This Week In Enterprise Tech

Out of the ashes of the application service provider market has emerged hosted CRM, not only alive and well, but growing at a faster rate than the mainstream licensed CRM market, according to Giga Information Group.

As Dennis Callaghan reports, hosted CRM providers such as Salesnet and Salesforce.com are generating their share of satisfied users among large enterprise customers, so many in fact, that CRM heavyweight Siebel Systems not only has entered the market with its own CRM OnDemand offering, but it has also acquired UpShot, a hosted CRM startup. One of the factors behind the resurgence is the addition of customization features that let a company tailor the hosted service to its needs. Another is the ability of the offerings to integrate with Web services.

To Salesforce.coms Marc Benioff, Siebels imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Salesforces $100 million in sales—and its profitability—were successes the CRM giant could not ignore. See Dennis interview for Benioffs full perspective. This is what e-business was supposed to look like in 2000, before the dot-com bubble burst. Just dont call the hosted CRM providers ASPs.

As soon as you get back to work from last weeks holiday feast, the event in San Jose will be serving up a multicourse repast of WLAN products from such companies as Enterasys Networks, ReefEdge, Motia, Chantry Networks and Propagate Networks. Enterasys RoamAbout AP3000 reflects both the popularity of WLAN technologies as well as the splintering of WLAN standards, as it supports 802.11a, b and g. It is the companys first dual-radio WLAN access point, running in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies. Reflecting the proliferation of Wi-Fi networks, ReefEdge will show off the ReefEdge WLAN EcoSystem, which boasts management capabilities to tie together multiple sites.

This week, a large subset of eWEEK readers will receive the Network Solutions supplement, which leads off with a case study on the 2004 Athens Olympics. As the systems integrator, SchlumbergerSema is heading a team of major vendors including Swatch Group, Xerox, Kodak, Sun, Dell, Samsung and OTE.

Another supplement, System Solutions, which debuted Nov. 10, will next appear Dec. 8.

Till next eWEEK, send your comments to me at stan_gibson@ziffdavis.com.