80% of Marketers Surveyed Have a CRM or SaaS Lead Management System.

The executive director of Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA), James W. Obermayer announced the results of the Fall 2008 Sales Lead Management Study today. He said, "It is great to see that CRM and SaaS systems are so prevalent," Obermayer comments, "but why are only 23% of marketers using them to measure marketing tactics?" He continued, "Another 30% measure some, but not all, programs, and yet they (80%) appear to have the tools. What's stopping them?"

Software Vendors, Solution Providers Eye SAAS Disruptive Threat.

According to a recent report released by Forrester research, It is estimated that 14% of SMBs and 15% of large enterprises adopted SaaS in 2007. "While the majority of these SAAS projects are business applications solutions with standardized business processes across large, distributed user groups, SAAS also continues to encroach on the IT management software market, where it is becoming a disruptive dynamic for both software vendors and service providers," Peter O'Neill, a Forrester analyst, writes in his report.

Reader's Digest moves Food and Entertainment arm to SaaS.

Revel Consulting is helping Reader’s Digest Association (RDA) in adding SaaS to some of its current CRM platforms. As per the agreement, Revel will help the Food & entertainment group define and then put into place a widespread SaaS strategy, using the salesforce.com infrastructure. “Reader's Digest is such a recognized brand and an international conglomerate with so many subsidiaries, and a hosted solution internally would take so much time to deploy,” explained Arif Samad, director of solutions integration for Revel's SaaS practice. “But the SaaS unifies that and gets them up and running.”

AFS Gives Distributors SaaS-Based Hosted Order Management System.

A solutions provider to the food and beverage industry, AFS Technologies Inc has announced the introduction of the first hosted, full function Order Management System on a SaaS monthly subscription basis. “The low-cost monthly subscription model offered by AFS’ On Demand OMS suite enables progressive companies to improve their position in the market without the need for CapEx” said Kurien Jacob, CEO of AFS Technologies.

Logistics Cloud Computing Brings Relief to Users in the Bad Times.

The cloud computing logistics solution from Deltion, CarrierNetOnline has reduced the cost of their software services because of the slump in the current market. Deltion CEO Piyush Shah said: “Traditional on-premises software, whether for logistics or other applications, have to be bought in advance together with the necessary servers and other hardware. And no matter how businesses are affected by the recession, companies still have to go on paying maintenance and upgrade fees.

ThePort Secures $4.1 Million.

A social media solution provider by the name of ThePort Network Inc has risen $ 4.1 M in Series B funding of which the participating investors included Lee Enterprises and the Atlanta based venture capital firm Imlay Investments.

Recruitment Solution from Nitman.

A new solution to help recruitment firms create their own easily searchable resume database and boost revenues was released today by Nitman Software under the name of TalentScout. "Talentscout gives firm managements a bird's eye view of the recruitment progress and reduces workload of the recruiters by providing them productivity tools and taking care of mundane tasks", said Nitin Shimpi, CEO of Nitman Software.

Upcoming CyberShift Webcast Examines the ROI of SaaS-Deployed Workforce Management Applications.

Paul Hamerman, VP at Forrester research and Steve Tafaro, VP of Sales at CyberShift will present a webcast on SaaS based Workforce Management Automation and its ROI. The webcast “SaaS : A Compelling ROI For Workforce Management Automation” will be held on Thursday, December 11, 2008 from 1 PM to 2 PM EST.

Echoworx Announces Secure Data Center in Europe to Support Global Availability of Policy-Based Encryption Gateway.

A provider of security software products for digital communications, Echoworx Corp has announced the addition of a new secure data center in Europe. The data center will be live in The UK from January 2009 onwards and will support the global availability of Echoworx Policy based encryption (PBE) Gateway. "PBE Gateway can be deployed with no impact to workflow. Once the policies are set, email is automatically encrypted based on privacy rules set by the company. The low SaaS per user fee, allows businesses to cost effectively prevent security risks associated with regulatory violations and data loss." said Michael Ginsberg, President and CEO of Echoworx.

MediGold® Program Selects Healthation's AboveHealth® for Health Plan, Member, and Provider Portals.

A three year SaaS agreement was signed by Healthation and MediGold, a Mount Carmel Health Plan Medicare Advantage Product. MediGold will implement the e-business healthcare portal, AboveHealth. "We are happy MediGold has decided to grow with Healthation and to share in our vision for bringing new, real-time, consumer-driven portals and claims and benefits applications built on Microsoft to the consumer and health plan user desktop," said Scott Kornhauser, CEO of Healthation.

Hosting.com Presents Cloud Computing Solution at Gartner's Data Center Conference -- Announces General Availability for CloudNine.

CloudNine, a hosted cloud-computing environment that provides scalable business solutions was announced for public use at Gartner’s 2008 Data Center Conference by hosting.com. The solution will start at $ 75 / month, however is immediately available for beta users, clients and prospects. "After months of collecting and acting upon client feedback, developing an intuitive and interactive client portal, and working with world-class manufacturers to guarantee the security, redundancy and availability of our cloud computing solution we are pleased that we have beta users waiting to sign the paperwork to purchase the solution today," said Jonathan Erwin, EVP CloudNine Sales and Marketing.