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Hyperion, a provider of business performance management software, today introduced a new upgrade to Hyperion System 9 in release 9.3.

Version 9.3 promises new functionality in financial management applications, data management services, and business intelligence modules of Hyperion System 9. Hyperion System 9 was released about one year ago and was reportedly at that time the industry’s first product to integrate financial management applications and a BI platform in a single system built on a common set of foundation services.

A new Hyperion System 9 Capital Expense Planning module within Release 9.3’s integrated business planning framework can now stake claim as “the industry’s only packaged and extensible solution for planning the acquisition, lifecycle management, and retirement of capital assets.” Concretely speaking, this module allows financial and operational managers to integrate capital improvements into their rolling forecasts and annual plans, to run depreciation and amortization calculations, to develop action plans for existing assets, to plan for driver-based or user-defined asset-related expenses, and to generate asset reports.

After a short break (about twenty-four hours exactly, by this writer’s calculation), the Oracle PR stream is flowing again.

Today, Oracle representatives took the time to detail the activities of several local governments currently running recently implemented Oracle applications, including Oracle e-business suite customer relationship management, PeopleSoft enterprise CRM and Siebel CRM applications, to support 311 government information systems.

Given the informal diagnostic were Oracle programs in good old Albuquerque, N.M.; DeKalb County, Ga. (including greater Atlanta); Denver and Denver County, Colo.; Kansas City, Mo.; and New York City. New Mexico’s largest city decided to build a 311 systems from the ground up in response to overwhelming traffic on the 911 line in the Duke City. The city of Albuquerque worked with Unisys to implement Oracle’s PeopleSoft enterprise CRM. July 2005 marked the first full month of the desert city’s 311 system; in that month, Albuquerque 311 reporting over 45,300 calls incoming.

Leveraging training material based on the PeopleSoft user productivity kit, the 35 call center operators employed in Albuquerque are reporting a response rate of 99.34 percent of calls answered in under seven seconds. (Hey, that’s less than a successful ride on the bucking steer at the rodeo.) A city-sponsored survey taken this summer showed that 85 percent of citizens using the system were extremely satisfied with their experience, and 97 percent would recommend using 311 to family and friends.

DeKalb County encompasses the heart of Atlanta and claims over 700,000 citizens; the county receives 3.8 million calls annually and is currently implementing Oracle e-business suite CRM to deploy a 311 system to consolidate call centers and service information for the some 46 county government departments.

DeKalb County recently worked with Oracle and its implementation partner Unisys to go live in four pilot departments; the system out to will be rolled out to the other 42 departments gradually, and the 311 number will be turned on in March 2007, according to plans. County officials estimate that the call center will receive 1.5 million calls per year, and they wish to reduce 911 traffic by 20 percent.

The city of Denver’s greater metropolitan area is home to more than 2.5 million residents. In July of this year, Denver’s 311 system went live with Oracle’s PeopleSoft enterprise CRM, implemented in partnership with Oracle Consulting Services. As part of their 311 initiative, the county of Denver sought to simplify operations across departments. The city is establishing performance metrics to measure the effectiveness of service processes; identify and improve every department’s performance; benchmark from other top-performing organizations; and track the performance of teams and employees.

During implementation, Denver participated in Oracle’s Insight Program, an on-site session for Oracle customers, which provided the city and county of Denver with a technical integration roadmap for CRM including integration methodologies, best practices and lessons learned. Kansas City is currently implementing Oracle’s PeopleSoft enterprise CRM to consolidate call center operations.

In 1974, the city staked a claim as one of the first to implement a centralized call center to handle citizen inquiries, but the system slowly decentralized with individual departments often opening independent call centers. Implemented in partnership with Unisys and Oracle Consulting Services, the new 311 system is expected to launch late this year.

And naturally, the biggest of the big, New York City, has CRM horror stories unique to that land where “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” Prior to 2003, it is said, when New York City’s eight million citizens wanted to contact city agencies, they needed to leaf through ten pages in the telephone book in hopes of finding the right number. New York City implemented a 311 citizen service center which leveraged Siebel CRM applications. The city selected Accenture to help integrate and implement the new call center technology, as well as to train employees.

Via 311, New Yorkers can now get an astounding range of service from reporting potholes to library hours. By calling 212-NEW-YORK, the 311 services are available outside city limits as well. The center answers calls 24 / 7 and offers the service in an incredible 170-plus languages.

New York City’s 311 system regularly receives approximately 40,000 calls per day and answers those calls in an average of less than six seconds. The Oracle system can access a database of over 10,000 content records describing government services, information and other details. Some 500,000 non-emergency calls that would have otherwise gone to the city’s 911 emergency system are diverted to New York’s 311 annually.

And Oracle? Well, heck, says company PR, “Oracle is the world’s largest enterprise software company.”

In a world where everything technological is overhyped, the word “revolution” is thrown about easily, with declaring the latest electronic toy or fly-by-night software advance “earth-moving” seemingly a race among media outlets and advertising venues.

The sobriquet is often applied to open source technology as well, but this stuff may actually deserve the title.

After all, open source goes against tradition in terms of business culture, research and development techniques, principles of ownership, and even overriding philosophy. Meanwhile, burgeoning in universities is the study of not only how to use open source but how the technology works to develop viable product at all.

Today, we present a rundown of success stories from all spheres that open source touches. Whether through profit margins, spreading the technology to areas thought well outside its reach (check out stories regarding the open-source car project and the open-source film production), or just simply generating greater public awareness, the success of this truly world-changing technology is everywhere. Read more

TMCNet is reporting a couple of moves by Autonomy Corporation plc, not the least of which is a multi-million dollar/Euro/pound contract with Her Majesty’s government. Under terms of the contract, Autonomy will deploy its IDOL Server software. (Get it? IDOL Server? Whoa, that’s bad … but memorable! And that’s all that matters in the end.)

IDOL stands for “Intelligent Data Operating Layer,” and serves as a platform for the “conceptual and contextual understanding of information in an enterprise.” Company PR states that IDOL “automatically analyzes any piece of information from 1000 different content formats, including text, voice or video and delivers over 500 functions including hyperlinking, agents, summarization, taxonomy generation, retrieval, channels, clustering, visualization, eduction, profiling, collaboration and alerting.”

The deal for poundage is just the latest bit of news from Autonomy, however, as the firm continues to extend its reach into the great land of China. Forbes’ Pammy Olsen wrote a story entitled “Autonomy Gets The Picture,” in which a few details about Autonomy’s recent deal with Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television. Reportedly, Autonomy bagged exclusive access to sixteen stations’ worth of television content. At the time of the China Central Television signing, OpenV had already reached agreements with Beijing TV, Shanghai Media Group, ZheJiang TV, JiangXi TV, NeiMengGu TV and Hunan TV. To this end, Autonomy will get to work placing “millions of hours of programming” on the OpenV video search service, a website browser which Forbes describes as “busy-looking” and “rather like a Chinese version of YouTube.” (In fact, the Forbes article goes on to say that the recent Google purchase of YouTube may have influenced the Autonomy move.)

OpenV’s service is to be available through internet sites including CCTV.com and SMGBB, reportedly the two largest Chinese TV broadband sites; QQ, the largest Chinese community site; Yahoo! China; Nusports, the largest Chinese sports site; XinHua net, a Chinese news wire service; and China Radio International. Autonomy spokespeople have stated that OpenV currently gets five million page views and one million users per day; WPP, AC Nielsen and Chang Rong (a.k.a. Charm Communication Group) have been subcontracted in the search for advertising dollars.

Last week also saw release of new versions of Aungate Electronic Document Discovery and Real-Time Monitoring solutions for the IDOL platform. Autonomy is pushing the products on the basis of the U.S.’ eDiscovery legislation. Said a company spokesman, “The significant rise in market demand for intelligent, scalable and cost-effective eDiscovery solutions is now being accelerated not just by existing and forthcoming legislation such as the new U.S. Federal Laws of Civil Procedure which take effect on December 1, 2006, but also by an increasing need to overcome the costly effects and risks of disparate information silos that reside within the global enterprise.”

Another news item shows that Autonomy is big in Spain, too. El Mundo, Spain’s largest daily, has selected Autonomy’s meaning-based technology for the online www.elmundo.es. Reportedly, the website just got off a crazy busy month, with ten million unique visitors to the site, a whopping 65 percent increase since January. El Mundo had already licensed Autonomy to index over two million documents for an unlimited number of visitors to their site. Was that “big in Spain?” I meant, “big in Japan.”

As TMCNet reports, “Nomura has selected Autonomy’s IDOL 7 for a multi-lingual deployment to more than 20,000 users. Nomura had experience of legacy keyword technologies which spurred them to search for a next-generation product. CRM vendor Autonomy’s product was chosen following a competitive procurement focusing on scalability and finding a system that spoke Japanese.” Unfortunately, Forbes dropped a bit of rain on the parade of news out of Autonomy this month, as the magazine called the firm “one of the biggest losers on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday [17 October], most likely due to profit taking after a month long climb in the shares of around 25 percent.

Shares dropped 3.2 percent, to US $9.29…” Autonomy’s customer base now numbers over 16,000 global companies and organizations including BAE Systems, Boeing, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Shell, AOL, BBC, Reuters, Hutchison 3G, Ericsson, T-Mobile, Philips, Coca Cola, Kraft Foods, Nestle, Lloyds TSB, GlaxoSmithKline, KPMG, Citigroup, ABN AMRO, Deutsche Bank, Hewlett Packard, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York Stock Exchange, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Autonomy has over 300 OEM partners and more than 350 VARs and Integrators, numbering among them leading companies such as BEA, Citrix, EDS, EMC, IBM Global Services, Novell, Symantec, Vignette, Tibco, Stellent and Sybase. The Autonomy Group includes Aungate, Virage, etalk and Cardiff.

Scribe Software Corporation, a provider of data migration and integration software technology for CRM and ERP systems, today announced that the company has been acquired by The Mustang Group and “key members of the Scribe management team.” Investment firms / involved interests Edison Venture Fund and Borealis Ventures sold their share of the company as part of this transaction.

Existing senior management will reportedly remain in their current positions, with future expansion of the team expected as the company continues to experience growth in the market.

Founded in 1996, Scribe Software is a privately held corporation headquartered in Bedford, N.H. and was founded in 1996.

The Mustang Group, LLC is a Boston-based private equity firm founded in 2003 that invests in middle-market companies throughout North America. Among Mustang investments are The Vermont Teddy Bear Company and Cascade Lacrosse. One blue ribbon attained by the group was the bestowal from Buyouts Magazine (Criminy, there’s a publication for everything) of the 2006 Public-To-Private Deal of the Year Award for their US $47 million snag of Vermont Teddy Bear. Awwww, isn’t that cute?

Despite a steady stream of love, propaganda and product releases for Oracle that came out of the firm’s OpenWorld 2006 conference in San Francisco this week, some Siebel clients still have axes to grind.

In what appears to be his debut piece for Computer World, Marc Songini tells of attendees of Oracle OpenWorld 2006 that are none too pleased, calling the big firm “slow to provide details on its pledge to integrate Siebel and Oracle products and to provide detailed information about its long-term plans for the CRM product line.”

While Songini writes that he spoke to six or so disgruntled Oracle/Siebel users, the best quotes are provided by a source who asked to remain nameless. (And isn’t that always the case?) Songini excellently has said dissatisfied user saying, “Ideally, I’d like a detailed road map about when all the [Oracle] products will converge and what the architecture will look like and how it will feel and how to navigate through it.” What, that’s it? Does Oracle have any road map at all?

In the unnamed source’s opinion, Oracle must “better integrate all of its products, including Siebel’s. The Chump’s summary, however, is only the tip of the iceberg of a nice piece by Songini. It’s on several versions of Computer World online, so let’s see … how about a link to … Australia? The Chump’s got no clue about Songini’s background, but a shout out to him and best of luck in the future…

Integrated Software Development Ltd., a provider of enterprise software aimed at small-and medium-sized enterprises, today announced that Trilogical, an Israel-based integrator of cellular and GPS-based management systems, has expanded the range of BENEFIT modules incorporated into the system it has developed for the Israel Defense Forces.

Trilogical is an IT solution provider that specializes in the development and integration of cellular and GPS-based IT systems in areas including fleet management, field service management, monitoring and control systems, security and telemetry applications.

Trilogical has recently extended the range of BENEFIT modules incorporated in IDF field maintenance systems. Trilogical’s new solutions for the IDF will now include BENEFIT web-based modules that allow operations of automatic SMS service and automatic downloading capability of files from the central database to PDAs in the field.

ISD Ltd. is an Israeli software company providing enterprise software for small- and medium-sized enterprises in functions such as workforce management, contact center operations and asset management. Flagship product BENEFIT is used by over 3,000 users in more than 200 organizations.

CRM provider PacificNet Inc. has announced its agreement with MOABC, a leading mobile internet portal in China, to purchase a twenty percent ownership equity interest in MOABC. The acquisition is a move that PacificNet strategists hope will strengthen PacificNet’s wireless internet, mobile games, and mobile e-commerce unit in the big country.

MOABC.com is a mobile internet portal in China currently boasting eleven million registered users and one of the top-ranked mobile internet sites. MOABC’s free WAP portal provides internet services including news, mobile gaming and entertainment services, mobile blogs, mobile email, avatars, virtual pets, mobile online dating, mobile instant messaging, virtual communities, mobile social community and virtual showrooms.

MOABC is also a leading provider of mobile games and mobile pastimes, providing a variety of on-demand game downloads including SMS games, WAP games, and JAVA/BREW games.

As a mobile game portal, MOABC recently entered into a profit-sharing cooperation agreement with NetEase.com, Inc. on a newly launched mobile game entitled simply "The World." The World is a mobile mass multi-user online role-playing game developed in JAVA that can be played by a large number of concurrent users online or offline using mobile phones, including various JAVA-enabled phones by Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, Siemens, and Lenovo. Casino, Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung, and other well-known consumer electronics brands have agreements in place to advertise on MOABC’s mobile internet portal.

The acquisition is also expected to complement the company’s Macao gaming technology services by PacificNet Games Limited, a.k.a. PacGames. PacGames is a provider of Asian multi-player electronic gaming machines, gaming technology solutions and gaming related maintenance, IT and distribution services for the leading hotel, casino and slot hall operators based in Macau, China and other Asian gaming markets. Macau is expected to surpass Las Vegas in total revenues by 2007. (Whoa.)

Lest we forget the importance of good old Cathay, company PR reminds The Chump that, with over 400 million mobile phone users, China has already become the largest mobile population in the world. The number of PC-based internet users is about 120 million. (Dude. Whoa.)

Beijing- and Hong Kong-headquartered PacificNet Inc. is an investor in and operator of companies that provide outsourcing, e-commerce, and value-added services in China, such as call centers, telemarketing, direct response television marketing, CRM, interactive voice response, mobile applications, and communications product distribution services. PacificNet corporate clients include China Telecom, China Mobile, Unicom, PCCW, Hutchison Telecom, Bell24, SONY, TCL, Huawei, American Express, Citibank, HSBC, Bank of China, Bank of East Asia, DBS, TNT, and the Hong Kong government. PacificNet employs over 2,300 in China with offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Macau, and branch offices in 26 provinces.

Sun Microsystems Inc. has announced that leading Swiss telecommunications carrier Swisscom Mobile has selected Sun Fire T2000 servers running the Solaris 10 Operating System and the Sun Java Identity Management Suite for its 1145 retail stores.

Swisscom Mobile’s Siebel CRM project was implemented in 2002, and today reportedly stands as one of the largest Siebel implementations in the world. At that time Sun supplied large SMP servers to run the Siebel 7 deployment.

Sun will be deploying UltraSPARC T1 processors, CoolThreads technology, and eight 1.2-GHz cores per processor handling four threads each. Important PR to note: The UltraSPARC T1 processor in the Sun Fire 2000 server is claimed to be the world’s first eco-responsible processor, consuming just 70 watts – or the same power as about one light bulb – and less than half the energy of comparable Intel Xeon or IBM Power processors.

Surado Solutions, a CRM solutions provider for small- to medium-sized enterprises, today announced the support of Computer Telephony Integration with ShoreTel IP PBX telephone systems. Surado sees the move as continuation of its increase in integration feature set with third-party applications and systems.

“From a product development standpoint,” said the wonderfully named Sundip R. Doshi, Surado CRM CEO, “our team is constantly focusing on … bringing never before seen innovative solutions to the market and continuing to expand our out of the box integration with popular third party applications.”

Surado plans to release seamless integration to other popular IP based telephone systems in the next year.

Founded in 1998, ShoreTel is reportedly the fastest growing IP PBX company in the United States, with the IP telephony specialist recording sales doubling year over year. Surado Solutions, Inc., founded in 1995, is headquartered in Riverside, Calif. Surado provides a full spectrum of products and services in CRM and e-business solutions.