But ‘lo with the bow near capacity, SSA saw more to gather just beyond a tall, golden gate. Before she could pass she met a greater collector with a bigger bouquet and was immediately plucked herself, to be  arranged in the Infor fold (next to cousins Systems Unionis and Autumn Extensity).

Was anything still missing? Perhaps some Sage? With this wild mixture, florist Infor must hope against allergic reactions.

“Our focus at ProClarity is to give organizations a simple, powerful and adaptable interface to insight, expanding on the power of the Microsoft business intelligence platform.”

Note how ProClarity’s PR person, who probably authored the official “quotation“, began it with the words “our focus.” My guess is that they try to do that kind of thing all the time. I figured I’d just go back and browse through some old press releases to see what Eye could find. (I also enjoy the idea of buying myself an interface to insight. Mein Gott, this company could put the entire psychiatric community out of work (also, would that interface constitute wetware?)

So here are my findings, from the beginning of the year ’till now.

1. 12 January PR on the company’s Understanding conference includes a “quote” by the company’s Otey, saying “I look forward to sharing my insight on Microsoft SQL Server 2005’s new features as they relate to the enterprise.” One down, plus we get insight and understanding from the same grey gook.

2. 16 January PR on the company’s retail acorns, which goes a little something like this

“The Retail Profitability Analysis solution… utilizes ProClarity Analytics 6 as a simple, powerful and adaptable interface to the Microsoft BI platform, providing retail organizations with valuable insight into operational performance…”

There it is, insight!

3. 18 January PR on customer 8el, buying ProClarity–will they get the insight interface? Let’s see… (note the ellipses in my comment, this is me taking a couple minutes to read the PR, it’s exciting because you can imagine this in real time)

“CallWatch Interactive, leveraging ProClarity software, will further empower 8el customers to make better informed, faster decisions through unprecedented access and visibility of call data combined with powerful reporting functionality.”

They got the visibility buzzword and “insight” appears as part of the company’s standard tagline. I won’t repeat that part–you can click the link to the press release if you want to find it.

4. 8 February PR on a non-recalcitrant endeavor taken with KalSoft to get into Pakistan and other MEA regions. Here, Ali Khan, of KalSoft gets to mention insight, “ProClarity offers a variety of excellent analytic tools for the Microsoft BI platform that allow users to glean valuable insight into corporate data”.

5. 8 February PR finally, we’re up-to-the-current-date, and I know this can’t be that exciting, we get decomposition tree visualizations and a Perspective View add-on.

Well there it is. I checked every press release from the beginning of the year, and they’ve all got something to do with vision or insight. It’s not surprising Microsoft bought them, the company talks about its goings-on with MS in every press release it issues. And anyway, you might argue that visibility is exactly what BI tools ought to be talking about. I wonder, will it run on Vista? Maybe that’s too far off on the horizon to answer.

“Corporate governance” has become a watchword for public companies worldwide. Laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and BASEL II have been enacted to help restore investor confidence in financial information reported by public companies.

Peregrine should know, after all, it was only a few years ago that its top execs flew the coop in a in a swoop of guilt. Yes, the SEC brought charges of fraud on the company. The San Diego Reader published an interesting story at the time. It covered how a Peregrine VP scoured the moneytrees for nests holding a few firm eggs that could potentially resell the company’s products and then hatched a scheme to count a phoney buy-in of the Peregrine mother nest as actual sales to customers. When it all backfired and the eggs turned rotten, Peregrine bought ‘em up and called it an “acquisition cost.” Ah well, such is business–though not everyone agrees. Now considering the above claim Peregrine makes, (we may want to excuse its history as presumably, like a human being, it has by now shed its old cells and could be all new and perhaps quite honest) it’s a joy to see the company quickly changing flight paths and pulling SOX into an ITAM realm. It continues by saying:

From IT’s perspective, achieving compliance requires implementing strong general controls, such as change management and IT asset management.

IT department, only YOU can prevent C-level theft. No no, it would be taking things too far to convey such a strong message about SOX compliance in relation to the tools that enable it or the people responsible for those tools. But the point’s not bad… ITAM has its place, just like all the other enterprise apps citing their profound effectiveness toward complying with Sarbanes-Oxley.

In other news, HP announced the completion of its acquisition of Peregrine. While the public forgets how Peregrine used to treat its purchases (certainly HP wouldn’t practice that kind of stunt), this will help set HP (via Peregrine Service Center/Asset Center, etc.) to better compete with CA’s Unicenter IT asset management apps.

“The Internet is making it easier than ever for consumers to research companies’ products and services and take their business to different companies when their expectations are not met, according to a recent study released today by Accenture.”

Accenture says that after surveying over 1,000 US consumers regarding customer loyalty. It turns out that 61 percent are disloyal because, with the Internet giving them access to information about competition, it’s easier to change service providers, another 50 percent are disloyal because the Internet lets them purchase on-line. So I may be stretching the “disloyal” factor a bit, but Accenture’s news is rather confusing–it refers, seemingly interchangeably, to both “service providers” and “companies” but Accenture doesn’t say what constitutes a service provider. While it might (with some qualifications) be possible to say every service provider is a company, not every company is a service provider. In what sense is this customer loyalty? Are they talking about Internet service providers? Or do they mean some more general sense of the word?

Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop their Woody fellow from generalizing on how “it’s more important than ever that companies get their customer relationships right…” He continues to mention a ripple effect from customers sharing their experiences with others and then, voila, the supporting stats

“…63 percent of respondents said they would complain directly to a company about a service or product problem, an even greater number (68 percent) said they would tell family and friends about their negative experiences with those companies…”

How does the Internet play into this? Accenture doesn’t tell us. The news release simply offers a few correlating points, and none stand up to a clear causal relationship. In the end Accenture talks about service providers again, even though the subtitle for the release is “Internet Challenges Companies to Re-think Customer Relationships,”

Shall we see how easy it is for Accenture to lose clients, err I mean service obtainers (I guess they’re who get services from providers) to a competitor? Here they are.

1. TIBCO “enables real-time business”
2. “…Portals are being seen as the linchpin or face of SOA, helping customers become more nimble and responsive through the timely personalized delivery of relevant information assets.”

1) Is now “real-time?” What about time aside from now? It could be a bit of dinger had I found any “forward-looking” statements in the press release. Anyway, there may be another software company or two enabling real time business–I wouldn’t rush into this one right away, at least not until TIBCO answers some fundamental philosophical questions about time. I hope they’re not substantivalists or we might hit upon their “intellectual property” issues.

2) With now in real-time, why does one need to become more nimble? If I implement a PortalBuilder system, I too want the power of now I don’t want nimble, which would imply something not quite now but able to respond pretty fast (I guess, relative to your frame of reference). That is, if it happens now at least one moment (and who’s counting) will pass before I get nimble and respond. Maybe before I was nimble it took more than a moment, but in any case it’s not the identical now anymore is it? If it’s a different now is it still real-time? And can TIBCO still claim the power?

This coming from a company who at the top of its press release states “Portal Solution Provides Cost-Effective Means for Unlocking Potential of Trapped “Siloed” Assets; Fuels Adoption of SOA” Hold on! Let’s review. In business, isn’t time an asset? Time always costs money, the more time required to do something the more dough lost. However, TIBCO provides the power of now. TIBCO makes you more nimble. But in TIBCO making you more nimble, it implies another now (and another and another). So which now is it, TIBCO? Damn these siloes of nows! In paying to get a real-time business, which unlocks my trapped asset siloes, the power of now just keeps making new ones.

3. Lastly, portals as the face of SOA? Now that is some good rebranding of the 90s portal story. Old marketing reinvented by new buzz. Mark this moment.

Kicks from the name? As usual, mergers give their marketing lots of space to really confuse everyone. After all, it’s one of the more telling points about how the future of the merged business will turn out. In this case, we went from GNX and WWRE into a GNU-like recursive genesis (name only, you Adam smashers) now known as Agentrics. What’s it mean? It means “AGENT for Retail Information and Collaborative Solutions.” Why they chose to capitalize AGENT I do not know as the recursion doesn’t go that far.

The new Agentrics logo looks like a mutation of something familiar but not for those familiar with the old GNX or WWRE logos. I can’t quite pin down the dots, but they seem to be the standard-bearer for confusing merged companies (recall the Sun-Netscape alliance that gave us iPlanet).

Or maybe they were inspired by Agilent, after all that was a big name deal too and it certainly didn’t hurt to get their “ag, ag, ag” sounds involved.

what about another “ag” sounding company, and this one’s even got its own PLM solution.

Finally see, where we are?

According to the GNX press release

Among the immediate priorities of Agentrics is the consolidation and rationalization of the software and technology platforms from GNX and WWRE, which will result in a cost advantage to the new company.

I wonder what that means for the old GNX PLM customers? I’ll be curious to see how they tend ProductVine’s growth. After all, Eric Reiss, who is a member of Agentrics’ board had this to say “Agentrics is in a privileged position to leverage their unique insights into our business requirements and deliver high value-added solutions across the retail supply chain. ” Maybe they’ll priveledge us with some of those insights.

CA wants to put some focus back in its enterprise services management products. It’s introducing a slew of new solutions for dashboards, things to help service delivery, and make IT “magical” to the enterprise, with very very litle downtime. Hocus pocusy stuff, they think.

CEO John Swainson flips his flippers while plunging into the icy waters of customerland. He commented on CA’s nastyman past but wants all to know, employees (those that weren’t laid off in the Spring) have swapped their wifebeater uniforms for something friendlier. Granted, they can’t afford much more than a t-shirt, what with the expensive new excutives the company was forced to indulge, who must consider naming rights for major sporting stadiums–maybe branding things Unicenter Arena, with a CA teletubby-esque mascot (teletubbies seem friendly). No wait, execs, Swainson believes he’d be called “sleazy” for a move like that, come up with something else.

In Mark Harrington’s Newsday article, we get a Swainson quote:

Swainson said he’s been rewarded by a “buzz” that’s returning to the company and “seeing the excitement of the people as they realize we’re coming out of it.”

About time, don’t you hate coming off a good high?

…As part of the reorganization, Infor, an existing Golden Gate Capital funded company, will acquire Geac’s ERP software products including System21, Runtime, RatioPlan, Streamline, and Management Data and the employees who support them will move to Infor…

Which puts Infor in a stronger global position for the discrete, process, distribution, and other ERP industries. It doesn’t end here though, look for some new financial solutions to be named soon (as a result of the Golden Gate Gutting Co’s activities).

…Geac’s financial applications and the Industry Specific Applications (ISA) will become the two business groups under a newly formed Golden Gate Capital funded company, which will be named prior to the transaction closing…

Wonder how the Geac employees will fare? Interesting since hearing recent announcements on the low Canadian unemployment rate “the unemployment rate dipped 0.1 percentage points to 6.6%, the lowest in three decades.” according to Statistics Canada.

Anyway, let’s get to the meat of the matter–I mean Mr. Lee’s insightful quote from the press release. He said

The DMA helps shape the way that businesses apply data-driven marketing methods . . . I am very honored to be elected to serve on the board of such a committed and influential organization within our industry…”

So I suppose the answer to customer-focusedness might be found within the realm of the DMA and that is where we must look. What exactly is the DMA committed to? Let’s examine its strategy (pdf), which is available from its web site.

Enter vision! “The DMA will represent the entire Direct Marketing Community across the complete, end-to-end, Direct Marketing Process, in order to create the most attractive market space for all participants.” I ask, who are “all participants” if not the marketers and the marketees? It’s a good question to ask, because according to the DMA’s response, it is “…concerned about the welfare of anyone who uses DM techniques or makes purchases or donations in response to them.” That clearly includes customers.

The next statement in its strategy is the jello star salve on a business slur savvyman. Pull out your scotch, lunchmates: “The Mission of The DMA is to expand the convergence zone of the Direct Marketing market space in order to maximize the long-term economic interests of its members.” That convergence sweetness is where suppliers and customers meet, they say. Well let’s examine what the DMA does to “maximize the long-term economic interests of its members.” I think it’s clear for the supply-side, but what about the consumer-side? I looked. I really did. After all, I want to maximize my long-term economic interests. I tried to see what I’d get if I could find some way to join an organization “…dedicated to helping members increase their effectiveness and profitability…”

But if you’re just some duddy on the other end of convergence (a customer type) the DMA doesn’t actually offer anything to maximize your long term economic interests. According to the DMA’s web site on joining “Membership in DMA is corporate which means that companies join DMA, and individual employees of those companies enjoy the benefits of membership. Annual dues begin at $1,250…” and look who the members are.

The DMA says “Our mission is to encourage the education, growth and profitability of our members and their adherence to high ethical standards.” but isn’t an honest statement of intentions part of adhering to high ethical standards? If so, I believe the DMA should revise its vision and strategy statement to bring it in-line with the fact that its real intentions have nothing to do with the long-term economic interest of the entire convergence zone. Just a select few participants–and especially those that fork over upwards of 12 hundred (USD). Maybe if the DMA had just stuck with its fifth strategic goal “Increased Direct Marketing in all Intensity Segments” it would ring true, even if Mr. Lee hasn’t a clue what an intensity segment is.

an individual’s potential influence on the market due to recent management changes, product line restructuring, or a merger or acquisition.

Sage has done its share of acquiring, in fact it recently restructured its product line to take some of that into account, but also to clink the crystal of its corporate name change from Best to Sage. The one thing I find curious is how Sage PR spins this little badge of net honour, Sage titled the press release

Sage Software Receives Multiple Market Leadership Awards For Entire CRM Product Portfolio And CEO’s Strategic Vision

What part of the Sage acquisitions was visionary? Maybe it wasn’t the buying so much as the naming! After all, naming is an important process… even since the beginning of Christian time. Is “influential” really the same as “visionary?” Wise guy, that Verni, wise.

the United States Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is successfully deploying Hummingbird Enterprise™ for its electronic document and records management system (EDRMS). The fully integrated document and records management and e-mail management solution provides the MDA users with a flexible and secure environment, within the familiar Outlook application, to safely capture, share and manage all their electronic data, forms and e-mails, enhancing operational efficiencies across the Agency.

Wait, they said Outlook? Oh yes, because Outlook is that well-known, trusted application, with a wholesome bowl of security features and robust reliability. To be fair, let’s assume the safety and security are actually what Hummingbird brings to the stronghold. By the way, ever notice that the bad guys are reported as having compounds, while the good guys are reported as having, maybe a command post, base, etc.? Wouldn’t it be grim if the agency had a missile called the Hummingbird (the closest I found was a helicopter named Hummingbird Warrior? The press release could have been much more interesting, talking about the Missile Defense launching its Hummingbird deployment, with the naughty hackers hiding in their compounds unable to penetrate the safety of Outlook.

Last interesting tidbit, back in 2001, Raytheon grabbed a Hummingbird product in its development of an imaging and doc management system for the Maine Dept of Transportation. Raytheon develops missile defense.

“It’s been a confusing few years for PeopleSoft/JD Edwards customers. And now, with Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft complete, the future is more uncertain than ever.”

And, let’s say that’s not enough, here’s a screenshot

Grin. There was a time, when people left Oracle and built their own fancy fiefdoms. Ellison must have loved giving Siebel and PeopleSoft their shortlived run for the kingdom and then jerking the rope that realed them back to the fold with an armful of “satisfied” revenue streams. But here we see Siebel putting a decent amount of effort into discrediting the future of PeopleSoft (err JD Edwards?) customers with Oracle. In fact on the page I referenced above they collected quite a nice assortment of quotes from industry analysts like Meta, to build their case for the uncertain future PeopleSoft customers were to destined face. As if they could be a siren in the corporate internaut’s ear–that this is the time to CHOOSE SIEBEL. But if you’d taken too long to choose, well, I guess it just wouldn’t matter because Siebel decided to sell its revenue streams’, err, customers’ futures to Oracle as well.

One need look only so far as the press release to get the most direct confusion on the situation from the founder’s mouth.

“Today is a great day for Siebel Systems’ customers, partners, shareholders, and employees,” said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman of Siebel Systems. “The combination of Siebel applications with the development capacity of Oracle to enhance our CRM product set assures our customers continuing success. This is a very beneficial business combination that will allow us to be even more effective in delivering high quality, leading edge solutions into the hands of satisfied customers.”

Don’t let this be a one sided issue though, what did Mr. Ellison have to say in the same press release? “In a single step, Oracle becomes the number one CRM applications company in the world…” Is Larry trying to satisfy… the end user customer? How about the shareholder?