Hewlett-Packard and EDS, the Plano, TX-based service giant, announced today that HP will purchase the company for "an enterprise value of approximately $13.9 billion." The deal has already been approved of by both companies' boards and should be finalized some time in the second half of this year. For EDS, the acquisition is primarily about improving its languishing stock price. For HP, the deal is about increasing its services business, in particular, adding more types of services and increasing its scale in order to take on the king of IT services, IBM.

Continue reading "HP buys EDS to take on IBM" »

Posted by TomR at 10:25 AM | Permalink

Yesterday, Microsoft announced the "business launch" of several of its most prominent software offerings, including Windows Vista, 2007 Microsoft Office, and Exchange Server 2007. However, the individual organizational jury is still out on whether the new features and capabilities of these products outweigh the cost of their adoption, deployment, and support. The biggest hurdle for Microsoft to overcome will be trying to convince its existing customer base to upgrade.

Continue reading "Microsoft launches Vista and Office upgrades for businesses" »

Posted by TomR at 12:08 PM | Permalink

Customer service is usually a tradeoff between quality and cost. With no budget constraints, organizations could field an army of well-trained customer service representatives (CSRs) supported by technology and systems that deliver immediate access to comprehensive customer records, product information, and related material. Of course, organizations cannot afford such a people-centric strategy, so they must continually explore self-service options, particularly on the Web and through interactive voice response (IVR) systems, to meet quality goals and...

Continue reading " Conversagent automates online help to improve customer service and drive support costs down" »

Posted by TomR at 04:41 PM | Permalink