Gartner Research is reporting mobile CRM apps will grow 500 percent by 2014, another sign of a shifting market that has more to do with work getting done in the cloud more so than from a server behind the firewall.This is buttressed by Gartner’s news that SaaS providers will represent more than 50 percent of profits in the CRM market by 2016 and the steep decline in PC shipments that Gartner  reported yesterday.Gartner reports there are 200 apps now in app stores. By 2014, there will be 1,200. Mobile apps will come in a variety of flavors, attacking specific aspects of the CRM experience. Gartner, citing a CIO survey of more than 2,000 people, predicts that vendors will need to build mobile apps around their specific strengths.

Leading provider of call center voice operations software maker, NICE Systems has released customer engagement analytics platform, which combines interaction and transaction analytics. The platform allows organizations to capture and analyze big data generated by cross-channel customer touch points and map the entire customer life cycle.

A service-oriented architecture - which Oracle claims gives users the ability to uniquely manage functions across a heterogeneous environment.

A role-based user experience - that links exception-based processing, business intelligence, transactions and collaboration.

Embedded business intelligence - which Oracle says allows users to use BI within enterprise applications.

What does Oracle's release of Fusion Applications mean for its customers?

After acquiring numerous rival ERP, CRM, HR and middleware platforms over the years, Oracle is finally linking together its enterprise software portfolio, under Fusion, a service-oriented architecture which could rewrite the rulebook on how enterprise software is acquired and pulled together.

Fusion Applications, which took six years to develop, constitutes Oracle's JD Edwards, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and Siebel systems, including functions such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and human resource systems. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said more than 100 products are now available on the platform.

During the launch, Ellison also announced a public cloud to host its Fusion Applications, Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database, but subscription pricing information has not yet been released. This slew of announcements has given customers much to digest.

Debra Lilley, head of the Oracle UK User Group (UKOUG), said the feedback among early adopters of Fusion has so far been positive. "There have been rumblings about whether it is going to be expensive, but people are starting to listen to messages that this is how upgrades work," she said.

Oracle has never hidden the fact that to implement the Fusion suite customers will need to build the platform themselves, with Oracle providing the script for the migration, said Lilley, but most people are going to adopt a coexistence approach.

"I'm no more scared of Fusion than any other implementation - it's not going to be any more complicated. The technology isn't new, it's been around for a couple of years, but if a company hasn't looked at things like business intelligence (BI) it will be a culture shock."

D&B (NYSE: DNB), the world’s leading source of commercial information and insight on businesses, announced that D&B360 is now available for Oracle CRM On Demand and Oracle’s Siebel CRM. Now, Oracle customers can benefit from D&B’s data on more than 200 million global businesses and 53 million contacts, with information available where they need it – directly within the applications they use every day.

With D&B360’s world-class data management and data enrichment capabilities, sales, sales operations and marketing professionals can increase sales and deepen customer engagement. The solution combines D&B’s business information and corporate hierarchies with social data from popular social platforms. The result is real-time, actionable insight that improves the effectiveness of an organization’s sales and marketing teams.

“From email to Facebook, texting to Twitter, customers and prospects receive more messages from sales and marketing professionals than ever. It’s no longer about sending more messages, it’s about sending the right one,” said Denis Pombriant, managing principal, Beagle Research. “Smart companies are using data to truly understand their target customer in order to engage in a personal manner that catches the attention of prospects, and helps to grow an established relationship with existing customers.”

“Sales and marketing professionals need comprehensive business intelligence in their CRM to acquire new customers and meet their goals,” said Josh Peirez, President, Global Product, Marketing and Innovation at D&B. “Putting the right information, exactly where they need it is D&B’s focus. Customers of any major CRM solution can now quickly find the most promising leads, get to key decision makers and drive growth.”

To meet the needs of both large and small organizations, D&B now offers D&B360 in two tiers offering levels of functionality optimized for company size to provide data quality and database enhancements with the highest quality company information available. D&B will continue to enhance the offering with additional features and functionality throughout 2012.

Customer Benefits

• Know customers better – Armed with D&B’s unmatched business insight, sales and marketing professionals can improve customer segmentation, understand customer pain points and tailor the sales strategy for each pitch.
• Improved data quality – D&B360 provides sales operations with automatic data updates and vital data cleansing services, eliminating duplication and redundant data to make records complete and accurate.
• Acquire new prospects – From building a list of prospects to identifying and connecting with key decision makers, D&B360 helps salespeople build a pipeline of strong leads. By leveraging a unique “look-a-like” function, salespeople can identify potential prospects that are similar to an organization’s best customers.
• Sell deeper into organizations – Using insight from D&B360, salespeople can leverage a better understanding of corporate hierarchies to identify key decision makers in other departments to drive organic sales.
• Improve sales effectiveness – D&B360 leverages D&B’s proprietary DUNSRight® quality process to prevent duplicate records, fill in the gaps and improve data accuracy which allows salespeople to focus on selling rather than verifying or searching for critical information.

D&B is a Platinum level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) and is currently enrolled in Oracle Validated Integration with Oracle CRM On Demand and Oracle’s Siebel CRM.

For more on D&B360, visit www.dnb.com/360 or visit D&B at Oracle OpenWorld San Francisco 2011 October 3 – 5 at Booth Number 335 in Moscone South, and the CRM Pavilion in Moscone West.

About Oracle Validated Integration

Oracle Validated Integration through the Oracle PartnerNetwork gives customers confidence that the integration of complementary partner software products with Oracle Applications and Oracle Technology (including Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Content Management, and Oracle Identity Management) have been validated and the products work together as designed. This can help reduce risk, improve system implementation cycles, and provide for smoother upgrades and simpler maintenance. Oracle Validated Integration applies a rigorous technical process to review the integrations of third-party software to Oracle Applications and Technology products, including productized repeatable integrations from system integrators. Oracle provides access to Oracle Applications and Technology software, tools, technical resources and training to assist partners in developing integrations based on Oracle standards and best practices. Partners who have successfully validated their integrations are authorized to use the “Oracle Validated Integration” logo. For more information, please visit Oracle.com at http://www.oracle.com/us/partnerships/solutions/index.html.

About Oracle PartnerNetwork:

Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized is the latest version of Oracle's partner program that provides partners with tools to better develop, sell and implement Oracle solutions. OPN Specialized offers resources to train and support specialized knowledge of Oracle products and solutions and has evolved to recognize Oracle's growing product portfolio, partner base and business opportunity. Key to the latest enhancements to OPN is the ability for partners to differentiate through Specializations. Specializations are achieved through competency development, business results, expertise and proven success. To find out more visit http://www.oracle.com/partners.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates

About Dun & Bradstreet® (D&B)

Dun & Bradstreet (NYSE:DNB) is the world's leading source of commercial information and insight on businesses, enabling companies to Decide with Confidence® for 170 years. D&B's global commercial database contains more than 200 million business records. The database is enhanced by D&B's proprietary DUNSRight® Quality Process, which provides our customers with quality business information. This quality information is the foundation of our global solutions that customers rely on to make critical business decisions.

D&B provides solution sets that meet a diverse set of customer needs globally. Customers use D&B Risk Management Solutions™ to mitigate credit and supplier risk, increase cash flow and drive increased profitability; D&B Sales & Marketing Solutions™ to increase revenue from new and existing customers; and D&B Internet Solutions™ to convert prospects into clients faster by enabling business professionals to research companies, executives and industries, over the web.

For more information, please visit www.dnb.com.

In a clear sign of the influence consumer mobile devices are having in the enterprise Oracle has flagged that it plans to make available iPad- and Android-compatible versions of its traditional ERP and CRM suites as well as its latest Fusion apps.

Speaking at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 in San Francisco, Steve Miranda, SVP, Oracle Applications Development said mobility was a major theme in Oracle’s application strategy.

“Our strategy in mobile is two-fold: first, it is a set of mobile/telephone device applications [in] beta and a set of iPad applications. I think just about every product in the suite has either an iPad or smartphone/mobile device [version], including the Fusion applications,” Madden said.

“In addition our investment in terms of mobile technology is a common-goal technology platform that is independent and will take advantage of HTML 5 … and will not only run iPad but Android devices…”

Jon Schiff, VP and General Manager, JD Edwards World, and Anthony Lye, Senior Vice President, Oracle CRM On Demand, also signaled that mobility was a part of their individual software strategies.

“[Siebel] leverages a lot of the Oracle technology and one of the big areas is around mobile,” Oracle’s Lye said. “So those in resources, those in sales and service are increasingly using their smartphones and now their iPad.

“One of the things we have announced this week is a piece of middleware which allows any of our Siebel customers or CRM on Demand customers to connect their applications through to their iPad based applications.”

“We feel very strongly that people are looking to mobilise ERP as well so we now have full support for the EnterpriseOne product on the iPad,” JD Ewards’ Schiff said. “We have specific gestures for ERP to make it easy so you don’t have to do a bunch of typing on the iPad.

Oracle customer Australian Financial Group (AFG) executive director, Malcolm Watkins, said mobility was an essential part of the white label CRM business it offers its insurance and third party broking firms.

“Mobility is very much one of our key focuses,” he said. “…We were already running our own CRM on Demand and now the next step is to take it to the iPad.

“A broker needs to work faster and more efficiently to be able to email [their customers] a password and a log in, start collecting information on a customer, suck it into their [CRM] system, and flick it over to their iPad so [the broker] can sit down with a customer over the iPad, validate the information they are given, then transfer that back to CRM and have it reflected on their iPhones so that when they are on the road they don’t have to log back in. “Ultimately where we want to be in the first quarter of next year is having a broker apps so a broker can [access our CRM system]… it’s all about this Gen Y connectivity. Mobility is a huge focus for us.”

Oracle partner and customer, Presence of IT’s Oracle practice manager, Duane Thompson, said mobility was also important in managing its base of consultants.

“Being able to get people to do transactions on the fly—apply for annual leave, look at their calendars, or have managers look at their calendars—and to capture time—clocking on using your iPhone—are key,” he said.

What does the formal launch of Fusion mean for existing Oracle CRM and ERP users?

A year ago, Oracle (NASDAQ: CEO) Larry Ellison made a big splash at the 2010 Oracle OpenWorld about the company's Fusion middeware and application platform. He said it would be rolled out carefully to ensure it was fully ready for the enterprise.

Fast forward a year and 200 companies have been using a beta version of Fusion, with another 200 early adopters helping to test and refine the platform. At last week's OpenWorld, Ellison officially ended the controlled release phase and put his foot down hard on the throttle of Fusion sales.

"It took six years of engineering to build a complete integrated suite of ERP, Human Capital Management, CRM, Supply Chain Management and many other applications on top of modern technology," he said. "Now Fusion is ready for general availability – over 100 separate products all rewritten on top of modern technology."

The design goals for Fusion were for it to run in the cloud and on premises, base it on standard programming languages like Java, standard middleware, have baked-in business intelligence and analytics, and have security running in the middleware and OS rather than the applications.

Oracle's CEO compared that approach to SAP, which uses the proprietary Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) while Fusion utilizes Java, which Ellison characterized as the most popular programming language in the world.

When users log in to the home page, it is designed to tell them the latest news about the business. For a sales manager, this would be details of deals closed, how current sales match up against quotas, tasks that need performing, hiring info, pending approvals and more.

Oracle Cloud Applications
Ellison also revealed the Oracle Public Cloud, which is both a platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). The platform part consists of services for data, database and security, while the application side is where Fusion CRM, Human Capital Management (HCM), Talent Management and Financials reside. As a result, you can take any existing Oracle database and move it into or out of the cloud (or into another standards-based cloud like Amazon), as well as associated data.

For those wanting to extend an application or build an app, the Java Services portion comes into play. Users can use Java EE to build an app that is portable.

"Don't try to move that Java EE app to the Salesforce cloud," said Ellison. "It won't run."

He then proceeded to bash Salesforce.com as a "false cloud" based on proprietary APEX and Force.com technologies.

Ellison gave an example of Oracle Fusion CRM running in the cloud.

"Other CRM systems help managers monitor their sales forecasts," he said. "Our system helps sales people sell more and work as a team."

The Oracle Public Cloud is available on a monthly subscription basis with self-service sign up and instant provisioning of more or less resources as needed.

Ellison ended with the unveiling of the Oracle Social Network. It is a way for teams to collaborate, communicate, web conference and share documents in a secure environment. It, too, has business intelligence and analytics built in.

The idea is for sales teams, for example, to use this network to collaborate on closes, provide recommendations on the best customer references and team members to bring into the sales cycle. Security controls allow managers to enable individuals to see only certain info and not others.

Applications Unlimited
So should users migrate to Fusion or stick with their existing platforms? Oracle's approach is to be happy to accept both viewpoints. Those in a rush to get their hands on Fusion can do so. Other more conservative operations will be supported for many years to come on current apps. And both can coexist as well.

Accordingly, Oracle has developed coexistence processes that extend across all major product lines, including Oracle's Siebel CRM, Oracle's PeopleSoft, Oracle's JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Oracle's JD Edwards and the Oracle E-Business Suite.

"Oracle Fusion Application coexistence means organizations can cull the best from existing systems and incrementally adopt without the expense of a complete overhaul," said Steve Miranda, Oracle's senior vice president of application development.
He explained that Oracle's Applications Unlimited initiative allows customers to remain on existing apps like PeopleSoft, Oracle EBS or Siebel CRM, or else move over to Fusion. Part of the strategy is to use Fusion as a gateway to cloud-based enterprise apps.

"Some are rushing to the cloud and Fusion is the way to get them there easiest," said Miranda.

He made the point that current applications in the cloud are there in isolation. You can have CRM in the cloud or talent management in the cloud but those systems don't interoperate. Fusion is a means of remedying that – each app that runs in the cloud shares the underlying platform and so data can be shared by them.

Miranda said the CRM and HCM families are the most popular modules of Fusion, followed by supply chain management (SCM). 

"Most customers are using several modules in tandem within one family," said Miranda.

He said that the Fusion upgrade path will vary from customer to customer. Some will dive in as they are anxious to move to the cloud. Others will upgrade to the latest on premises version of ERP or CRM and then add a Fusion module to add specific functionality.

Even without Fusion, there are plenty of advances across the Oracle Financials and ERP categories.

Paco Aubrejuan, a PeopleSoft Manager at Oracle, mentioned UI upgrades to PeopleSoft 9.1 to make it more intuitive. While version 9.2 is due next year, several feature packs from 9.2 have already been given to 9.1 users, including increased support for mobile users. PeopleSoft is also leveraging centralized R&D from Fusion to improve its own feature set. Similarly, Aubrejuan expects to see customers taking advantage of new platforms such as Oracle Exadata.

"A lot of PeopleSoft customers are running on the mainframe so it is attractive to many of them to move to Exadata," he said.

JDEdwards EnterpriseOne 9.0, too, has had some updates. It includes more functionality for contractors and a recently released module deals with multi-variant Store Keeping Units (SKUs). And like other areas of the Oracle app portfolio, it is benefiting from new technical capabilities from Fusion middleware. For instance, developers have taken mobility features for Apple's iPad and created specific gestures for ERP on that device.

For the Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS), the last major release was 12.1 back in 2001 with a couple of minor updates since.

"Easing the process of maintenance is a big focus and the 12.2 release is coming soon," said Cliff Godwin, an EBS Manager at Oracle. "Online patching will mean you can apply patches while users are still using the older versions."

Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) 11.1 developers are also working on deep integration with Fusion Financials. Fusion has analytics as one of the key features, and these business intelligence and analytics features will bleed into other Oracle apps, including Hyperion EPM.

The storm of announcements during Oracle OpenWorld continued with the company introducing Oracle Financial Management Analytics, prebuilt analytic dashboards that integrate data from Oracle Hyperion Financial Close Management and Oracle Hyperion Financial Management to deliver a unified view of financial close process and financial results. This is based on Oracle Business Intelligence and includes support for the iPad and iPhone. It is generally available as an extra option to users of the Hyperion Financial Close Suite.

"Oracle Financial Management Analytics reduces the complexity of implementing a BI solution that provides insight into the financial close process as well as monthly and quarterly financial results," said Hari Sankar, vice president of product management for Oracle Enterprise Performance Management.

CRM News
The week included plenty of announcements about CRM too. Oracle CRM On Demand Release 19 Innovation Pack was introduced at Oracle OpenWorld. It includes a hosted contact center that adds features such as chat, co-browsing, response libraries, multi-party conferencing, suggested email responses and a pre-built integration interface. Oracle CRM On Demand Marketing Release 5.4 is included as part of it. This simplifies the building and managing of campaigns, websites and customer-facing documents and includes ways to target content to specific customers.

Anthony Lye, senior vice president of Oracle CRM, covered Siebel CRM 8.2, which has the same mobile technology as Oracle CRM On Demand, including middleware to connect apps to the iPad. He added that there had been four major releases to Siebel since its acquisition five years ago.

He was happy also with the acquisition of ATG Commerce, which he termed the world's best ecommerce platform. It has been integrated with Siebel so either set of customers can easily back in to the other one.

Lye wasn't a proponent of all cloud for every app, however,

"It is never going to be all cloud," he said. "If seconds matter in orders, for instance, it is maybe not good to put that over a public internet. Cloud is a good extension but it won't take all applications." 

He countered that, though, by stating that Oracle is already the second biggest provider of cloud applications.

Lye ended with a discussion of Fusion, noting that by using Groovy (the scripting engine for Java), it has become much easier to make changes to CRM applications. He gave the example of tweaking a manager's dashboard to only show deals over $1 million. This can be accomplished in minutes, he said, as could the addition of mobile features or customization for partners to help them qualify leads.

India plans to sell tablet computers, made popular by Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPad, to schools for as low as 1,100 rupees ($22) as Asia’s third-biggest economy aims to boost computer literacy.

The government will initially buy 100,000 tablets for 2,250 rupees each from DataWind Ltd., a U.K.-based company, and sell it to schools at the subsidized price, Kapil Sibal, India’s telecommunications minister, said at a news conference in New Delhi yesterday. India subsequently plans to purchase 10 million tablets over the next five years, he said.

The 7-inch tablet that can run videos and games and browse the Internet will be used by educational institutions to teach students, Sibal said. The world’s second-most populous nation had 4.2 computers for every 100 people at the end of last year, according to CyberMedia Research, based near New Delhi, compared with 63.2 mobile phones per 100 people.

“It’s going to increase the desirability of computing devices for people who wanted them but couldn’t afford the price tag,” said Vishal Tripathi, an analyst at Gartner Inc. (IT) in Mumbai. “People who are using this device are not going to get the seamless experience of an iPad or a Samsung. There’s no comparison.”

The DataWind tablet runs on Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android operating system like Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy Tab. The iPad 2 range starts at 29,500 rupees in India.

Sky in Hindi
The tablet called ‘Aakash,’ which means sky in Hindi, has been developed by closely held DataWind and the state-run Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan. DataWind won the contract after offering a price that was at least 15 percent lower than the next competitor, Chief Executive Officer Suneet Singh Tuli said, without elaborating.

Aakash has a 366 megahertz processor, 256 megabytes of memory, 2 gigabytes of storage, two USB ports and Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity, according to a DataWind statement. It can run for up to 180 minutes on a charge.

Shipments of tablet devices in India, the world’s second- largest market for mobile-phone services after China, may surge 66 percent to 266,000 next year, according to research firm IDC.

“Aakash will ensure that digital illiteracy will be vanquished,” said Sibal. “Technology that is low cost, that provides quality access, that can be owned and operated by every student, would truly empower the child.”