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DHL Introduces “Green” Service for Asia Pacific
Express delivery and logistics giant DHL has launched an Asia Pacific service allowing clients to offset the carbon emissions generated by transporting their shipments. DHL said in a statement from its regional headquarters in Singapore that customers who want to use the firm’s new DHL GOGREEN EXPRESS service are asked to pay a three percent “green premium” on top of the standard charges. The company then calculates the carbon emissions generated as a result of transporting the parcel and offset these by reinvesting in environmentally friendly projects such as fuel vehicle technology, solar panels, and reforestation. Customers can choose to send all or just a selection of their shipments under the carbon-offsetting scheme, which aims to help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Switzerland-based Societe Generale de Surveillance, an independent certifying body, will verify the program annually to ensure accountability and transparency. For more information, visit www.dhl.com.

Trusted Identity Solutions for Financial Services Institutions
ChosenSecurity, Inc., a provider of on-demand public key infrastructure security services, has extended its partnership with IdenTrust, a provider of trusted identity solutions, to provide ChosenSecurity’s global financial services customers with additional IdenTrust-compliant products and services. IdenTrust has long set the standards for the financial services industry’s authentication and validation of digital identities. ChosenSecurity provides a wide range of services and software for authenticating users, computers, devices, and businesses, and then securing information, such as e-mail, mobile code, and documents passing across networks. ChosenSecurity’s European service, TC TrustCenter, has been IdenTrust compliant for nearly a decade. The extended partnership marks the expansion of the relationship to include ChosenSecurity’s On-Demand PKI security services designed for banks and other financial institutions. For more information, visit www.identrust.com or www.chosensecurity.com.

AT&T to Invest $1B in Global Network and Services
AT&T has announced plans to invest $1 billion in 2008 to continue the expansion of its network and portfolio of solutions for multinational companies with operations and applications in key markets worldwide. The 2008 program—which is 33 percent more than last year’s enterprise investment and more than double AT&T’s investment in 2006—is being driven by demand for IP networks and services as companies deal with the explosive surge in data, voice, and video traffic made possible by the proliferation of high-speed networks and devices worldwide. Responding to this demand, AT&T is accelerating its efforts to extend its global network reach and capacity, globalize its portfolio of business services, and embed the latest utility computing and other technologies in the network so that companies can deliver real-time applications to their customers, suppliers, and partners. Visit www.att.com for more details.

Hitachi Consulting Acquires JMN Associates
Hitachi Consulting, the global consulting company of Hitachi, Ltd., has acquired JMN Associates, a leading provider of consulting services to the financial services, real estate, and insurance industries. JMN, based in San Francisco, CA, brings practical and proven solutions to its clients in the areas of business and technology strategy, process improvement, organizational change, project management, and regulatory compliance. Joining this new practice also will be the Financial Services practice of the Dove Consulting Division of Hitachi Consulting, as well as its Payments Compliance practice. “The combination of JMN and Hitachi Consulting now provides one of the most comprehensive portfolios of consulting services and solutions for the financial services industry,” said Jim Neckopulos, founder and CEO of JMN. For more information, visit www.hitachiconsulting.com.

New Products & Services

IBM announced the launch of Partner Sales Support Centre, a new initiative from IBM Systems & Technology Group designed to provide IBM Business Partners throughout India with services specific to sales opportunities. The Partner Sales Support Centre is a centralized team operating from IBM that will help business partners with product positioning, competitive updates, customized customer configuration, and customized product pricing. IBM teams based in the north, south, east, and west will help business partners in those regions determine the best technologies for their customers and will help strengthen collaboration with IBM. The Partner Sales Support Centre initiative comes on the heels of the realignment of IBM Systems & Technology Group from a product-centric model to a customer-centric model. IBM STG is now focused on aligning closely with customers’ needs in order to provide complete end-to-end solutions that address their constantly changing business requirements, and the Partner Sales Support Centre is the latest example of this realignment. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

ShoreTel Launches ShoreWare Contact Center 4.66
ShoreTel, a provider of pure IP unified communications solutions, has announced ShoreWare Contact Center 4.66. This suite of applications is designed to dramatically improve customer service while reducing the cost of deploying and maintaining high-performance inbound or outbound multimedia call centers. ShoreWare Contact Center 4.66 is designed to support more simultaneous agents while offering several new features to enhance the customer experience. Such an execution will make it ideal for expanding mid-size contact centers. The upgrades to the ShoreWare Contact Center introduce advanced features in an entry-level package, enabling smaller call centers to deliver the same customer experience previously available only in ShoreWare Enterprise Contact Center. These features include graphical contact control scripts, abandoned and scheduled callbacks, and IVR information screen pops. This new platform is also designed to enhance outbound capability by introducing preview dialing to enable agents to view customer details before an outbound call is placed. This advanced preparation results in an enhanced customer experience. For more information, visit www.shoretel.com.

Sun and Microsoft Open New Interoperability Center and Announce Availability of Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Microsoft Corporation announced two new milestones in their ongoing alliance—the official opening of the Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center on Microsoft’s Redmond campus for optimizing Microsoft applications on Sun Fire x64 server systems and storage, and the availability of the Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. The Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center serves as a working lab for tuning, benchmarking, and interoperability solutions creation. The Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will help enable enterprise customers to better manage e-mail growth and realize the benefits of Exchange Server 2007. Pre-tested end-to-end system and storage configurations allow customers to easily migrate to Exchange Server 2007—achieving up to 85 percent in rack space, power and cooling savings, and reducing total cost of ownership for e-mail by up to 70 percent over three years. More information on the Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is available at www.sun.com/exchange and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb412164.aspx.

ClickSoftware Channel Partner Program Brings Field Service Management and Optimization to Mid-Size Service Organizations
Mid-size service organizations now have access to full-featured, quickly deployed, and affordable field service optimization software thanks to a new channel partner program unveiled by ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. The ClickSoftware Channel Partner Program will be the exclusive channel for selling ClickSoftware for Installation, Maintenance and Repair Services (ClickIMRS) software, which enables mid-size service organizations to use best-in-class service optimization tools. ClickIMRS is a cost-effective offering incorporating schedule optimization, mobility, reporting, and a work order management module to help mid-size companies with 50 to 500 field resources increase their customers’ satisfaction and loyalty while sustaining growth and profitability. Having recently attained Microsoft’s Gold Certified Partner status, ClickSoftware will work with key Microsoft Dynamics AX (ERP) and Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution resellers to provide ClickIMRS to prospective customers. ClickIMRS integrates with the Dynamics ERP and CRM solutions to help organizations respond more quickly to customer requests and connect their business in real time with their mobile workforce. Visit www.clicksoftware.com for more information.

Industry Awards & Achievements

Prudential Financial a Winner in FORTUNE’s List of World’s Most Admired Companies
Prudential Financial, Inc. was named the World’s Most Admired Company in the “Insurance: Life, Health category” of FORTUNE’s 2008 annual World’s Most Admired Companies list. The FORTUNE survey of 1,467 industry professionals and analysts ranks companies according to a number of key attributes used to calculate a company’s overall “corporate reputation” score. These include innovation, people management, use of corporate assets, social responsibility, quality of management, financial soundness, long-term investment, quality of products/services, and global competitiveness. Prudential achieved an overall score of 7.25 in the survey. Prudential Financial has operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Leveraging its heritage of life insurance and asset management expertise, Prudential Financial, Inc.’s businesses offer a variety of products and services, including life insurance, annuities, retirement-related services, mutual funds, investment management, and real estate services. For more information, visit www.prudential.com.

VanceInfo Ranked Number One Vendor in R&D Services by Huawei
VanceInfo Technologies Inc., an IT service provider and one of the leading offshore software development companies in China, has been ranked number one by Huawei Software in its most recent ranking of R&D services vendors. Huawei Technologies is a leader in next-generation telecommunications networks. VanceInfo provides software development and testing services for various subsidiaries and divisions of Huawei Technologies in areas including billing systems, multimedia gateways, short message service (SMS) systems, and mobile data service platforms. Huawei Software performs regular reviews of its vendors, ranking them on factors including quality and timeliness of project delivery, testing capabilities, Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), project acceptance rate, residual defect rate, and stability of project teams. VanceInfo received the highest rating possible for project acceptance rate, timely delivery, and team stability. As the top-ranked company, VanceInfo will receive a 20 percent increase in billing rate, as well as more business opportunities with Huawei. Visit www.vanceinfo.com or www.huawei.com for more information.

Salesforce.com Wins SearchCRM.com 2007 Product of the Year Awards
Salesforce.com, a market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, has received two 2007 Products of the Year awards from SearchCRM.com. Salesforce Customer Portal won in the Online Service category, and, for the third time, Salesforce SFA was named the winner in Sales Force Automation. Salesforce Customer Portal garnered especially high marks for usability and support. And Salesforce SFA was deemed by SearchCRM.com judges a clear winner in the SFA category, who gave the solution high marks for innovation, ease of use, and functionality. The award winners were selected by a panel of 13 independent industry experts and analysts, CRM professionals, and SearchCRM.com editors, who evaluated 50 products in eight CRM categories. Visit www.salesforce.com for more details.

Industry News Makers

New Technical Support Director Joins ESRI Staff
ESRI recently welcomed Michael Kim to head its technical support division. Kim comes to ESRI as a customer relationship management (CRM) and contact center senior executive with more than 15 years’ experience servicing Fortune 100 clients in the U.S. and Asia Pacific. He has proven executive-level experience implementing the design of enterprise-level CRM and contact center infrastructures in global organizations. Kim’s responsibilities as technical support director include management of support services operations with the goal of maintaining and growing ESRI’s world-class customer service. Kim is a recognized leader in the contact center management field as well as a member of the Genesys Executive Global CTI Advisory Board. His accomplishments in the industry have been covered internationally and documented by major media groups including CIO Magazine, E-week, and BNI Media Group. Visit www.esri.com for more information.

Worksoft Appoints 17-Year IT Veteran as VP of PS
Worksoft, Inc., a premier provider of life-cycle automation solutions that automate, accelerate, and optimize deployments of SAP applications, has appointed Jim Siegel as vice president of professional services. As a 19-year IT veteran, Siegel brings extensive experience to Worksoft in building and managing large client service teams who have successfully implemented large-scale enterprise systems across a broad range of environments. As vice president of professional services, Siegel will be responsible for developing and refining Worksoft’s professional services and training capabilities, and leading its team of technical consultants. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Worksoft was founded in 1998 and pioneers innovative approaches to software quality testing. More information can be found at www.worksoft.com.

Nexiant Appoints New Vice President of Professional Services
Nexiant, a leading provider of MRO inventory management solutions for the industrial market, announced that Mark Vettese has joined the company as vice president of professional services. Vettese will manage solution engagements in areas that include process design services, material flow optimization services, information technology implementation services, and outsourcing services. He also will be involved in strategic and operational planning related to the creation of solution products, methodologies, and controls. Vettese brings over 30 years of senior operational management experience to Nexiant, specifically in various areas of the technology sector. His expertise includes working with start-up, turnaround, and high-growth technology organizations. Before joining Nexiant, Vettese spent five years in the software industry. Prior to that, Vettese spent 15 years in business operations consulting roles where he sold and directed multimillion-dollar strategic consulting assignments for more than 100 domestic and international companies. Visit www.nexiant.com.

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