text:
Creating Real Motivation For CRM
Posted By: Usama 0 Comment EE|Times
Dave Fowler, president of Kana, says the number one driving force in CRM purchases today is a move away from point solutions to something more strategic, "something that touches more places in their organization than buyers had originally expected." As a result, Fowler says, "They're looking to buy from a smaller number of vendors who have a broader set of solutions."
And today, those buyers are asking about ROI before they let those vendors in the door. Says Fowler, "If you don't meet their ROI criteria, you won't even get your telephone calls returned."
The purchase decisions are made higher up, too: "Because these deals are very ROI-focused and because they're more strategic, they're decided at the CIO and CFO level. We're seeing emphasis not just on big ROI projects, but on big ROI projects with an immediate return." No more high-concept, lifetime-customer-relationship pitches with subtle, intangible, or far-off payoffs.
Down To It
You can't help but wonder if corporations ever really bought into the dreamier side of CRM, the part in which the corporation so obsesses on your future lifetime spending potential that it almost dismisses the current transaction. And where, to embrace the dark side of the dream, you were supposed to be found out and gracefully eliminated if you weren't likely to be a good enough customer pretty darned soon. All this relationship talk – it was hokey when you were trying to score in college, and it's still hokey now.
Not that we're bashing CRM as a category. Sure, it's possible to be a bit cynical about CRM right now. Big companies like Pivotal remain stubbornly unprofitable. Quintus simply flipped belly up (and Quintus won't be the only one) and was bought out by Avaya in a kind of corporate mercy killing. The field is narrowing amid a spate of mergers and acquisitions. To make sure their offerings can handle multiple channels, companies are merging to combine their strengths.
Needless to say, in a soft economy, there are Darwinian forces at work as well. Data mining specialist DigiMine bought Co-Relation, Broadbase Software merged with Kana, configurator builder Firepond bought Brightware. Plus, skeptics were handed a bone when a Gartner study early in the year revealed that more than half of CRM implementations fail.
On the other hand, recent Hurwitz Group research says companies are planning to devote fully one-half of their IT budgets to CRM implementations. If both Gartner and Hurwitz are right, then we're faced with the daunting thought that a quarter of the world's IT budget is frittered away, wasted on a pipe dream.
What's actually going on? CRM is getting real.
Our sense is that when IT managers look at their contact centers, they don't think about developing relationships through ongoing customer interaction. Rather, they're thinking it would be nice if they could hire fewer people to handle the phones, pay them less, and figure out how to deal with turnover so that fresh faces don't represent the company badly. IT managers don't want to be so efficient that the customer has a terrible experience, of course (though that's certainly the result sometimes). But they've got to be hard nosed about what it costs to deal with customers. They're looking both to corporate strategy and to technology to help them strike a reasonable balance between "your call is very important to us, please hold" and "no problem, we'll take care of that right away."
Increasingly, managers want to accommodate whatever medium the customer chooses. In particular, they want to handle customer email with aplomb, rather than losing inbound messages and never replying. By the end of next year, nearly a third of customer contacts will be made using something other than the telephone, according to a META Group estimate, so the email and IM angles are increasingly important.
Furthermore, several of the people interviewed for this story expressed a similar sentiment: The idea used to be just to make it possible for a customer to reach you using something besides the telephone. Adding point solutions to enable other channels, though, merely created the expectation among customers that the company would actually handle all the channels in a coordinated way.
It's a problem similar to the abandoned shopping cart. Call it the abandoned confessional. Because it's not quite a shopping cart, not yet – the customer hasn't put his or her finger on any particular product yet. It's just the part where the customer has handed over some piece of his soul, their identity, their preferences, their profile. Maybe she's requested a white paper and filled in some basic info as the price of admission. Maybe he's worked partway through a guide to help him select a video camera, and he's come face to face with the question of whether price or functionality matters more to him.
Now he or she requests an agent callback on the telephone. The question is, will all these spilt beans be remembered when the agent places the call? Or will the agent have to say, in effect, "I have no idea who you are, you're just another faceless customer I've been paid to call, can we start with your mailing address?"
Enterprises that buy CRM (and they really are buying – $23 billion worth last year, according to Gartner research, and headed for $76 billion in 2005) want their contact centers to actually work, to not make the company look heartless or inept, and they want customers to feel like they've been treated decently, maybe even with a little flair. If an agent can upsell a customer, fine, but mostly enterprises will be happy for now if they just manage not to bungle a basic contact scenario and annoy.
According to Gartner, there are currently more than 2,000 vendors in 50 sub-segments of the CRM market. These numbers almost certainly stretch the borders of CRM a little, but nevertheless, we had no trouble finding more than a hundred vendors with a credible claim, about 70 in what might be called "mainstream" CRM, and about 30 that actually wound up in the main section of this article.
Those 30 make products that run on desktops in front of agents, be they sales agents or customer service reps. They're conventional tools for case history management, in other words.
That's not to say, obviously, that we don't recognize other vitally important sectors within CRM.
First and foremost, there's the functionality that used to live within the ACD. Now that the call center is morphing into a multi-channel contact center, an ACD no longer quite cuts it. What's needed instead is a bundle of hardware and software that handles the plumbing for the various channels (POTS, VoIP, IM, email, and anything else that any clever souls can think of), along with front-end IVR and chat "bots" that provide the text equivalent of IVR. Add to this feedback mechanisms that identify platinum customers and bump them up in the blended queue, and of course the blended queue itself.
For all of this, we think a new term is needed that conveys the idea that we're trying to be smart about handling contact even before we've committed ourselves to dealing with it in the contact center. Our proposal for yet another industry acronym: CRL, for "contact routing layer." Doing CRL well is hard, and no one does it well yet.
Another category that's got traction in the market is analytics. Some of the mainstream vendors have real strength in analytics within their application suites – E.piphany, Siebel, and SAP spring to mind. We think the large vendors will increasingly add analytics as a way of competing on enhanced functionality.
But expect widespread use of the analytics part of the CRM package to come slowly, if at all. For now, we'll see only the simplest sorts of deployments – basically just business rules with statistical weighting mechanisms that fine-tune how the rules are applied. A key use of analytics will be to provide feedback to CRL products, so that contact centers can determine whether to give a caller an expensive live agent or a far less expensive online alternative.
Point Solutions/ASPs
There were additional product category distinctions to be drawn. Some products are quite narrowly focused point solutions (for the most part ignored in this article). Then, too, there's a whole clique of ASP providers of CRM. They're collected in a sidebar of their own.
Framework Futures
The computer software industry as a whole has had a tumultuous history trying to figure out which made more sense: the comprehensive suite or the integrated collection of discrete, best-of-breed applications. So it should surprise no one to learn that at least part of the CRM space is now embracing easily interlocking component pieces for building enterprise solutions.
Components are a compelling way to approach CRM objectives for a couple of reasons: First, components can be hooked together very quickly because their functionality is clearly delineated and the methods for bringing each component into an application are the same across an entire component framework (and there are only two primary frameworks here – Microsoft's COM+ family on the one hand and Sun's J2EE and JavaBeans on the other). Second, an open framework for open-standards components makes it possible to create fully integrated suites out of point-solution components, meaning that enterprises can hedge their bets on the suite-vs.-point-solution question.
Early component players include Delano Technology Corporation, Neteos, Nortel Networks, Pivotal, Red Celsius, and YOUcentric, each treated in the following pages.
Agent-Facing, Multi-channel
Even after removing the routing layer specialists, the pure-ASP plays, the single-channel point solutions, the analytics companies, and the various data cleaners and snail-mail outsourcing companies that stake a claim in the CRM world, our list of companies that put multi-channel consoles on agent desktops is a long and varied one. If you're thinking CRM and you're thinking about keeping your contact center reps on the same (and not just the same, but the right same) page, then this is the list you want to be checking out.
Altitude Software
Altitude Software (Milpitas, CA – 408-965-1700) offers a suite of applications called uCI (Unified Customer Interaction). The latest version of the application suite, uCI 2001, hit the streets in March, offering a set of touch-point managers for voice, email, web, web collaboration, and WAP communication channels. Intelligent routing and blending capabilities are monitored and logged to provide analysis and reporting across all channels. The platform, which runs on Windows NT and several flavors of UNIX servers, stores data on the usual RDBMS suspects, ranging from Oracle to Microsoft SQL server. Telephone switches supported include Alcatel, Nortel Networks, Siemens, Lucent, Ericsson, and Philips.
Early this year, Altitude has focused on partnerships with SAP and Siebel. The SAP arrangement, announced this past April, boils down to mySAP.com's certification of the Altitude Software Telephony Gateway version 1.0 for use with the BC-CTI SAPphone Interface for the Avaya and Nortel Meridian PBXs. Altitude's partnership with Siebel had not been officially announced at press time, but sources inside Altitude say that a formal announcement was being withheld to follow Siebel's first-quarter earnings announcement.
Applix
Applix (Westboro, MA – 508-870-0300) opened this year by shopping the non-CRM side of its business for a buyer and declaring a focus on CRM analytics. The Applix offerings for CRM are collectively called iEnterprise and feature applications for sales, customer service, and an analytic piece called iCustomerInsight. This gives a customizable, personalized visual display of real-time vital statistics known as iDashboard.
Astute
Astute (Columbus, OH – 614-508-6100) differs from most vendors in this roundup by focusing almost exclusively on B2C. Astute counts among its customers a lot of household names, including McDonald's, Kroger, Levis, Dollar Rent-A-Car, and Dunkin Donuts. Needless to say, the sort of relationship you manage with a regular buyer of your one-dollar cup of coffee is considerably different from the sort of relationship that, say, Boeing builds up with an airline that buys its planes. But that's not to say that McDonald's doesn't have relationships to manage. Explains Astute president and CEO Joe Sanda: "Many of the companies we're dealing with have 800 numbers on their products and they get a tremendous number of contacts from consumers. How the company handles the customer's call determines whether they retain or lose that customer."
Astute makes the agent-facing console that a McDonald's customer representative uses – it doesn't make the contact center queue that gets the call routed and the screen popped. However, a recent OEM deal with Interactive Intelligence allows Astute to harness portions of II's Customer Interaction Center to its PowerCenter eCRM.
PowerCenter is Astute's consumer response database, tracking, and reporting system. Specific CIC applications included in the new PowerCenter are Internet text chat, automatic call distribution (ACD), IVR, unified messaging, contact management, email, and web response management.
With Customer Interaction Center routing calls and data, PowerCenter's screen pop will enable agents to view a complete customer record on their desktop as soon as they receive a call from the customer. The customer record includes call control buttons so that agents can transfer, forward, and perform a variety of other interaction processing tasks without switching applications. ACD capabilities enable customers to be routed to the most appropriate agent via skills-based and other routing criteria.
Blue Martini (San Mateo, CA – 650-356-4000) is primarily known for its extensive (and expensive – starting at a cool million bucks) storefront and e-commerce applications. But those applications are driven by a powerful set of analytics and on-the-fly personalization tools. Furthermore, these same tools are hooked into a service application that includes a full-blown, agent-facing contact center. Sounds like multi-channel CRM to us.
In the first year it offered its Commence RM software package, Commence (Oakhurst, NJ – 732-660-1010) sold 13,000 seats worth of licenses. Not bad for a company focusing on small-to-midsize businesses. Larry Caretsky, the company's president and CEO, says: "Although there are hundreds and thousands of users of single-user contact management systems such as Act and Goldmine, there was no good way for those users to migrate to a real enterprise CRM solution." Even solutions that compete with Commence RM in the midsize niche, Caretsky says, cost in excess of a thousand dollars per seat for the software, usually with a considerable additional expense for customization. Commence RM costs $695 a seat and, says Caretsky, the whole point is that it's ready to use. It comes out of the box supporting a broad range of business functions, including marketing and sales automation, customer service, call center, contact management, and project management. Though the range of functions supported is broad, it's important to bear in mind when comparing Commence to other SMB offerings that this is desktop software only – there's no integration to the phone or messaging layer.
Computer Associates (Islandia, NY – 631-342-6000) entered the CRM fray only last fall, but they made a convincing entry with a four-part Intelligent CRM Suite. The sales and marketing component is particularly geared toward supporting mobile field representatives (and yes, Virginia, it's WAP-enabled, but the way that real people use it is with disconnected notebooks). Additionally, there's an agent-facing customer service piece and a web self-service and chat add-on called Human Touch.
Delano Technology Corporation
Delano Technology Corporation (Markham, Ontario – 905-947-2222) was founded in 1998 and by now includes Ericsson, Charles Schwab, Nortel, i2 Technologies, Warner Music Group, Zurich Financial Services, and Macromedia among its customers.
Delano's core product, the e-Business Interaction Suite, is a software platform focused on web and email interactions. The platform ties into existing systems through native support for standards such as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), XML, WAP, SMTP, IMAP4, POP3, HTTP, LDAP, ODBC/ JDBC, JavaScript, and COM/ DCOM. Typical Delano e-business applications include automated customer registration and profile generation, customer self-service and escalation management, order processing and confirmation, e-commerce transaction notification and tracking, and product upgrade notification.
Though it's arguably a point solution, what's interesting here is the component approach. Delano supports this with an application builder for drag-and-drop interface and process creation, a highly scalable interaction server designed to run thousands of e-business applications simultaneously, and a component development kit. Custom components can be created to provide specific or unique functionality, beyond what is possible with supplied components or JavaScript.
In February, the company announced Delano Discovery Marketing, an analytical e-marketing package that's the first phase of product integration following Delano's recent acquisition of Digital Archaeology.
eGain
eGain (Sunnyvale, CA – 408-212-3400) products target web self service, web chat, email, and call center applications. The eGain Knowledge product suite aims to keep everyone on the same page, regardless of the channel they've chosen, and is built atop a database core called eGain Knowledge Central. This includes the Knowledge Author, a visual drag-and-drop authoring tool for creating and maintaining multi-language knowledge bases. A conversation-based Knowledge Agent helps call center reps by providing "case-based reasoning" drawn from the Knowledge Central piece. To package this same core material for direct use by customers on the web, Knowledge Self-Service generates targeted questions to narrow down possible responses to customer queries.
With the Knowledge Gateway, you can leverage content stored in existing unstructured information sources by indexing documents and creating a taxonomy to quickly find them when needed. You get, in other words, a single access point to Lotus Notes databases, Microsoft Office documents, HTML and PDF files, and emails.
E.piphany
E.piphany (San Mateo, CA – 650-356-3800) finds its strength in real-time analytics. Indeed, in an industry awash in blather about knowing what your customer is up to, E.piphany's e.5 suite is one of the few options that lets you actually interpret and react to what your customer has been doing today. We covered E.piphany in some depth back in an April article on data analytics; director of product marketing Brad Wilson told us that "IT managers increasingly want to link websites and the call center." If you're using offline analytics, he notes, you don't have an up-to-the-minute view of what the customer's been doing. You need this, Wilson notes, because "the best predictors of behavior are what the customer did most recently."
This past March, the company announced support for the "demand chain" paradigm with new applications designed to provide partner relationship management (PRM) solutions for businesses that sell through indirect channels.
eShare
eShare (Norcross, GA – 770-239-4000) is primarily a CRL vendor with a strong offering in its XChange communications server. But like a few other CRL competitors, eShare recently opted to provide an agent-facing application: NetAgent. This piece supports incoming phone calls and web callback requests on the same screen as email, text chat, and web collaboration. An interesting extra for web support is bi-directional co-browsing (in other words, the customer can push pages, too).
While Hewlett-Packard (Palo Alto, CA – 650-857-1501) certainly sells a CRM solution (called Front Office), it primarily does so by dint of some smart reseller deals built atop its underlying Smart Contact call center package. The marketing component comes from Rubric, while BroadVision supplies e-commerce capabilities.
!hey
In September of last year, !hey software and icontact.com merged to form !hey inc. (North Andover, MA – 978-974-0800), a company that offers live web chat, traditional call center and speech-enabled IVR, automated Q&A, and email management. !hey clients include Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard.
Kana's (Redwood City, CA – 877-480-5262) recent big news is the acquisition of BroadBase. Part of this had to do with adding analytics to Kana's multi-channel desktop. Another part had to do with pulling some cash into the business, which has fought a losing battle with profitability since its inception. The curiosity of the BroadBase deal was that, as Kana's president David Fowler puts it, "we got $130 million for only $78 million." It gave Kana some running room in a tightening market and broadened their customer base, which was already one of the most impressive in the industry. Kana has more than 850 customers, including eight of the top ten most-visited sites on the web.
Neteos
Two-year-old startup Neteos (Waltham, MA – 781-466-0100) has focused on attacking one of the central points of CRM pain for midsize corporations, the murky and sometimes bottomless pit of customization costs. By midsize, Neteos means companies with revenues between $30 and $500 million. Marketing vice president Dave McNamara says the lynchpin of this strategy is the company's drag-and-drop Design Studio, which allows end users and administrators to customize virtually any aspect of the product – business rules, workflow, screen layout, and even integration to third-party products. Control is so fine-grained that most of the development of the core product itself was done using the Studio.
Neteos announced its eRMNow! product about a year ago, spent "a fair amount of last year," McNamara says, cultivating distribution agreements, and has just begun "active, aggressive selling." Selling into the mid-tier, he notes, has required a good bit of customer education (and relationship building).
"When we talk to some of our prospects, we're surprised to find that they often don't understand the difference between an Act or Goldmine application that runs contact management on the desktop and an enterprise CRM application. Maybe 25% of the prospects understand it when we first start talking.
"Act and Goldmine users are contact-centric; they don't tend to be enterprise oriented. They're either individualized or workgroup deployed. That lets them confine their scope, both in terms of the requirements to expand their functionality and to expand the levels of integration. As they move to the enterprise, even if it's a middle-tier enterprise, you're talking about a deployment that is not workgroup-based and often does require pretty substantial customization." Companies have to reckon with the added difficulties of making databases accessible to applications throughout their organization, and it's hard to foresee the added complexities when you've never undertaken that kind of project before.
eRMNow! is a desktop product, providing no CRL except for email, which is provided both through tight integration with Exchange and Outlook and, on the support side, with internally developed email elements for inbound and outbound email.
Neteos markets eRMNow! directly to end-user organizations, both as an on-premise server product and as an ASP service offering. Per-seat pricing for the ASP offering ranges from $50 to $150, depending upon the breadth of the service suite selected.
The big news at Nortel Networks (Saint John, NB, Canada – 800-466-7835), of course, is that there's too much fiber-optic cable in the ground these days, nobody's buying the stuff, sales growth expectations for this year have been slashed to 15%, and 20,000 jobs are on the chopping block.
Does fiber glut make the CRM side of the business look more or less appealing? Too early to tell, but expect some rough sailing. The basic setup for CRM at Nortel is rock solid, though, and Nortel is one of the large players who've opted to handle both CRL and CRM. For traditional contact center call handling, there's Nortel's array of well-known hardware, in particular the Norstar and Meridian lines. For more next-gen contact centers, there's the Symposium line of tools for souping up Meridian-based call centers.
For CRM capability, Nortel's late-1999 acquisition of Clarify has led to last year's introduction of the Clarify eFrontOffice. This is yet another CRM tool that's built atop a component framework, which Nortel has dubbed Clarify Business Objects. This set of components support both of the industry-leading object architectures – COM+/ActiveX for Microsoft Windows NT users, and CORBA/ JavaBeans for UNIX users.
Onyx (Bellevue, WA – 425-451-8060) received the blessings of the Redmond gods early this year, in the form of a multi-year global sales, marketing and technology development initiative. Onyx and Microsoft are aiming at specific vertical market segments, beginning with financial services.
The first of these solutions, Onyx's Investment Management Edition, will leverage Onyx's new Internet-based, native-XML platform running on Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers to enable deep business process customization and extensive legacy application integration. The offering also will include industry-specific CRM strategy services from RevenueLab, a strategy-consulting firm recently acquired by Onyx.
Additionally, in late April, Onyx and AvantGo Inc. announced a strategic alliance to deliver mobile customer relationship management (mCRM) solutions to large, field-based sales and services teams.
Oracle's (Redwood Shores, CA – 650-506-7000) value prop in the CRM space is blissfully simple. Says Kathy O'Leary, senior director for eBusiness Suite marketing, giving the customer a compelling experience requires providing a common face to the customer. To get that common face, you need synchronized data. "Who better," she says, "to provide synchronized data than Oracle, with their integrated database/e-business suite."
In February, the company also unveiled Support.Oracle.com to deliver the customer care applications of the Oracle eBusiness Suite as an online service. Support.Oracle.com can be accessed at www.support.oracle.com and will initially be offered free of charge. At the time the new service was added, company statements claimed more than 10,000 companies and 150,000 users are utilizing its predecessor, Sales.Oracle.com. More than 8,500 companies use its e-business software, Oracle said.
PeopleSoft (Pleasanton, CA – 925-225-3000) currently has its customer and trading partner pieces 100% web-enabled. With a new release that should be out as you read this, PeopleSoft 8 will have a web-enabled agent-facing CRM piece as well.
Daniel Kenyon, vice president of CRM communications industry strategy, came to PeopleSoft by way of the Vantive acquisition. He says the strength of the deal (which raised some analyst eyebrows at the time) lies in the fact that "Vantive has very loyal customers, and for the longest time has been very strong in the communications industry. I think the idea in bringing the companies together was to bring the customer bases together."
Street apprehensions notwithstanding, Kenyon says the two companies "focused on the question of 'what is the ultimate promise of bringing these two products together?' " And the answer, for PeopleSoft, is breadth of application coverage: "By having a CRM application that is integrated with a financial application that is integrated with workforce management, supply chain management, analytics, with field service – you really start to have a comprehensive story. Some of our competitors are talking about this story, but they're talking about doing it with partners.
"As we integrate the Vantive product line completely into the PeopleSoft product line, we have a story that really shows that you can extend your workflow across previously unconnected application areas and you can deal with real, hard business problems in ways that you've never dreamed of before."
Another outgrowth of the Vantive deal is a concentration of vertical solutions, beginning with the telecom industry. In April, PeopleSoft released its CRM for Communications solution. For today's CLEC, "we see a mid-market target focus that combines various products from our product line – perhaps not the comprehensive products that former RBOCs would use, but slimmed-down products. The CLEC survivor needs all the same basic business operations, but can't afford to shell out the millions of dollars that it costs for license fees and custom integration. They want something more tailored, prepackaged."
Pivotal (North Vancouver, BC, Canada – 604-988-9982) calls the things it manages "demand chain networks." Nobody else calls anything a "demand chain network" unless they've partnered with Pivotal. Roughly speaking, Microsoft, KPMG, and Pivotal use the phrase freely, as if it were common parlance. Over the past couple of months, Pivotal and Microsoft have undertaken a 15-city tour to explain "Demand Chain Networks: eCommerce, CRM and Something Beyond."
This still leaves us wondering what a "demand chain network" might be. When we spoke with Bob Lunghi, chief marketing officer for Pivotal, toward the middle of last year, he told us "it's the analogue of what companies are used to looking at on the supply chain side, but focused on the making of customers versus the making of products." Having pondered this in the meanwhile, we think this means CRM plus PRM.
The product line for delivering a demand chain network is, not too surprisingly, the Pivotal Demand Chain Network software suite, which comprises three primary products. First, there's ePower, which is essentially a web portal engine and development toolset. Additionally, the eSelling and eRelationship components provide a sales configurator for web shopping and a web interface for customer service agents, respectively.
The suite is completely XML-based and fully leverages Microsoft's .NET Enterprise 2000 platform.
POINT's (Dublin, Ireland and Wellesley, MA – 978-974-0800) e-point 5 is deployed in 18 languages across 35 countries, in mid- to large-size companies that range from Allianz to Virgin. You haven't heard of them? That's because they've largely played in the international market, where they've enjoyed a strong run since their founding (in Munich) in 1989. The e-point 5 suite is the descendent of a robust call center solution called TeamPOINT, this time with an architecture specifically geared for the multi-channel approach.
Red Celsius
Red Celsius (Alpharetta, GA – 678-942-1300) figures their strength to be their firm foundation of J2EE components. But if that's the strength, the obvious weakness has to be that they haven't fully arrived with all their products yet. In particular, the contact center software hasn't been finished yet (at press time, it was due out at the end of this month).
What is already finished is the sales force automation (SFA) piece, and the differentiator, says Karl Oleyar, director of product marketing, is that multi-channel capability "wasn't done as an afterthought. The product was built from the ground up to support multiple communication channels." For channels, Red Celsius has in mind the usual suspects (not IM, though), but the company isn't positioning itself to provide the CRL, just the CRM. "The distribution and the routing are all going to be part of the function of embedding a third-party universal queue that handles every touchpoint."
Also online: web self-help capabilities. These have proven sufficiently compelling that the company recently struck a deal with General Motors to provide the next round of machinery behind the GMBuyPower site. The upgraded site will be one of the largest-scale J2EE implementations to date.
Remedy (Mountain View, CA – 650-903-5200) comes, as the name implies, from the help-desk part of the world. While the company is still very strong in the help-desk niche, it has sensibly noticed that help desk is just a hop and a skip removed from customer service, and not all that far afield of SFA.
Remedy's integrated CRM product suite includes Remedy Customer Support for technical assistance, Remedy Sales Continuum for SFA, Remedy Quality Management for product quality assurance, and Remedy Leads Management for opportunity management and telesales.
By way of keeping up with the rest of the field-support-crazed CRM community, Remedy went wireless in March with its Remedy Sales Continuum for Palm Powered Handhelds and Remedy Link for Palm Powered Handhelds 1.5. Global 2000 workers can now access the critical corporate data stored in Remedy CRM and ITSM applications via all Palm OS based handhelds.
In late April, SAP (Walldorf, Germany and Newtown Square, PA – 610-661-1000) announced an upgrade to its mySAP CRM suite. As one might expect, the upgrade focuses on more seamless multi-channel support and better analytics. Added by way of channels are web chat, email, and web callback. As for the rest, well, if it looks like a portal, that might well be because of SAP's creation of SAP Portals Inc., a new company dedicated to developing and marketing comprehensive, open-enterprise portal and business intelligence products. The new company, which expects to employ some 700 people, is partly a result of SAP's March acquisition of TopTier, an enterprise portal software vendor.
Saratoga Systems
Saratoga Systems (Campbell, CA – 408-558-9600) recently added a web-based solution to its Win32-based flagship product suite, collectively called Avenue. The web version is iAvenue; both web and desktop versions are aimed largely at enterprises within the financial services, energy, and manufacturing markets.
Siebel Systems
The last time we checked in with Siebel Systems (San Mateo, CA – 650-295-5000), they had struck agreements to partner with Avaya and Quintus, both companies equipped to provide the multi-channel plumbing required to funnel customer contacts onto an agent desktop. Once on the desktop, Siebel was well equipped to handle things. Meanwhile, Quintus ran aground and was bought out of its bankruptcy woes by Avaya, so it's all the same plumbing more or less by now.
In terms of its own product line, Siebel made a purchase of its own last October – online guided-selling tool maker OnLink Technologies. Folding OnLink's products into the Siebel framework has resulted in the introduction of the Interactive Selling Suite. The idea, says Chris Melancon, senior product line marketing manager for ISS, is to push Siebel's reach "beyond creating efficiencies internal to the organization" and outward "to add the ability to make the customers more efficient in dealing with the selling organization." To do this, the Interactive Selling Suite essentially acts as a virtual guide or a questionnaire-driven configurator to "take customers through needs analysis, recommendation, tradeoffs, and ultimately pricing and ordering."
Pieces gained from the OnLink acquisition have been added to pre-existing Siebel components such as Siebel's eConfigurator. The current ISS lineup, then, is a quintet that begins with the eAdvisor, which guides the user through "questions that a call center person would ask a customer." The eConfigurator handles complicated sales, say when a cellular company wants to guide a customer through selecting a cell phone and a service plan and configure the features of the phone, all online. To create a personalized storefront, there's eSales. Finally, there are two further pieces that handle sticky pricing situations: ePricer and eAuction.
Siebel watchers (and companies in the personalized storefront business) should note that Siebel generally doesn't enter a market that it doesn't feel it can dominate. It's looking for fifty percent of what might be called the "guided customer interaction" market.
Also, Siebel's CRM offerings as a whole will move to a thin – HTML and JavaScript only – web version as of the release of the 2001 product update (probably at about the time you're reading this). This will perhaps counter earlier criticisms that what Siebel called a thin-client version of its software was actually heavily laden with large objects that had to download and run on the client before any work got done.
Swallow Information Systems
In April, Swallow Information Systems (Beverly, MA – 978-867-6000) announced plans to build vertically tailored solutions for the retail, utilities, and travel industries. This builds atop the base product, called Charter Continuum, which is written entirely in Visual Basic, making it addressable within Microsoft's COM object-oriented framework. Like POINT, Swallow has considerably greater name recognition in Europe than it does stateside.
Talisma
Touch points integrated with Talisma (Kirkland, WA – 425- 897-2900) are email, chat, web forms, fax, web self-help, VoIP, IVR, and phone. Talisma threads all inbound interactions together into a single case to create a complete history of all interactions with a particular customer. The Talisma Interaction Management Engine (TIME) is the central queue for all this. Above the queue there are applications available across the whole CRM spectrum, including all the SFA and customer service chunks you'd expect – the interface across the board resembles Microsoft Outlook. There's also a highly functional customization function so that each user's view of the applications can evolve based on their use over time.
Xchange Inc.
Xchange Inc. (Boston, MA – 617-737-2244) has existed under this name only since April of last year, but dates back to 1994 as Exchange Applications. In its former life, the company was a data mining and analytics specialist; it's held fast to that specialization and is largely seen as an email campaign management tool. However, as an analytics heavyweight, it offers some of the same fast-reaction capabilities that E.piphany offers, to wit, it's Xchange 7 software can alert call center reps to recent activities on a company's website and offer suggestions for how to deal with the customer.
YOUcentric
YOUcentric (Charlotte, NC – 704-643-1000) is part of the component crowd, building web-centric apps on J2EE and XML. The company has a broad coverage of the typical CRM arsenal within its components, including pieces for SFA, self-help, campaign management, PRM, and a full-blown, multi-channel contact center. Customers include Bank of America, FedEx, Harcourt, and McGraw-Hill.
Box Eats Agent
Traditionally, customers with routine needs are handled by IVR today being extended to multiple communication channels (email, IM, etc.). But what about customers whose needs are routine, but who have difficulty navigating through fully automated systems? What about callers who require human assistance for one transaction, but are happy to perform others via automation? What about saving human agents' time, with automated aids?
Edify (Santa Clara, CA – 800-944-0056) has gone perhaps farthest of all communications-automation vendors in using this technology – not just to fully automate self-service, but to speed up and enhance interaction with human agents. The solution, according to Joseph G. Brown, Edify CEO, is Edify's new virtual CSR (vCSR).
"I view customer self-service as an integral part of CRM strategy," Brown says. "When we formed in 1990, our initial focus was faxback. We then quickly added IVR, then voice, then web, then wireless, and so, from day one, we've been building a multi-channel platform," Brown says. "What we've learned over the last eleven years is that, on average, we can automate about 30% of customer interactions."
This means, of course, that the other 70% requires an agent. There's no denying that any kind of self-help capability has to be an adjunct to the contact center. Which Edify fully realizes: "So while our focus up until now has been self service, in February we announced a new product for assisted service," Brown says. Read: agent-facing application.
While the assisted-service piece is "essential infrastructure," in Brown's view, "our true value comes in a new piece of technology we've introduced called Edify Natural Language. We now have the ability to understand what people say and what people type into a website."
It's this language parsing capability that underlies the vCSR, Brown says. And it doesn't work via recognition best guesses, Brown says. "We know when we know what they said, and we know when we don't know." For email and web chat within a specific business domain, says Brown, "we believe that we can answer on average between 30 to 50% of all questions."
It's early days, though. The vCSR has only been deployed with a half dozen or so early adopters (most notably the British division of Kraft foods).
From Customer Contact Management to Contact Routing Layer (CRL)
This month's look at CRM focuses on vendors that supply agent-facing software: the customer/process-managing part, as opposed to the contact-routing part. But that's by no means meant to imply that the CRL part of the package isn't important. Indeed, the ability to route and queue multiple contact channels – what you might call an ACD on steroids – is an absolutely essential foundation for a state-of-the-art call center and it's something we think merits a future article of its own.
Pending upcoming coverage, though, note that the field (key players listed below) features representatives both from the traditional world of large-scale ACDs and from the all-IP world, almost all of them names you've heard of because they've been around a while. A few examples:
Avaya is the spun-off continuation of the Enterprise Networks Group at Lucent. Their product history stretches back to the industry's initial realization that there needed to be some way to distribute inbound calls round-robin fashion. Nowadays, of course, they offer a broad range of products for contact centers, including their core Definity switches, CenterVu for intelligent call routing, and an overarching CRM Central product for tying the pieces together in a CRM context. Genesys Labs, another key early player in the traditional ACD market, offers a full suite of interaction management tools in the G6 platform they released late last year. Additionally, Genesys and its owner Alcatel announced plans to acquire CallPath (and its approximately 500 customers) as we were going to press. Even having handed over its well-established core ACD asset, IBM makes several products that might be termed "voice middleware" (in addition to having a top-notch service organization for implementing large-scale contact centers). The products include the Websphere Voice Server, WebSphere Translation Server, and DirectTalk.
Interactive Intelligence is an example of what might be called "pure play" CRL, insofar as their Customer Interaction Center (CIC) brings voice and data communications together in one scalable, unified architecture running on a Windows NT or Windows 2000 server. Gone are the separate boxes for PBX, ACD, IVR, voice mail, fax server, and so on.
Rockwell Electronic Commerce makes the well-established Spectrum enterprise-class ACD, which in field use has processed some 40 million calls a day for more than six years. Additionally, Rockwell Electronic's Transcend product targets midsize, multi-channel contact centers with an award-winning, CT Media-based solution.
All these vendors deal with the nuts and bolts of making the actual contact with the actual customer. One could argue that this process of routing and queuing incoming contact from customers isn't really CRM proper, but on the other hand, it's the moment of contact that defines the relationship a company is trying to build, not the database that helps us remember who the customer is, or the analysis that helps us decide whether we like this or that customer.
Brampton, ON, Canada
800-4-NORTEL
By: Robert Richardson
Source: EE|Times / PDF
CELLIT
CosmoCom
Genesys Labs
888-GENESYS
Davox
Interactive Intelligence
Rockwell Electronic Commerce
Mining Customer Data for Treasured Market Insights


text:
Is InfiniBand poised for a comeback?
By Ann Silverthorn
InfiniBand, the interconnect that enjoyed 15 minutes of fame more than five years ago, finds itself back in the spotlight, and this time around storage professionals might want to take a closer look at the technology. While many in the storage industry thought it was dead, InfiniBand found a niche in the high-performance computing (HPC) world connecting huge clusters of servers. Recently, HPC administrators started asking why they couldn't use InfiniBand for their storage networks, too.
Between 1999 and 2001, as bandwidth was being eaten up by faster processors, streaming video, and high-resolution graphics, InfiniBand was hailed as the answer to all bandwidth problems. The PCI bus was hitting the wall, and InfiniBand was going to replace the bus-based architecture with a high-bandwidth, low-latency, serial I/O interconnect. Some analysts predicted that InfiniBand would become the standard method of connecting servers to other servers, storage devices, and networks. And some observers even predicted that InfiniBand would replace Fibre Channel SANs.
Analysts speculated that InfiniBand would be accepted more quickly than Fibre Channel had, because it started out with support from the InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA). Formed in 1999, the IBTA had already gathered 200 members by mid-2001.
Unfortunately, InfiniBand had a timing problem, hitting the stage just before the technology and economic downturn. As a result, some InfiniBand start-ups went out of business in the 2002-2003 time frame.
Jonathan Eunice, president of the Illuminata research firm, thinks that if the technology bubble hadn't burst, then Fibre Channel would have been detrimentally affected by InfiniBand.
"There's been a tremendous setback for InfiniBand in terms of timeline and scope," says Eunice. "Also, some of the original supporters, like Intel, decided to take the PCI Express route."
Eunice adds that, at the time, storage professionals were asking themselves if they really needed another network. Most of them were aligned with Fibre Channel or were looking at TCP/IP networks for NAS and iSCSI.
InfiniBand 101
InfiniBand is a low-latency, high-performance, serial I/O interconnect. Its serial bus is bidirectional, with 2.5Gbps single-data rate (SDR) throughput in each direction per connection. It also supports double-data rate (DDR) and quad-data rate (QDR) for 5Gbps and 10Gbps throughput. And aggregating links dramatically increases throughput. For example, a quad-rate 12X link can push data at 120Gbps. And InfiniBand can run across copper or fiber-optic cabling.
InfiniBand is deployed primarily in server clusters ranging from two to thousands of nodes. In addition to connecting servers, InfiniBand can connect communications and storage fabrics in data centers. The technology can also support block- or file-based transfers. The IBTA claims more than 70 companies have announced InfiniBand products.
"InfiniBand start-ups that survived found early adopters in the HPC space," says Brian Garrett, an analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. "Users of clustered scientific applications deployed on commodity servers found that InfiniBand could be used to affordably 'glue' servers together, creating a single computer."
"Large commercial database clusters are starting to use InfiniBand, and it's also moving into the geophysics, seismic, oil and gas production, and energy markets," says Greg Schulz, a senior analyst at the Evaluator Group consulting firm.
Some well-established InfiniBand vendors include Mellanox, PathScale, SilverStorm Technologies, and Voltaire. And pre-configured InfiniBand clusters are available from well-known vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun.
IB breaks into storage
In mid-2004, a group of end users and vendors founded the Open IB Alliance to deliver a single, open-source Linux- and Windows-based software stack for deploying InfiniBand. Some of its members include Cisco, DataDirect Networks, Dell, Engenio, Mellanox, Network Appliance, Oracle, PathScale, Rackable Systems, Silicon Graphics, SilverStorm, Symantec, and Sun.
The Open IB Alliance had a positive influence on InfiniBand adoption, but there were other factors as well, such as rumblings from the HPC community.
"The HPC world, and certain parts of the commercial environment where companies have deployed large grids of servers for specific applications, focus on efficiency and low cost," says Rick Villars, vice president of storage systems research at International Data Corp. (IDC). "They don't want three different networks; they want one. A number of them have chosen InfiniBand for their networks and they want storage on InfiniBand, too."
"HPC users that already have InfiniBand for their server network want InfiniBand for their storage as well," says Illuminata's Eunice. "In these cases, InfiniBand plays against Fibre Channel." In addition to HPC environments, Eunice thinks that certain vertical markets with clustered databases will be interested in storage devices with native InfiniBand.
Cisco's acquisition of Topspin for $250 million in April 2005 also fueled interest in InfiniBand. In a brief on InfiniBand's impact on Cisco's switch offerings, ESG's Garrett noted: "Storage switching connects servers to storage systems and devices on a shared network. …Cisco Server Fabric Switching (SFS), based on Topspin's InfiniBand technology, connects servers within a cluster, enables shared connection to storage, and provides a platform within the network for the virtualization of storage and server resources."
In an interview, Garrett says, "Topspin provided the HCA [host channel adapter] that connects to Cisco's switch. This turns the InfiniBand 'fat pipe' into multiple pipes-one for connecting servers, one for connecting to storage, and one for bridging over to Ethernet for external storage. Right now the switches are running at 10Gbps, and 30Gbps is becoming available. Companies can now use InfiniBand as a direct connection to storage. This is good for HPC applications that move massive amounts of data to storage as quickly as possible, such as data collection from satellites."
As for InfiniBand storage arrays, Illuminata's Eunice considers Engenio and Texas Memory Systems to be early players. "Texas Memory's solid-state disk [SSD] and Engenio's [high-speed] disk subsystems are oriented toward some of the technical computing arenas where InfiniBand is gaining attention," he says.
Texas Memory offers an InfiniBand interface that allows its SSD devices to connect to HPC networks. Its 4X InfiniBand interface and a single RamSan SSD provides up to 3GBps of sustained throughput over four ports. The InfiniBand interface allows the RamSan devices to connect natively to the high-bandwidth, low-latency servers used in grid computing environments.
LSI Logic's Engenio division introduced storage systems with native InfiniBand at the Supercomputing conference in November 2005. Engenio's 6498 controller and 6498 storage system are sold through OEMs and can be configured with either Fibre Channel or Serial ATA (SATA) disk drives.
"InfiniBand is becoming the interconnect of choice for inter-processor communications in Linux clusters," says Steve Gardner, director of product marketing at Engenio. "Those customers started asking why they have to build a separate network for storage with Fibre Channel infrastructure, switches, and HBAs or buy converters that perform Fibre Channel-to-InfiniBand conversion. Both choices increase complexity and impact network performance."
SGI and Verari are two of Engenio's InfiniBand system OEMs. SGI resells Engenio's InfiniBand disk arrays as the InfiniteStorage TP9700. Verari, a blade server developer, uses Engenio's technology in its VS7000i InfiniBand-attached storage system.
Isilon is taking the concept of server clusters to storage environments, offering InfiniBand connections as options on its storage arrays.
"Clustered storage is built from the ground up to store large amounts of unstructured data, digital content, and reference information," says Brett Goodwin, vice president of marketing and business development at Isilon. "We teamed with Cisco to create a storage system that uses InfiniBand as a high-performance, low-latency cluster interconnect."
Goodwin reports that since Isilon first introduced its IQ series of storage systems with InfiniBand connections, in April 2005, about 90% of its customers have opted for the InfiniBand option (as opposed to Gigabit Ethernet) for node-to-node connectivity. Isilon offers the InfiniBand version of its IQ clustered storage systems at the same price as the Gigabit Ethernet version.
DataDirect Networks delivers more than 3GBps of read/write performance in its InfiniBand-based RAID storage networking appliance, the S2A9500. Designed for HPC and rich media applications, the S2A9500 can deliver 360 teraFLOPS and 1 petabyte of SATA storage.
Germany-based Xiranet Communications recently introduced its XAS 500-ib InfiniBand storage system, which is based on the SCSI RDMA Protocol (SRP) and offers capacity up to 7.5TB.
In October 2005, Voltaire and FalconStor teamed up to combine iSCSI management capabilities with the high performance of InfiniBand to enable accelerated backup and data replication.
In November 2005, Microsoft jumped into the market when it announced InfiniBand support for HPC environments with its Windows Compute Cluster for Windows Server 2003 software.
Hurdles remain
One of the hurdles that InfiniBand faces is that it can't be used over long distances. However, like Fibre Channel, it can be bridged. The distance limitation might not be an issue for server environments, but as the technology moves into storage the ability to transport large amounts of data across long distances becomes more critical.
Obsidian Research Corp., a Canadian InfinBand technology company, is developing long-range storage technologies with the US government. Obsidian has developed a 2-port, 1U box called Longbow XR that encapsulates InfiniBand traffic in a variety of WAN links.
In one demonstration, it linked remote clusters over OC192c SONET networks at up to 6,500km.
The Open IB Alliance also addressed the distance issue when it showcased the world's largest cross-continental InfiniBand data center in conjunction with the Supercomputing 2005 conference. The project included InfiniBand clusters in California, Washington, and Virginia connected over a WAN with Obsidian's Longbow XR devices.
Another major challenge that InfiniBand faces is the foothold that Fibre Channel and Ethernet already have in storage networking.
"Fibre Channel and Ethernet are entrenched," says Illuminata's Eunice, "but they can't carry the traffic that InfiniBand can and do not have the low latency."
This article was originally published on February 01, 2006

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


With a population now well in excess of 1,100 residents Middleton Grange is serviced by Middleton Grange Public School and Thomas Hassall Anglican College (K – 12). A town centre is planned to be located adjacent to the public school. A Council community facility, park and sporting facilities will also be provided.
It is anticipated that the area will contain approximately 2,580 dwellings and be home to approximately 9,000 residents.
The principal planning documents for Middleton Grange are the Liverpool Local Environment Plan 2008 and the Liverpool Development Control Plan 2008 Part 2.5, which can be found at Liverpool's Planning Controls.


text:
To See What I Could See
An Examination of Contemporary Printmaking
October 24, 2020 - March 17, 2021
Jane L. Stern Gallery
Plains Art Museum is pleased to announce To See What I Could See: An Examination of Contemporary Printmaking from our permanent collection. The prints in this exhibition relate and connect to one another through the avenues of formalism, collaboration, narration, and process. Conceptually simple – creating multiples of an image through a printing press – printmaking is technically complex and offers artists and audiences with unique results that can only be achieved through the myriad of printmaking processes. By focusing on contemporary prints, this exhibition allows for us to see inside the realms of aesthetic and theory, and also provides a glimpse inside the processes that often mystify and intrigue viewers.
To See What I Could See: An Examination of Contemporary Printmaking is curated by Plains Art Museum Manager of Hannaher's, Inc. Print Studio Manager Amanda Heidt with support from Museum Director Andy Maus, Associate Curator of Exhibitions & Collections Tasha Kubesh, Director of Curatorial & Operational Logistics Steve Jacobs, Associate Registrar Kaitlin Molden, and installation team member Tessa Wick. We would like to give a special thank you to artist DeborahMae Broad for giving permission to use the title of her etching as the title for this exhibition.
Plains Art Museum thanks our generous PlainsArt4All members and donors, and our Organizational Partners for their support. Additional support provided by The McKnight Foundation, Bush Foundation, The Arts Partnership, The FUNd at Plains Art Museum, and the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funds from the North Dakota Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.
left to right: Ellsworth Kelly, Untitled, 1997, Color lithograph, Gift of Myer and Marjorie C. Shark • Daniela Deeg, Ich Sehe Etwas, Das Du Nicht Siehst (I See Something You Can't See), 2003, Photolithograph, Hannaher's, Inc. Print Studio resident commission • James Rosenquist, My Mind is an Empty Glass, 1994, Color lithograph, Museum Gift • Edgar Heap of Birds, For Arizona Denials, 2001, Lithograph, Museum purchase from the University of Arizona Foundation for the benefit of Lasting Impressions
Ongoing Exhibitions
No Time For Despair
To say that right now is the ideal time to make art that speaks directly to the people about social justice is an understatement. Because the very nature of art is to undertake or assume the role of a healer by shading light on the human condition.
City Geode
S.P.A.C.E. Sculpture
City Geode, created and installed in May 2019 by students and Professor Josh Zeis from NDSU is the latest creation. In response to the work, the lead artists said, "What is a city? This City Geode incorporates many of the things that we thought a city needs; buildings, streets, electricity, drainage, and above all else, the human spirit.
Bee in Flight
Community artist and school art teacher MeLissa Kossick, who guides youth classes at the Museum on art, gardens, and pollinators, has created an enchanting mosaic design in the Creativity Pathway in the Serkland Gallery called Bee in Flight.
The North Dakota Mural
Drawing on his childhood memories of the Great Plains, he created a work that speaks to the wide open spaces, huge vistas, and ocean-like skies of the region.
Fragile Preservation
A Tallgrass Community
While the Tallgrass Prairie is a community made up of a great diversity of species, Fragile Preservation represents a selection of them.


text:
Jay-Z + Coldplay = Play-Z: A Rundown of Other Oddball Mashups
by Chaz Kangas
KRS-ONE and Michael Stipe
On New Year's Eve Brooklyn's Barclays Center will be alive with the monster double-bill of Coldplay and Jay-Z. Two titanic musical entities that have spent the past decade being the epicenter of their genres, their alignment for one night is sure to be a colossal way to bring in the new year. But despite their public relationship dating back to musical collaborations six years ago, some are still having a hard time wrapping their head around Coldplay and Jay-Z being musical BFFs. To assist with the acceptance, we decided to rundown a list of even-weirder cross-genre collaborations in years past that make the Play-Z Connection look mild by comparison.
The Ten Best Reissues of 2012
The Ten Best Noise Tracks of 2012
The Ten Best Metal Albums of 2012
The Ten Best Country Albums of 2012
The Ten Best New York City Rap Albums of 2012
R.E.M. and KRS-ONE
"Radio Song," 1990
Blastmaster KRS-ONE has spent the past quarter-century as one of the genre's foremost educators. By the early '90s, his name was synonymous with the concept of "music with a message." Perhaps it's the combination of this quest to better society and raw talent that drew Michael Stipe to him when the R.E.M. frontman invited him to essentially be a hypeman on the group's "Radio Song." A weird, sarcastic take on the disc-jockey, KRS's bombastic voice sounds downright unsettling in the group's soundscape.
Henry Rollins and 3rd Bass
"Pop Goes the Weasel," 1991
What's the most underrated random celebrity cameo in a rap video? Is it Patrick Swayze in Ja Rule's "The Reign?" Is it Gheorghe Muresan in Eminem's "My Name Is?" Or is it punk rocker Henry Rollins' turn as Vanilla Ice in 3rd Bass' monumental dis record "Pop Goes the Weasel?" We choose the latter as the Black Flag singer perfectly mimics MC Serch and Pete Nice's target to the point where Serch once remarked he really thought at times that he was looking at "the weasel" himself. According to legend, Serch at one point, blinded by rage, legit cracked Rollins/Ice with the bat during the beatdown scene in a take that can be seen in the video to this day.
Mudhoney and Sir Mix-A-Lot
"Freak Momma," 1993
The soundtrack to the 1993 film Judgment Night was a landmark release for cross-genre creations. Along with featuring familiar collaborators like Biohazard and Onyx reuniting after their "Bionyx" remix of "Slam" for the title track, and matches made in rap-rock Heaven like Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul, there were a few bizarre entries. While grunge rockers Mudhoney and rapper/butt connoisseur Sir Mix-A-Lot do share a hometown (which is more than most of the disc's participants had in common), their styles on "Freak Momma" form almost a unique anti-mesh.
3 Ring Circus Tour – Lordz of Brooklyn, Sublime & Wesley Willis 1995
Part of the appeal of certain genres of live music is the promise that anything can happen. In the early '90s, punk and hip-hop both hit an innovative hot streak, occasionally winning fans over who would usually shop on the other side of Sam Goody stores. While many major rock festivals would just have one token rap group, Skunk Records' 1995 3 Ring Circus tour went beyond the limits of genre uniformity. Boasting New York rappers Lordz of Brooklyn, Chicago punk rock outsider Wesley Willis and Sublime from Long Beach, the 20-plus date tour successfully broke the rules, selling out dates all over the West Coast.
Ozzy Osbourne featuring DMX, Ol' Dirty Bastard and the Crystal Method
"Nowhere to Run," 1998
Here's a noodle-scratcher: what do Black Sabbath's Ozzy Osbourne, DMX, Ol' Dirty Bastard and electronic favorites the Crystal Method have in common? If you said a shared love of South Park, you would be right. Off the show's Chef Aid compilation, released on rap-rock pioneer Rick Rubin's label American Recordings, "Nowhere to Hide" sounds like a bizarre tour-van collision with some of the most recognizable and occasionally incoherent voices in music history screaming at each other over a techno beat. With all the Surge being sipped in '98, it was only a matter of time before a record like this happened. Still, it's aged much better than the pieced together Ozzy/Tony Iommi and Wu-Tang Clan "For Heavens Sake 2000" from the Loud Rocks compilation.
This article from the Village Voice Archive was posted on December 28, 2012


text:
Q: Validate gradle task graph I need to refactor and break up a very large plugin that belongs to someone else. One thing that i absolutely can not do is change the existing task graph. I am trying to add baseline unit tests right now that i can use to verify i don't change anything when i break this apart. Now plan A was to add the plugin task tree and pull a tree from testkit tests that compare the task trees with the expected. the problem is one of the task trees looks like this
:buildDocsHtml
+--- :installBuildRequirements
|    \--- :installSetupRequirements
|         \--- :installLinks
|              \--- :createVirtualEnvironment
|                   \--- :pinRequirements
\--- :installProject
     \--- :installTestRequirements
          \--- :installPythonRequirements
               \--- :installBuildRequirements
                    \--- :installSetupRequirements
                         \--- :installLinks
                              \--- :createVirtualEnvironment
                                   \--- :pinRequirements

Thats going to be a nightmare to try to compare as a string. Is there an easier way to pull this off?

A: You could adapt the source code for the task tree plugin to produce a format that is better for diffing

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Home / Mortgage / Can I REALLY Afford a House?
The first question when deciding to buy a home is: "Do I make enough money?" It's important to know how much you can afford before going to see a lender. As lenders see you a risk, this could save you some disappointment if you are not prepared.
The application process for buying a home is a serious one. This is a huge purchase with a huge amount of debt- not to be taken lightly. So, you will need to prove that you are capable of handling the mortgage responsibly. The process includes revealing your bank account information, credit history, investments, etc. Be honest and forthright and ask questions if needed.
Income: Lenders have certain requirements. They need to see that you make enough to not only pay the mortgage, but are able to meet your other financial responsibilities as well.
Credit Score: This should not be something you don't know. You should regularly monitor your credit. Similarly to income, the higher your score the greater the loan amount could be and possible a lower interest rate.
Employment: Do you have a history of long, steady employment? Be prepared to explain any lapses in between jobs or short periods of time at one particular job.
Now that you've run the numbers you have a better idea of what you're in for. This will help you be prepared when deciding to purchase a home!


text:
Home > Talent > A way to avoid executive search fees; publicly announce your high-level opening
Published on: March 17, 2007
A way to avoid executive search fees; publicly announce your high-level opening
Legal Week, Vol. 9, Mar 1, 2007 at 5, deems it noteworthy that Motorola announced that it was looking for a new UK head of legal. The spokesperson gave the name of the departing lawyer, Palwinder Hare, mentioned the lawyer who will be taking the role during the interim, and pointed out that Motorola has more than 200 lawyers worldwide to support its annual revenues of almost $43 billion.
Aside from giving the compensation range expected to be paid, that information, plus the fact that the position reports to global general counsel Peter Lawson in Chicago, goes a long way to tell prospective applicants about the open high-level position. Thus, at no cost, and without incurring advertising or executive search fees (See my posts of July 5, 2006 on executive search firms' services; and March 26, 2005 about executive search firms possibly inflating compensation.), Motorola has cast its net widely for a worthy successor candidate.
Posted in: Talent
Updated: March 17, 2007 8:30 pm


text:
package org.apache.maven.report.projectinfo.stubs;

/**
 * @author Vincent Siveton
 * @version $Id$
 */
public class MailingListStub
    extends ProjectInfoProjectStub
{
    @Override
    protected String getPOM()
    {
        return "mailing-list-plugin-config.xml";
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Windsor High School provides your student with the best educational experience possible. In the classroom or in any of the many extra curricular activities offered, your student will receive a quality, comprehensive education. Students can focus on academics and also participate in clubs, activities and sports. We boast a "bring your own device" philosophy and students are challenged with instructional practices and curriculum that will prepare them for their post-secondary careers. We have State Championship Athletic Programs, National Award Winning FFA and FCCLA and State Marching Band Championships. Windsor High School offers multiple Advanced Placement classes in Math, Science, Social Studies, World Language and Language Arts. We offer daily tutoring in our Math and English departments and all Freshmen are enrolled in our Health 101 class where they are mentored and taught Wizard STAR qualities (Strength, Trust, Accountability and Respect.) Parents are encouraged to volunteer and be part of our Parent Teacher Advisory Committee and Booster Clubs.
We are in the process of a $30 million remodel and are excited to introduce an Innovation Center and other features that will enhance curriculum and student engagement.


text:
History Workshop 8
History Workshop 8, on the subject of Family, Work, Home, was held at the London School of Economics on Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 October 1973. This was the first time that the Workshop had been held away from Ruskin College. The format was similar to previous Workshops, although less crowded than the schedule for Workshop 6 had been. A video of the play Fall in and Follow Me, based on a History Workshop pamphlet by Dave Marson about a wave of strikes by school-children in 1911, was shown on the Saturday evening. The play, written by Billy Colville and Dave Marson, was performed at the Half Moon Theatre, Aldgate, in July 1973.
In contrast to Workshop 6, where there had been a number of concurrent sessions, sessions ran one at a time. Themes for sessions included 'Domesticity and the Home', 'Ideologies of Motherhood', 'Workshop and Factory', 'School and Home', 'Genteel Openings', and 'Class, Caste and Home'. Papers included The History of the Housewife, Imperialism and the Cult of Motherhood 1900-1914, Black Country Chainmakers 1880-1914, and Women and Home in the Chinese Revolution.
Speakers at this Workshop were split between professional academics and worker-students from Ruskin. As with the previous two Workshops, the importance of the women's movement and feminist history as a part of the History Workshop movement can clearly be seen. The choice of subject, the intersections and conflicts between family, work, and home was a significant one for socialist-feminist historians.
Publicity for History Workshop 8 © History Workshop Archive, Bishopsgate Institute


text:
«Спартак» () — бывший советский и узбекистанский футбольный клуб из Ташкента.

История

Основан в 1937 году на базе команды города Ташкента и расформирован в 1955 году. Являлся клубом-предшественником ташкентского «Пахтакора».

В частности, 12 игроков, выступавших за «Спартак» в классе «Б» в 1955 году, перешли в следующем сезоне в «Пахтакор».

Среди них — Олег Жмак, Кобил Мукимов, Идгай Тазетдинов, Юрий Усков, а Михаил Арустамов, завершив карьеру игрока, стал тренером этой команды.

В 2008 году возрождённый «Спартак» стал победителем группы A финального этапа Второй лиги Узбекистана и 3 следующих сезона выступал в Первой лиге.

Достижения
 Чемпион Узбекской ССР (4 раза): 1937, 1938, 1950, 1951.
 Первая лига СССР: 7-е место в зональном турнире класса «Б» (1953).
 Кубок СССР: 1/16 финала (1954).
 Вторая лига Узбекистана: 1-е место (2008).
 Первая лига Узбекистана: 6-е место (2009).

Ссылки
 Клуб в базе footballfacts
 Матчи клуба в базе Wildstat

Футбольные клубы СССР, прекратившие существование
Футбольные клубы Ташкента

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Peter is currently filming the Netflix series THE LETTER FOR THE KING. Most recent credits include the Amazon series HANNA and prior to that Ben Wheatley's latest feature COLIN which premiered in the London Film Festival. Other recent film credits include VITA AND VIRGINIA with Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki, BLUE IGUANA with Sam Rockwell, LOST IN LONDON alongside director and star Woody Harrelson, GHOST IN THE SHELL with Scarlett Johansson and Juliette Binoche and Guy Ritchie's KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD with Jude Law and Charlie Hunnam. He starred as the lead role in HYENA, which premiered at Edinburgh Festival in 2014 which received 4 award nominations and 4 wins internationally, including the Les Arcs Film Festival prize for Best Actor. Other credits include STARRED UP, A FIELD IN ENGLAND and TONY.
Abbot Vision/Film Council / Revolver Ent.
Company: Abbot Vision/Film Council / Revolver Ent.


Liverpool was named by Rough Guides as one of the top ten destinations to visit in 2014. I did, and they're right, it's fantastic. Here are 10 things you definitely shouldn't miss.
Liverpool really has become a centre for the arts. And it's no wonder. All the galleries and many of the museums in Liverpool are free. Even if you are not an art aficionado, the galleries are well worth the visit. The Walker Art Gallery contains works ranging from the 13th century until today and contains pieces from artists you would rarely be able to see in Canada. The Tate Gallery, located in the Albert Dock area has a massive collection of Modern and Contemporary works. Did I mention admission is FREE?
It's already can't miss…it's FREE!
Save the galleries for a rainy day. While I was lucky, apparently Liverpool can be quite wet!
Yes, go to the mall. Located on 42 acres of land in downtown Liverpool, Liverpool One is a massive outdoor complex of the trendiest shops in England. The layout groups stores appealing to similar tastes and age groups together. For example, Fred Perry sits next to the Dr. Marten store.
Don't eat here. The restaurants are all crowded and a DIY attitude towards service. Venture towards Albert Dock to find more interesting fare.
Don't buy anything you can get at home. The exchange rate won't make it worth it.
Before committing your money to a designer's boutique store, check out the department stores first. They will often have the same brands, but at a lower price.
No visit to England would be complete without visiting a local pub. The atmosphere, food and locally brewed ales are uniquely British. Liverpool is home to well over 80 Pubs. My favorite spot was the 160 year old Peter Kavanagh's. This dog friendly house features a cacophony of items covering the walls and overhanging the bar along with a great selection of ales on tap. It's like walking into a scene from Coronation Street…complete with angry football fans. The Ship and Mitre was a very close second.
Avoid the chain pubs. They have all the charm and warmth of a cafeteria….with food to match.
Get the map. I was fortunate enough to run into a member of CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale… seriously, it's a real organization!) member who supplied me with a map of the best pubs in Liverpool. Carry this with you so you can find a place for a quick bite or a rest along your route.
If Liverpool was a person, the Cavern Club would be its heart. As the birthplace of the Beatles, the Cavern Club has become a mecca not just for Beatles fans but also for fans of up and coming local and international artists. Because of the Cavern's worldwide reputation, you actually get the chance to see some pretty amazing musical acts living out their dream to play the Cavern.
Plan to go on a Saturday night and you will be treated to a Beatles tribute band.
There are actually three live stages. The Cavern Main Stage, The Cavern Club Back Stage and, located across the street, The Cavern PUB also featuring a live stage. There are plenty of chances to hear some great music.
If the Cavern Club doesn't satisfy your Beatles fix, embark on the Magical Mystery Tour (which also includes a free ticket for the Cavern Club). Starting from the Albert Docks, the tour takes you to the childhood haunts of the Fab Four and to several locations made famous through the Beatles music, like Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields.
Don't take a chance, book online. While most days you can purchase tickets for the same day, if a cruise ship is docked, you will miss out.
Looking for a shirt that says "I'm a Beatles fan, but I don't want John, Paul, George and Ringo plastered across my chest"? Purchase a Cavern Club Tee instead.
As the place where the company that managed the unsinkable ship was headquartered, Liverpool and the Titanic have and will always be linked. The Merseyside museum's comprehensive Titanic exhibition takes you from the building process, right through to its resting place in the Atlantic Ocean. Moving, without being overly sentimental, you will leave with a lot of information and more than a few goose bumps.
The International Slavery Museum is located in the same building. Also free, this museum combines exhibitions, art installations and workshops that explore slavery and Liverpool's formal role as an international hub in the slave trade.
The Liverpool Cathedral is the largest in the UK and the 5th largest in the world and features some of the most unique features you'll ever see in a Cathedral of this age – an organ featuring over 10000 pipes, a 331 feet high tower with an observation deck and even a freight elevator that emerges from the floor of the great hall. If you can manage the 108 stairs, then I suggest that you visit the top of the tower to take in some amazing views. On Thursdays, from March to October, there are also special twilight trips.
Bring Binoculars. You'll be the hero of your group.
Word to the Claustrophobic. Obviously, don't attempt the tower if you are afraid of heights, but be warned, the trip up also features two insanely small, sloooow elevators.
Located along the Mersey, the Baltic triangle is home to a number of restaurants, nightclubs and shops, most of which are housed in converted industrial spaces. The Baltic Social's interior can be described as putting the 'fun' in functional. But don't let the simple DIY décor fool you – the food at the Baltic Social is phenomenal. We shared the small plate menu. At 3 plates for £11 you can sample several items while sticking to a budget.
The Baltic has many personalities. Bistro by day, bar/club by night. Plan your visit based on your mood. The food is always great.
If you find yourself in the Baltic Social at night, head over to the Camp and Furnace after dinner. Picture an indoor camp site located in a warehouse.
Combining two of Liverpool's most historically frequent cargos, the Superlambanana sculpture combines, wait for it, a Lamb and a Banana. Originally created as a comment on genetic engineering, the Superlambanana has been embraced by the city, with several models located throughout the city. The original is located outside of Liverpool John Moores University.
In every gift shop in town you will be accosted with Superlambanana paraphernalia. Give in…buy the salt and pepper shakers. After all, both go great on (non-genetically modified) lamb…not so great on bananas.


African-American women have their own unique type of hair and have to style this hair differently from other women. There are lots of styles to chose from, but any woman, when choosing a hairstyle, while think of comfort and manageability and also fashion. For African hair there are some basic hairstyles to choose from but also quite a few variations to these basic ones. However, for an African hairstyle, the first thing you should think about is if you're going to go with natural hair, which in most cases of African hair is a frizzy curly look, or straight hair. If you go for straight hair, there are two options: chemicals or hair straighteners. If you go the chemical way, you will have to ask for a hair relaxing procedure. This will be done with chemicals that will straighten your hair with a permanent effect. You will have to redo this sort of therapy only when your roots grow out sufficiently to be noticed. However, if you use a hair straightener, you will have to redo everything every time you wash your hair. The advantage of the hair straightener route is that you can easily go from curly to straight hair and back only by washing your hair. A hairstyle that is very versatile is the bob hairstyle. This is not only a very popular haircut but it also fits African hair perfectly considering that it works great on either curly or straight hair. However, long hair does have more perks. Considering that African hair has some wonderful curls, long hair will make that asset more visible. And when you do decide to straighten your hair, for long straight hair there are numerous updos or variations of pony tails that can be worn on any occasion. However, for long African hair, there is also the option of hair braids, which while a little ethnic, will always be in style. Braids are a not that easy to achieve, it is a long process, but once done, they are fairly easy to take care of and look perfect every day.


text:
Q: Coefficient of two power series How do I find the coefficient of $x^n$ in $\sum_{k = 0}^{\infty}\frac{(-x)^k}{k!}\sum_{j = 0}^{\infty}x^j$?

A: Being lazy, I started with a small problem
$$\sum_{k = 0}^{7}\frac{(-x)^k}{k!}\sum_{j = 0}^{76}x^j=1+\frac{x^2}{2}+\frac{x^3}{3}+\frac{3 x^4}{8}+\frac{11 x^5}{30}+\frac{53
   x^6}{144}+\frac{103 x^7}{280}+\cdots=\sum_{k = 0}^{7}\frac{a_n}{b_n}x^n$$
Coefficients $a_n$ correspond to sequence $A053557$ in $OEIS$ (have a look here) and coefficients $b_n$ correspond to sequence $A053556$ in $OEIS$ (have a look here) making
$$\frac{a_n}{b_n}=\frac{(!n)}{n!}$$ where appears the subfactorial function (also called the derangement number) (have a look here)

A: Consider the finite case.
$$\sum_0^n a_ix^i\sum_0^n b_jx^j=a_0b_0+(a_1b_0+a_0b_1)x+(a_2b_0+a_1b_1+a_2b_0)x^2+\ldots=\sum_{k=0}^{2n}\sum_{j=0}^ka_jb_{k-j}x^k$$
Can you extend it for the infinite case now?


Investment in Property Business in Malaysia has very safe return in both, short and long terms point of view. If you have extra budget of RM50,000 or above, QADKAM professionals may assist you in suitable investment opportunities in different Property Businesses in Malaysia through its licensed affiliates. Invest as low as RM50,000 or above and start earning good returns. Later you may invest in big projects as well. QADKAM affiliate lawyers, expert in real estate will be at your services to safeguard your investment through legal agreements.
Malaysian real estate sector is offering many new high earning projects at different locations including Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bharu (near Singapore), Perlis (near Thailand border).
Many European, Arab, Pakistani and Iranian have invested in Property business in Malaysia. This is considered safest investment with high returns. There are many opportunities to invest in property business in Malaysia. If your budget is very low but even then you wish to take part in Property business, then we'll recommend you to start with "Renting Property" and then sublet it. This can be a very good start for foreigner. You can get a place and then may divide it and may rent it out. There are many good locations for Restaurants near beaches where you may invest in by getting such place on rent and then divide the place into corners for different businesses and may get more rent than the actual rent what you will be paying to owner.
Sublet Hotel Rooms - Same way, you can have rooms in hotels to sublet to others. We have many clients from Pakistan and Middle East who are having rooms in different hotels near tourist places and they are earning very good income on daily basis as their rooms are added in famous "Hotel Booking" networks. QADKAM Professionals are more than happy to guide you how to add a room in big Hotel Booking websites/networks to start an immediate income.
We have a list of available properties in many resorts where you can get many rooms to start your own Hotel business under your own name on famous hotel booking websites/networks.
Home Stay Business is also a trending business in Malaysia with a low start up cost. You can have independent house near a good location where you can offer "Home Stay" to tourists by renting out separate rooms as well on daily/weekly/monthly basis same as hotel business. Hoem Stay business is an alternative for those who want to do "Hotel" business but don't have a high budget.
We have good locations available for Home Stay business with a very low start up cost as low as RM1500/per month to onward. You can have houses on rent and then may sublet house/rooms to tourists/visitors on daily/weekly/monthly basis and may have good daily income with very low start up budget and may earn RM3000-9000 monthly easily from 5/6 rooms house.
How to Market your "Home Stay or Hotel Business"?
You don't need to work hard to advertise your Home Stay business or Hotel Business in Malaysia. Simply add your business listing in famous booking website sites e.g: Booking.com , Agoda.com , Airbnb.com etc and start getting instant customers!
If you have a little bit investment of RM30,000 and above, we have golden opportunity for you to invest in a vary safe and legal way. We have few lots in famous Langkawi island, Malaysia which is the top most tourist destination in Malaysia. These lots are located just 3 minutes drive from white sandy beach "Tanjung Rhu" and "Black Sand Beach", Langkawi.
Langkawi Bird Park and famous Kililm Geoforest Park Langkawi is just 5 minutes drive far. While Langkawi international airport is around 20 minutes drive.
Our Lawyer may assist you to make legal agreements for you to buy the land under your/your company name to enjoy the peaceful and safe investment in Malaysia.
Further details regarding land price, exact location and size, please arrange a visit to our office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia or drop us an email using Contact us Form.
Investment in Construction Projects is also good option for those who have high budget. We have many affiliates who offer investment opportunities in new/ongoing "Construction Projects". Such projects also include new residential buildings as well, where you can book a property and then may later sale it to other. Alternatively, you may also invest in brand new projects through our own "Construction Company" which have many land owners on its list who are looking for investors to develop their lands into commercial and residential units.