TMCnews Featured Article

The activity that is taking place in the cloud is nothing short of exciting, especially if you take the competition between Salesforce and Oracle (News - Alert). The two industry leaders are battling over the cloud. While both are headed in opposite directions, there is a similar goal and customers may benefit as a result. 

But because the two companies are trying to achieve the same goal through different means and a variety of different features, it can be confusing in the hosted predictive dialer space. Rebecca Wettemann with Nucleus Research says customers are being cautious, even as excitement is mounting. With any early version, especially a 1.0 product, there can be glitches to work out. 

At the same time, more choices is better for the customer and inevitable, business. Oracle is planning to launch its own cloud product, which has proven to already be effective. This service is designed to offer a wide reach to minimize the learning curve. Known as the Oracle Public Cloud, it will offer customers access to Oracle Fusion Applications, the Oracle Database and even Oracle Fusion Middleware to extend any current investments in the hosted predictive dialer. 

Run on the Oracle systems, this cloud offering also includes HCM, CRM, Oracle Fusion, Java, Social Network and the Oracle Database Cloud service. With this portfolio alone, it’s clear that Oracle is determined to make its presence in the cloud known. Don’t expect Salesforce.com (News - Alert) to just roll over and let Oracle have all the fun, however. Whether the need is in the hosted predictive dialer or other technologies, the CRM provider put its stake firm in the ground years ago with its firm stances on multi-tenancy. 

The company announced earlier this year a new Database.com Data Residency option to allow companies to maintain on premise, readable versions of their data. The competitive battle will continue to play out between these companies, with consumers and businesses winning out in the end. We should expect to see new innovations in CRM, hosted predictive dialer and other technologies to make communications more streamlines and network applications easily accessible from any device.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.

Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO. Follow us on Twitter.