James R. Borck

Talisma Corp. recently released Version 6.0 of its multichannel CRM suite, updating its base for managing customer relationship basics, including SFA, marketing, and customer service interactions.

Talisma Corp.'s Talisma 6.0 provides a comprehensive CRM solution, targeting most basics for enterprise SFA, marketing, and customer service, available as either a hosted solution or as a boxed application for in-house deployment. I accessed the hosted version through the new WAN client, which spawns a Citrix NFuse data connection to a Windows 2000 server running Talisma. The application performed well and provided a native-looking UI, but it is certainly less elegant than a self-contained remote client, and it will require in-house deployments to run a Citrix infrastructure.

Traditional EAI deployments are thorny, expensive endeavors that frequently go overbudget well before completion. For some projects, such as a call center scenario in which users typically are forced to navigate multiple screens and to tap numerous applications to accomplish a single task, taking a front-end approach to integration can reduce costs and complexity.

Sun Microsystems has shaped Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) into a formidable platform for enterprise application. But the strengths of Java don

Enterprise portals have become significant devices for bridging the gap between where an employee is and where the employee needs to be.

Mild-mannered corporate information portals crept onto the scene just a few years ago, but they have fast become the Superman of enterprisewide productivity and integration.

Taking the open road to Web services.

In the software-as-a-service paradigm of Web services, key factors such as easy service discovery and standards-based deployment will contribute substantially to the ultimate fate of the Web services model