Octane providing outsourced CRM services

By Eugene Grygo
InfoWorld, 02/18/00

Octane Software is making its Octane 2000 offering available as a hosted application to those customers who need rapidly deployed CRM (customer relationship management) services but lack the IT infrastructure to implement them.

For the Octane Online service, the vendor will maintain and support its CRM applications on a subscription basis. The online version is targeted at emerging, fast-growing companies, Octane officials said.

The Octane Online offering will be in addition to the outsourcing arrangements that Octane has with E-Assist.net and E-Convergence; both will host more than one application, Octane officials said. Octane Online will be sold through Octane and is intended for those customers who need a CRM system up and running sooner than they can deploy it themselves, and who are likely to take the system in-house, said Jim Lambert, director of corporate marketing at Octane.

Company officials said that this is a "pay as you grow" model whereby customers use the service as a stopgap measure until they "can catch up later with their own infrastructure," Lambert said. Octane will host the application as long as the customer needs it.

The relationships with E-Assist.net and E-Convergence will continue and Octane will pursue other such relationships that make sense for its business, company officials said. However, Octane will not expand its outsourcing service and will refer customers to its current partners for the hosting of multiple applications such as financial and human resource packages and for call center support.

The fact that Octane is "jumping into this market" is not surprising, said Deanne Moore, an analyst at the Yankee Group, in Boston, considering its previous third-party hosting arrangements. It is a good move for Octane because it gives the company another delivery model for its customers, according to Moore.

"This model is self-hosting to the customer," Moore said. Other CRM players have taken this direct approach "and they have a much higher success rates" than the third-party method, Moore said, because it is more immediate.

Octane officials have told Moore that they do not intend to get further into the application hosting market, she said. Octane officials said the company's future is as a software provider and not an ASP (application service provider) vendor.

The Octane 2000 product is the upgrade for the Octane 99 thin-client CRM software for finding and creating new opportunities among sales calls, e-mail, Web communications, chat channels, and faxes. The vendor has named its flagship product as an Internet Relationship Management application because it spans a variety of CRM channels. The design of the Octane 2000 iBusiness Application infrastructure includes the Web Channel, Email Channel, Telephony Channel, Chat Channel, and Fax Channel.

Octane Online is available with a one-time setup fee and a monthly service fee. The pricing will vary according to the number of users and interactions. The offering includes basic setup and implementation, agent training, and ongoing technical support.

Octane Software Inc., in San Mateo, Calif., is at www.octane.com.