Linux News: ECT News Exclusives

Riding Out the Storm: Q&A With Information Builders CEO Gerry Cohen
June 01, 2009

Business Intelligence has evolved considerably in the last several years. At one time the domain of PhDs or other highly trained employees, it has become accessible to the masses. Indeed, one of the competitive differentiators among the vendors in the market -- from the huge stack players to the small best-of-breed providers -- is not whether, but how, they make this complex technology available to business line users.

Building a 21st Century Platform: Q&A With Consona CEO Jeff Tognoni
May 18, 2009

Consona offers a line of ERP and CRM software that is made up of parts that are more recognizable than the whole. Remember Onyx? It belongs to Consona. Same with Knova and, more recently, SupportSoft. Over the last few years, Consona has been steadily acquiring companies, building out a very respectable portfolio of products. It's about to take the next logical step.

Investments Bleed When You Cut Costs: Q&A With Tigerpaw CEO Dave Foxall
May 11, 2009

Tigerpaw Software is a family-owned software company that, 24 years after it was founded, is about to enter a new phase of growth. The company's enterprise CRM, inventory and project management platform has always had a loyal following, in no small part because of the care and attention Tigerpaw lavishes on its customers, said CEO Dave Foxall.

The End of Message Fragments: Q&A With Relenta CEO Dmitri Eroshenko
May 04, 2009

Before the arrival of sales force automation and marketing campaign software, there were productivity applications. CRM, as we all know, rose from that fundamental platform of email, calendaring, mailing list management and task management. A lot of CRM vendors include productivity in their CRM apps, but few focus on it as relentlessly as Relenta does.

Long Live PRM: Q&A With TreeHouse CEO Erich Flynn
April 27, 2009

PRM has an intriguing business case: It applies the concepts and tools of customer relationship management to the business relationships that also affect a company's customer base. The problem with PRM is that it hasn't caught on -- for myriad reasons, starting with its expense and difficulty in implementation. Enter the next generation of PRM companies.

Poised to Pounce on IPO: Q&A With SugarCRM CEO John Roberts
April 20, 2009

Around the time when Software as a Service was pre-empting the on-premise vendors, SugarCRM burst onto the CRM scene with its own disruptive business mode: open source for CRM. The build-it-yourself model wasn't for everybody, of course -- or so many thought at the time. As SugarCRM continues to refine its code and product lineup, it is attracting customers that once would have opted for a packaged or SaaS product.

BI Bridge-Building: Q&A With Noetix CEO Morris Beton
April 13, 2009

The Business Intelligence space has been on a mission for several years. The goal: to simplify the way these applications work for the end-user. Several years ago, one practically needed a Ph.D. to be able to eke out usable data. Today, most line of business users can get the same results. Noetix is the latest vendor to ride this trend.

Moving as Fast as We Can: Q&A With inContact CEO Paul Jarman
April 06, 2009

Right now, about 2 percent of the contact center infrastructure market uses Software as a Service, said inContact CEO Paul Jarman, citing research by Gartner. That statistic seems reasonable, given that the contact center infrastructure space has traditionally been dominated by on-premise players -- but Jarman hopes to change that.

'We Know How to Deal With Hard Times': Q&A With Epicor CEO George Klaus
March 23, 2009

Having joined the business software company in 1996, George Klaus, chairman, president and CEO of Epicor, is hardly a newbie by industry standards. However, he tells CRM Buyer that all of his executive team has been with the company even longer. Long enough, in other words, to have weathered several economic downturns.

It's All About Execution: Q&A With Journyx CEO Curt Finch
March 09, 2009

Journyx, a company that provides Web-based time-tracking and project management applications, also offers its customers a back door into customer service. That is, its application lets users track what a customer cost. That is a number that is often surprisingly miscalculated or not calculated at all, said CEO Curt Finch.

Reducing Clients' Risks Pays Off: Q&A With RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte
March 02, 2009

By any measure, SaaS vendor RightNow Technologies closed the year on a high note, completing seven million-dollar-plus deals in the last quarter. In fact, CEO Greg Gianforte told CRM Buyer, "our sales teams delivered the highest total bookings in any quarter over the last two years. In the current environment, we believe that is a tremendous achievement."

Visions of IPO Dance in His Head: Q&A With Xactly CEO Christopher Cabrera
February 23, 2009

When Christopher Cabrera, president and CEO of Xactly, says his Software as a Service sales performance management company began 2009 with a big bang, he didn't -- as one might assume in this economy -- mean it in a bad way. In January, the company acquired Centive, its primary competitor. In February, it lured a new CFO on board -- Steve Cakebread, former CFO of Salesforce.com.

Selling to the Other 97 Percent: Q&A With Demandbase CEO Chris Golec
February 16, 2009

Sales are down. You don't even need to add a qualifier to that sentence -- such as industry or name of company. Across the board, corporate and consumer sales are down. Enter firms like Demandbase, which promises the latest in lead generation functionality. The company debuted last year with Demandbase Central, a Software as a Service platform.

Web 2.0 Stars Are Aligning: Q&A With Genesys CEO Paul Segre
February 10, 2009

Genesys has always been a distinct entity within the Alcatel-Lucent line of divisions, products and services. On Jan. 1, though, it was folded into a larger group called the "Applications Software Group." Genesys' mission of offering contact center products and services geared toward enterprises and telecommunication firms will still be part of Alcatel-Lucent's mix.

Fast Implementation Is Key: Q&A With Amdocs Strategy VP Dana Porter
February 09, 2009

For the last few years, Amdocs has been introducing modules, or "packs," to customers. These are packaged applications that are equipped with features that address a specific task or functional area and are designed for fast implementation. This strategy was on display last week when Amdocs rolled out its E-Billing Start Pack.

We're Hiring: Q&A With Alpine CEO Christopher Carrington
February 05, 2009

The home-agent contact center model has undergone a metamorphosis in the last few years. A few short years ago, it was the refuge of small companies that couldn't afford to outsource operations to typical brick-and-mortar contact centers, said Alpine CEO Christopher Carrington. However, larger companies are increasingly drawn to the model.