By
Alana Grelyak
Welcome to OSS NewsWatch for August! What news do we have to impart to you this month? Plenty, as always. There are several tidbits that pertain directly to SPs and a few others that are just plain interesting, but don't take my word for it. Instead, read on to discover the news that we at Pipeline thought was as hot as the month of August. Enjoy!
Apple turned rotten with the launch of the new iPhone 3G when some server issues caused new customers to go home with unactivated phones, a major issue for Apple, who prides itself on customer satisfaction. iPhone 3GCustomers were turned away from AT&T and Apple stores, forced instead to activate their phones at home using iTunes at a later time. Buyers waited in stores for hours due to slow server issues and many were unable to activate their devices for quite awhile after purchase. Users upgrading from the original iPhone software to the new also had major issues when their phones crashed during the upgrade process. Clearly, Apple was unprepared for the massive rush in traffic that accompanied the launch of the hotly anticipated new device (they reportedly sold 1 million devices in the first weekend). This could be a major blow to the trust Apple fans had in the company. How will Apple make up for it? That remains to be seen. Perhaps it will be overlooked by those willing to recognize that even the most delicious apple can still conceal a worm…
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Perhaps it will be overlooked by those willing to recognize that even the most delicious apple can still conceal a worm… |
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Once again Carl Icahn is in the headlines, this time with his attempts to overthrow the entire board of Yahoo in order to accomplish his desire to have Yahoo partner with Microsoft. Icahn took negotiations into his own hands and has been working directly with Microsoft. He was able to get the mega company to offer a second deal to Yahoo, this time for a guaranteed $2.3 billion per year over five years on an exclusive contract. Being that Yahoo just made an $800 million deal with Google for search ads, and in light of the fact that the Microsoft deal would remove the entire board of directors, including CEO Jerry Yang, Yahoo rejected the offer (insert sound of open palm slapping onto Microsoft's face). Icahn is now attempting to overthrow the current board of directors with a list of his own in a shareholder vote schedule for August 1. The drama continues…
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Oracle has decided to take advantage of the iPhone craze by releasing the Oracle® Business Applications for iPhone. The first in a series of the free applications are already available at the Apple App Store and are geared toward busy executives who want to view the latest company financial trends, get alerts for sales performance and customer satisfaction issues, and various other tasks that are important to mobile executives. "Today's business executives and managers are highly mobile, and their information needs are too," said Ed Abbo, Oracle Senior Vice President of Application Development. "We're excited to build out applications on the iPhone platform to support these highly mobile customers."
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Amdocs, in collaboration with Yankee Group, has released a study that finds that while SPs are investing in improving the customer experience, they are challenged by the lack of a common view of customers and inconsistent business processes. The study, which was sponsored by Amdocs, revealed that while 70 percent of service providers believe that business processes have a direct impact on the customer experience, nearly one third do not have dedicated resources to manage their internal business processes or customer-focused key performance indicators
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