Industry News Worldwide

Business News

Avectra Receives Growth Capital Investment
Avectra, Inc., a provider of on-demand software for membership management, announced that it has received a $26.5-million investment from Sterling Venture Partners, a private equity firm that provides growth and expansion capital to proven businesses. This is Avectra’s first outside funding, with HarbourVest Partners also participating in the growth investment. Avectra’s netFORUM software solution provides tools for relationship management, fundraising, event management, certification, scheduling, e-commerce, marketing, accounting, committee management, and reporting, serving more than 750 member-based organizations and 40 million members of its clients. Avectra plans to use the capital from this investment to accelerate the development of netFORUM for all three of its customer groups and expand its customer service center. In addition, Avectra also plans to expand its sales and marketing efforts to promote the offering more broadly throughout North America and the international communities. Additional information can be found at www.avectra.com.

Market2Lead and Rainmaker Enter Agreement
Market2Lead, a provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) B2B automated marketing solutions designed to accelerate demand and revenue growth, announced that it has licensed its technology to Rainmaker Systems, Inc., a provider of sales and marketing solutions combining hosted application software and execution services. In addition, Rainmaker has made a multimillion-dollar investment in Market2Lead, which will continue to market its SaaS solutions directly to marketers. Through an OEM agreement, Market2Lead technology components will enhance Rainmaker’s LeadWorks on-demand marketing automation application, and Market2Lead will be provided continuing royalties for the use of its technology. For further details, visit www.market2lead.com or www.rmkr.com.

TCS South Africa Launched
IT services, business solutions, and outsourcing organization Tata Consultancy Services announced that it is launching a new subsidiary, TCS South Africa, to further strengthen its focus and expand operations in South Africa. South Africa is a key strategic market for Tata Group, and the new subsidiary will help intensify this focus further and is in line with TCS’ global strategy to have a direct presence in the countries in which it operates. The new subsidiary will help TCS bring its global best practices to help increase the competitiveness of South African business and the skill levels of IT professionals in South Africa. More information is available at www.tcs.com.

Sify Limited Changes Its Name
Sify Limited, a provider of consumer Internet and enterprise services in India with global delivery capabilities, announced the change of its name from Sify Limited to “Sify Technologies Limited” after approval from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. This is in line with the company’s strategy to position itself as a technology company with deep expertise in IT infrastructure management. The company recently integrated its managed enterprise services offering into an integrated enterprise business division, which provides services such as IP VPNs. More information can be found at www.sifycorp.com.

Nuance to Acquire Viecore
Nuance Communications, Inc., a supplier of speech solutions, announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Viecore, Inc., a consulting and systems integration firm specializing in the deployment of contact center solutions for large enterprises. Viecore expands Nuance’s professional services capabilities and complements its existing partnerships, allowing the company to deliver end-to-end speech solutions and system integration for speech-enabled customer care in key vertical markets including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, utilities, and government. Viecore’s consulting services, systems integration experience, and significant intellectual property related to services delivery allow Nuance to further accelerate the deployment of customer care solutions. For more information, visit www.nuance.com.

 

New Products & Services

Lead Referral Solution
BLUEROADS, a provider of partner opportunity management solutions for medium to large enterprises, announced the availability of the BLUEROADS Lead Referral Management solution, which was developed to enable vendors to harness the power of their broad partner network to participate in driving leads into the front end of the vendor’s opportunity pipeline. These participants can include agents, ISVs, SIs, and independent consultants. Partners can refer incremental sales opportunities into the vendor organization and be compensated and recognized for their contribution. For more information, visit www.blueroads.com.

BBH Truper Scanner Enhancements
BÖWE BELL + HOWELL Scanners (BBH) announced recent enhancements to its Truper Series scanners. Truper scanners now include long-document scanning as a standard, user-selectable feature. BBH developed long-document handling for its low-volume production scanners so that healthcare institutions can convert vital long documents into sharp electronic images. The technology eliminates the labor-intensive process of cutting long documents into measured sections or mounting them on standard-size sheets prior to scanning. The enhancements were designed to allow healthcare users to activate the technology through the scanner’s interface easily and without help from an IT professional. For more information, visit www.bbhscanners.com.

Contact Center Analytics
Speech and imaging solutions provider Nuance Communications, Inc. announced the launch of Nuance Care Analytics. Rather than simply collecting and presenting data, Nuance Care Analytics provides detailed, actionable intelligence that companies can use to improve contact center automation and the overall customer experience. Nuance unveils underlying root causes and improvements by providing analytics on the end-to-end customer experience, including interactions with self-service, call routing, agent-customer conversations, and post-call interaction feedback surveys. Nuance Care Analytics also includes interpretation of the results, recommended actions, and assistance to customers with implementation and measurement of improvements. For more information, visit www.nuance.com.

Zurich Targets Mid-Market Tech Coverage
Zurich, a large commercial property casualty insurance company, announced efforts to target the needs of technology customers by providing a range of coverages designed specifically for mid-size businesses. Zurich’s focus is on the creators and builders of technology products rather than end users. Zurich’s new specialized solutions for electronics manufacturing, information technology, digital and electronic communications, factory automation, and medical technology companies include proprietary products such as its Property Portfolio Protection form and coverages for errors and omissions, as well as standard coverages for general liability, business auto, umbrella, and workers compensation. Zurich’s global network ensures that these coverages and related risk-management services are available throughout a customer’s technology supply chain. Additional details are available at www.zurich.com.

 

Industry Achievements

DHL Wins Award for Service Quality Campaign
DHL, worldwide express delivery and logistics company, announced that it has received a PR Platinum award from PR News, the highest honor given by the public relations industry magazine. DHL won in the Employee Relations category for the successful launch and execution of its “I’m On It” campaign. The campaign articulates DHL’s brand promise of delivering a superior customer experience into employee terms by innovating internal communications to drive positive business results. “I own it, I am accountable, I am responsive, and I will follow through,” are key messages behind the campaign. Visit www.dhl.com for additional information.

Lumigent Named a Market Leader
Lumigent, a provider of data auditing technology for compliance and security, announced that Forrester Research has named the company as a Leader in “The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Database Auditing and Real-Time Protection, Q4 2007” released on October 25. Forrester cited Lumigent as a Leader based on a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria categorized by current product offerings, overall strategy, and market presence. Lumigent received the highest score among all 14 vendors evaluated in this report in the areas of usability, corporate strategy, and the company’s installed base, one of the components of the market presence score. For further information, visit www.lumigent.com.

CBaySystems Receives Superior Ratings
CBaySystems, a provider of transcription and healthcare BPO services, reported superior ratings from two customer satisfaction surveys conducted during 2007. In the KLAS MTSO Study conducted across the entire medical transcription industry, published by independent research and consulting firm KLAS, CBay emerged as only one of two companies to have a positive trend rating increase in all three major categories--Performance Indicators, Business Indicators, and percentage of Positive Commentary. CBay’s 2007 Customer Satisfaction Survey analyzed responses from over 300 CBay customers, in which they were asked to rate the company in areas such as quality, turnaround time, customer service, and technology. Ninety-five percent of CBay customers said that they would recommend CBay’s services to others, up from 93 percent in 2006. Further details are available at www.cbaysystems.com.

NextNine Honored
NextNine, a global provider of unified remote support automation solutions, announced its placement on the 2007 Deloitte Israel Technology Fast 50, a ranking of the 50 fastest-growing technology companies in Israel. In determining this select group, Deloitte reviewed fiscal year revenues over five years (2002-2006), calculated the revenue growth percentage over five years, and compared the growth of technology companies. For more information, visit www.NextNine.com.

 

Industry News Makers

Cymetrix Hires SVP
Cymetrix, a company that provides hospitals and healthcare networks with revenue cycle management solutions, announced the appointment of John Nulty to the position of senior vice president of business development. In this new role, Nulty will be working closely with president and CEO Michael Halberda to oversee Cymetrix’s strategic business development initiatives. In addition, Nulty will expand on the success of Cymetrix’s Comprehensive Revenue Cycle Management model. Nulty will be based at the company’s corporate headquarters in Irvine, California. For further details, visit www.cymetrix.com.

Mazu Networks Names Marketing VP
Mazu Networks, a provider of network behavior analysis systems, announced that they have named Kevin Conklin as vice president of marketing. Mazu Networks offers solutions designed to enable IT organizations to manage, secure, and optimize the availability and performance of business services. In his role, Conklin will lead the team responsible for marketing programs, communications, product marketing and management, and lead generation. Conklin brings more than 30 years of marketing experience to Mazu Networks in a career heavily focused on global marketing strategy and execution, product marketing, and business development. Visit www.mazunetworks.com for further information.

LiveOps Hires EVP and CFO
LiveOps, a provider of distributed call center solutions, announced that Murray Demo has joined the company as executive vice president and chief financial officer. Demo brings to LiveOps more than 20 years of experience in the technology sector. He was most recently the executive vice president and chief financial officer of e-mail security and compliance vendor Postini, where he helped to finalize the sale of the company to Google. Prior to Postini, Demo served as Adobe’s executive vice president and chief financial officer. Visit www.liveops.com for more information.

FreeWave Appoints Head of Latin America Sales
FreeWave Technologies, a large independent provider of high-performance spread spectrum and licensed radio products and services, announced the addition of a new business development executive to its worldwide sales team. Roy Rosado has been hired as a business development manager responsible for FreeWave’s Latin America markets. Rosado brings more than 10 years of senior leadership and management experience growing sales, developing distribution channels, and managing business development efforts for manufacturers of high-technology engineering products. More information is available at www.freewave.com.

 

 

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