UniPress announced a new add-on module for its FootPrints line of web-based service desk products. The new module, FootPrints Change Management, provides a tool for help desk and support organizations to automate and control IT change management activities.

SAP announced that it is acquiring privately-held, Toronto, Canada-based Triversity, a North American provider of point-of-sale (POS) software solutions. The announcement was made at Triversity's Retail Summit and Executive Conference, being held in Phoenix, Arizona, Sept. 18-20.

Outsourced call center agent positions in the United States are losing their share of the global market, according to new research by independent market analysis firm Datamonitor (DTM.L). The report, "Contact Center Outsourcing in the United States," says that tight profit margins are driving outsourcers to move offshore and automate where viable. Canada, India and the Philippines are expected to be the beneficiaries. In a shrinking market, outsourcers are being forced to reinvent themselves by merging, partnering or competing with other types of companies in a bid to stay in the game and seize market share.

Pandora Networks and salesforce.com announced the availability of Pandora's Worksmart On Demand IP Communications service for AppExchange. Built on salesforce.com's Appforce on-demand platform, Worksmart for AppExchange is available immediately for preview in the AppExchange, and will be generally available at the same time as the Salesforce Winter '06 release.

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.

Mercury Interactive announced it has acquired BeatBox Technologies (formerly ClickCadence LLC). Under the terms of the acquisition, which closed on September 1, 2005, Mercury will pay approximately $14 million in cash. Mercury also announced it has acquired the m-Test wireless testing technology from Intuwave, a Mercury partner based in the United Kingdom. Under the terms of the m-Test technology acquisition, which closed on July 26, 2005, Mercury paid cash and entered into certain licensing arrangements in exchange for specified intellectual property assets from Intuwave.

Conexio Managed Services announced the acquisition of the assets of TJBA of Monroe, MI. The combined company will operate under the name "Conexio Managed Services, LLC."

Genticity will unveil new enhancements to its business intelligence tool set, combining reporting, analysis, scorecards and performance monitoring within its award-winning integrated web-based desktop. Customer1 is introducing the Customer1 Reporting Matrix, designed to extend business intelligence to all levels of the Contact Center and the Enterprise, while lessening the demand on information technology resources.

  "OUR TAKE" (more)

9/23/05 - At Least They Use First Names Big vendors make easy targets. Lately, I wonder if I've picked on the Siebel/Oracle merger too much. It's really more self-flagellation because no one has beaten me up for my sometimes cutting comments. However, I don't want you to think that I'm picking sides to promote or bash any particular vendor. I call 'em like I see 'em.   You may know that I offer this space to opposing opinions so I want to share a letter I received from Bruce Cleveland of Siebel. In the letter, he basically says, "not so fast" to those that think Siebel CRM OnDemand will go away. The letter addresses specific claims made by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and clarifies what is possible with the Siebel platform moving forward. Click here to read the whole text.   Game on!   Gary Lemke, Publisher (Share your thoughts)