Top 25 CRM News Stories of 2007

As 2008 arrives, a look back at the most popular online stories of last year.

by Editors of CRM magazine

Heading into 2008, awash in predictions and guesses about what the year ahead is likely to bring, we thought it was a fine time to step back and take a moment to reflect on the 25 stories viewed most often by visitors here at destinationCRM.com.

It's important to note, of course, that stories posted recently haven't had the benefit of extra time to trickle through the series of tubes we call the Internet, so it's no surprise that any list such as this would skew heavily toward the first quarter of the year -- it's impossible to guess what this list will look like a few months or even a year from now. (If you've got an algorithm for accurately weighting popularity as a factor of time, we'd love to hear about it.) If history is any guide, articles eventually develop lives of their own, spiking in popularity weeks or even months after they're first written -- as companies change, products are introduced or updated, and related trends emerge.

Consider some of the major headlines from the year that aren't yet on this list:

• the business-intelligence fire sale that included Oracle acquiring Hyperion Solutions, SAP making a bid for Business Objects, and IBM snapping up Cognos;
• the late-year launches of SAP Business ByDesign, SAP CRM 2007, and Microsoft's Dynamics CRM 4.0;
• the initial public offerings for NetSuite and (after a short delay) SoundBite Communications;
• the ongoing legal battle between SAP and Oracle over alleged corporate espionage by an SAP subsidiary;
• a major restructuring and some wholesale corporate tumult at Sage Software;
• departures of key CRM executives from SAP (Shai Agassi) and Oracle (John Wookey);
• Oracle's offer to buy middleware competitor BEA Systems -- which was quickly rejected;
• CEO departures from Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories (for Nuance Communciations) and from Callidus Software (for Microsoft);
• the launch of Apple's iPhone and the mainstreaming of enterprise mobility in CRM overall;
• Salesforce.com hitting a milestone (its millionth subscriber) and launching its Platform-as-a-Service; and
• upgrades -- and new naming conventions -- for the core CRM suites of NetSuite, Concursive Corp. (formerly Centric CRM) and RightNow Technologies.

All these stories were major events in 2007, stories likely to have repercussions in the year ahead -- and none of them has yet cracked the Top 25.

That said, the articles that do currently comprise the Top 25 have been popular for a reason, and they reflect a wide range of subject matter -- from research reports to trend analysis, from vendor announcements to product launches. What's really amazing is the sheer breadth of the CRM industry reflected in this list -- 18 of the 25 headlines mention a CRM vendor by name, with only two vendors appearing more than once. We take that as a sign of how democratic the marketplace truly has become (and perhaps a sign that we're doing a fairly decent job being representative of that marketplace).

But enough dragging out the suspense -- here are the Top 25, as of Dec. 31, 2007:

#1 - SAS Tops Gartner's BI Magic Quadrant (2/1/2007)
#2 - Verint: Can I Get a Witness? (2/12/2007)
#3 - Gartner Combines Two Magic Quadrants (2/14/2007)
#4 - Midmarket CRM Grows (2/23/2007)
#5 - Beagle Honors the Wizzes in the Biz (3/6/2007)
#6 - High-Tech Wages Are On the Upswing (1/3/2007)
#7 - Infor Is the Top Performer in Performance Management (1/22/2007)
#8 - SPSS Refreshes Its Data Mining Software (1/16/2007)
#9 - Microsoft Brings Analytics to the Desktop (2/14/2007)
#10 - A Dot KANA Solution (1/22/2007)
#11 - Omniture and Salesforce.com Take a Meeting (9/11/2007)
#12 - What's in a Lead? (1/9/2007)
#13 - Centric CRM Updates Its Offerings (3/9/2007)
#14 - An SFA Wave Hits a Crowded Beach (5/3/2007)
#15 - NetSuite Moves Up the E-Commerce Ladder (2/15/2007)
#16 - SugarCRM Adds Spice (1/29/2007)
#17 - A New Flavor of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (1/10/2007)
#18 - Business Objects Makes Baby's First BI (2/5/2007)
#19 - Siebel Continues to Fly Solo as a Leader (3/7/2007)
#20 - RightNow Delivers on Voice Commitment (2/5/2007)
#21 - Offline-Level Service Is a Must-Have in the Virtual World (1/8/2007)
#22 - Avaya Begins an Ascent (1/15/2007)
#23 - Yahoo! Is the New E-Biz Satisfaction Leader (8/14/2007)
#24 - Salesforce.com Makes a Vertical Splash (2/28/2007)
#25 - Oracle's World of Unlimited Possibilities (1/31/2007)