Short Message Service (SMS)

Jobscope
In his “First Coffee” blog, TMCnet’s David Sims writes:

Jobscope, which sells ERP for order-driven manufacturers, is shipping their new Customer Relationship Management
(CRM) module as part of the Jobscope ERP system.

The new CRM module within Jobscope “creates information visibility into all aspects of each customer,” says Hank Sanders, president of Jobscope.

Integrated within Jobscope, the new CRM module offers customer management
capabilities “without the need of buying a third party application or any bolt-on software.” Company officials say single screen views with customer tabs “simplify the CRM experience.”

Using the module gives customers activity tracking capabilities for accounts and prospects:
“Multiple contacts, bill to and ship to addresses are included on single records,” company officials say, for tracking activity: “Additionally, multiple hold statuses for each account are available including job hold, work order hold and shipping hold. Users also have the ability to link documents to customer records for simplifying access to engineering drawings, pictures, or other account and project documentation.”

Visit David’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm

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Will Reliability Be a Factor?
In his On Rad’s Radar, Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. writes:

I see many folks asking if SaaS (software-as-a-service) will be hurt by data center outages. So I figured I would take a shot at it.

Anything over the IP network is going to be slightly less reliable than the TDM network. The TDM network had 100 years to create the 5 nines reliability that customers have come to expect. IP networks have not had that long – 15 years max to design some kind of reliability

One big difference is that IP networks have more points of failure. Routers and switches on each end. Smart jacks. Cabling. Sure TDM has RJ-11 cabling, but when was the last time that failed? Until it disintegrates it can usually carry some kind of voice signal. It’s data that requires a better connection and more wire integrity. The signal carrying the data is more susceptible to interference, like the way an AM radio signal can knock out a DSLAM.

Luckily for carriers, the consumers have been taught by cellular
usage that convenience comes with some trade-offs. So dropped calls, blacked out areas, no coverage, roaming charges, unclear calls and the like have helped to lower customer expectations
about services.

That’s a good thing for SaaS – whether it is Hotmail, Google Apps, Salesforce, blogs, or what-have-you. Outages happen. Total redundancy is way too expensive for most companies to actually implement. Let’s remember that the cloud and virtualized apps are still sitting somewhere on a server and hard drive. Many points of failure there, but people have outages on premise based servers too. And on PCs. So there is some understanding.

Visit Peter’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/on-rads-radar

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Survey: Mobile Phones Much More Favorable than Social Networks
In his Communications and Technology Blog, Rich Tehrani writes:

In a tough decade, what could people count on to make their lives better? Communications, yes communications. Fifty percent of people surveyed by Pew viewed the last decade unfavorably and 27 percent viewed it positively.

Here are some of the reasons they may have positive thoughts about the last 10 years:

• 65 percent say the Internet and e-mail have been a change for the better while a full 69 percent of people say mobile devices have been a change for the better;
• Only 29 percent say blogs haven’t been a change for the better – I like to think these are people who haven’t had a chance to visit this site yet; and
• Social networking – all the rage these past years showed a lackluster ranking with only 35 percent saying this new form of communications is a change for the better

After a magnificent bubble in 1998-2000, communications investment was slaughtered like a balanced federal government budget and left for dead. Amazingly companies like Vonage, Skype and a slew of others emerged from the ashes and showed innovation was alive and well.

With the public behind the technology and VCs not far behind, what will the next decade hold in store for communications and tech? I can’t wait to find out.

Visit Rich’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani

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