January 23, 2004   |   Martin Schneider —

In the news...
Siebel Systems' acquisition of hosted call center company Ineto will boost its appeal among small and midsize firms, according to Gartner analysts. "The acquisition adds an important component to Siebel's OnDemand strategy--the ability to host the contact center component, thus removing the need for enterprises to invest in and maintain costly telephony infrastructure," says Wendy Close, research director at Gartner, in a recent report. But Siebel must be able to run with the momentum, Close says: "The deal puts a burden on Siebel to finally improve its ability to serve and support smaller customers. Siebel has not had a strong customer rating in this area."

The "Wendover-Global Insight IT Spending Index" for fourth-quarter 2003 increased by 25 percent over the third quarter 2003 average level of spending, which the firm says further supports the identification of an upward trend first identified in second-quarter 2003. The report suggests that CRM will see much of this resurgence in IT spending, with spending possibly reaching the high levels seen in 2001.

Teradata announced the launch of the Teradata University Network, an online-learning portal designed to foster education of data warehousing, business intelligence, and database administration. About 170 universities from 27 countries are represented in the network so far.

Deals of the week...
Metreo, a provider of price optimization software solutions, announced this week it has become the pricing solution for several industrial manufacturers, including Eaton Corporation, Essex Electrical Products, General Electric, and Honeywell.

AGF, a Canadian investment-management company, is deploying PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM.

Birch Telecom has begun a 400-seat implementation of Salesnet's hosted CRM solution.

Verizon has selected edocs to power "My Account," Verizon's online account management and customer service tool.

Executive changes...
The Allant Group has named Dave Irwin vice president of corporate development. Irwin most recently held the position of business advisor, corporate strategy for Acxiom.

Blackwell Consulting Services has promoted former CFO Pamela Blackwell to the position of president and COO.

Edify has named Alex Choy vice president of engineering. He comes to Edify from Interwoven, where he also served as vice president of engineering.

Rockwell FirstPoint Contact, a provider of contact center solutions, has added Garry Reichert as director, strategic sales, and Sandy Biggam as director of new solutions development. Reichert has held positions at Aspect and Pivotal, while Biggam was COO for contract center software startup Eqtima.

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