When it was launched two and a half years ago, the iPhone was in many ways the positioned as the non-enterprise smartphone. BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices were the phones for businessmen, and the iPhone offered that same functionality with an added cool factor. Needless to say, the iPhone has since had great success within enterprise and particularly within CRM, and given the astonishing growth of Apple’s App Store, things will only get better.

Aside from featuring the simple user interface characteristic of Apple devices, the iPhone’s success is largely due to its ability to offer many more software choices than its competitors do. While most of these applications aren’t relevant to business users, it is noteworthy that there are currently about 100,000 applications available for the iPhone; rival smartphones don’t even have 15,000 apps.

Despite not being positioned as a business phone, it was quickly targeted for enterprise goals. The year it was released, Salesforce.com made a lite CRM app in the form of a contact manager; the following year they released an app for their CRM subscribers to view and creating information, and Oracle did the same. And over the past year, CRM for iPhone has grown—SugarCRM and NetSuite have applications, and smaller CRM players are joining in. NetSuite recently released an ERP application for the iPhone, and while it currently only has viewing capability, editing functions are soon to come. This seemingly premature release of NetSuite’s app is definitely a view to the status of CRM applications for the iPhone. It isn’t a mature market, but it is a growing one, and these applications are constantly adding more capabilities and proliferating.

There is another player recently added to the mobile CRM application race—the Android—and Oracle and Salesforce.com have already reached out to HTC (the company making the phones) about developing programs. Droid has also eschewed enterprise positioning, but the phone’s compatibility with Google programs is attractive for enterprise users. Currently, one of the drawbacks in using the Android as a business phone is its lacking security, but these problems are not without solution. Whether the new Droids—or any competing smartphone—will surpass the iPhone in CRM and general enterprise use is tough to say. Only time will tell.

Not long ago, CDC Software announced plans to acquire on-demand companies in order to create one SaaS software solutions provider to complement its on-premise products for various verticals. Last week, CDC announced they have signed a binding term sheet for the future acquisition of a SaaS provider for not-for-profit (NFP) organizations; the name of the company was not disclosed.

Given the rise of SaaS—a recent global study by Avanade consultancy shows that within 2009 alone, the number of companies using only on-premise solutions decreased from 61% to 41%—this is a smart move for CDC to offer customers multiple deployment options. It is even smarter to offer a combination, as the hybrid SaaS model is proliferating at light speed. CDC plans to take these SaaS and on-premise offerings worldwide, via 22 offices and 1200 resellers and partners. In terms of the NFP vertical solution, business should be good—market research shows there are 1.5 million registered NFPs in North America alone, and SaaS solutions are extremely cost-effective. The soon-to-be-acquired company is venture-capital financed, and provides solutions for ERP, CRM, financial management, e-commerce and others, in one platform.

This pending acquisition will also be fruitful for other CDC solutions: it will provide cross-selling opportunities for CDC MarketFirst and CDC Respond by expanding product functionality into marketing automation, lead management, and complaint and feedback management. Full procurement of the unnamed company is expected by the end of 2009.

Cloud computing is here to stay, which is a certainty that even Larry Ellison embraces, even for all his posturing with Salesforce.com founder—and self-proclaimed “cloud-computing evangelist”—Marc Benioff. Last week at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, Ellison announced that a full version of Oracle Fusion applications would be available next year, marking the company’s first serious SaaS offering.

Prior to Ellison’s keynote announcement of Oracle Fusion apps, the other buzzed-about speech was the one given by Benioff, mostly because he and Ellison have exchanged thinly-veiled insults for quite a while. Ellison has historically balked at cloud-computing, even though he was one of Salesforce’s first investors. During his speech, Benioff painted Oracle as a bit of a straggler for their favoring on-premise solutions, but also made digs about Oracle’s being more suited to large enterprises, while Salesforce is accessible to businesses of all sizes. Even though Oracle products have been a ground station for many cloud-computing vendors (including Salesforce.com, which uses the Oracle database to support its service), perhaps Benioff’s presence and speech were more a nod to Oracle’s future in SaaS than anything else.

Of course, just because Oracle has pledged to the cloud-computing club doesn’t mean initiation will be easy: some tech pundits note that making a shift to SaaS at this stage of the “game” could mean having to change your business model. Still, Oracle will have a solid stable of on-premise products to cushion the blow of any on-demand failures. There is also the fact that while cloud-computing is wildly popular (and undoubtedly the future), legacy applications haven’t been eradicated yet, and there is still a demand for traditional licensing.

The outpouring of Oracle OpenWorld news continues: Samsung SDS and Oracle have co-developed a native mobile CRM application. Last week, demonstrations of the new application were held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, but the week prior the product had a “soft debut” in San Diego that was met with positive reviews.

The application is for Samsung smartphones and is based on Oracle Siebel CRM, and will run on the Samsung Mobile Cloud Center (SMCC). The first release is for pharmaceutical companies, but Samsung SDS plans to develop similar CRM applications for other verticals. Oracle already offers mobile version of its CRM system, but it is a basic rendering in comparison to the new Samsung collaboration, which has more features. Some of the advancements include a hub-and-spoke graphic to show users their customers’ connections—as opposed to Oracle’s original spreadsheet for displaying such associations—communication records built into customer profiles, and complex graphs.

At OpenWorld, Oracle’s Anthony Lye spoke to the importance to moving toward mobile in the future, so it is no surprise that this CRM offering is only the first of Samsung’s projected efforts to target the enterprise market. In this regard, Samsung will concentrate on its Windows Mobile phones in 2010, and plans to continue to focus on applications as well as devices by maintaining partnership with Oracle.

Two weeks ago, the annual CRM Expo was held in Nuremberg, Germany, and SugarCRM client 3Dconnexion was awarded the 2009 CRM Best Practice Award. The award is most certainly a testament to the value and capabilities SugarCRM delivers to its customers, and 3Dconnexion is the third SugarCRM customer to win the award, and it is also the third such win for Insignio, SugarCRM’s German partner who managed the implementation.

3Dconnexion is a subsidiary of Logitech, and the award was given in the “CRM Launch” category for their use of SugarCRM as a global customer management platform. 3Dconnexion develops control devices for a wide variety of users, from gamers to product designers, and is headquartered in Fremont, CA, with European headquarters near Munich. The previous CRM system was spread across multiple databases, and they turned to SugarCRM for a consolidation solution for online marketing, sales, services and reporting.

The SugarCRM deployment includes key integrations to tie the CRM system into Google Maps, the company’s e-commerce platform and partner portal. It also serves employees in seven languages in Europe and the United States, and 3Dconnexion’s next step will be implementation in Japan. Thus far, it’s been a good fall for SugarCRM, as they were also recently awarded “Best Open Source Technology” by CRM Magazine.

Keynote speeches at Oracle OpenWorld (which wrapped up yesterday), didn’t necessarily announce radically new concepts, but that certain strategies were promoted at this well-attended event speaks to the certainty of future changes in Oracle’s CRM development. And of course, it will be interesting to see who follows in their footsteps now that this gauntlet has been thrown.

Oracle CFO Safra Catz spoke to some upcoming changes and Oracle’s recent acquisitions. One of her main points was that Oracle was a strong vendor in many industries, but perhaps had not been doing enough to connect their products so that the user wouldn’t have to do this task themselves. The company’s acquisitions are meant to mollify this situation, and make solutions work together. Joel Koppelman, head of project management at 2008 acquisition Primavera, spoke of customers’ demand for integrations to be prepackaged; something Oracle will produce more of in the future.

But it was Anthony Lye, SVP of CRM, who detailed the three strategies that will change the face of Oracle CRM. In a discussion with other executives regarding specific strategies for Oracle Siebel and Oracle CRM On Demand, Lye stated that the fundamentals in the coming year would be: executing the cross-channel customer experience flawlessly, tapping into the power of the social web, and delivering CRM data when, how and where users need it. More specifically, customers start and end in different channels, and are using more mobile data as well, and Lye wants to move toward seamless transitions. This is also important to the third point—supporting the user’s need to access CRM data from pretty much anywhere. And in terms of utilizing social media, Lye thinks it’s especially important that CRM foster customer-to-customer relationships, which is a less-discussed reason for racing to social networking.

Last week, InsideView announced enhancements to its integration of SalesView with both Oracle CRM and Siebel CRM applications. InsideView is a proponent of social media and self-proclaimed leaders of the “Sales 2.0” push, and these latest updates to the SalesView product are a move in support of Oracle’s Social CRM initiative.

SalesView goes beyond the average social enterprise application in that it analyzes information across both traditional sources within a CRM application and emerging social media to present sales opportunities. These prospects are presented within the CRM system, and the latest improvements allow greater coverage for international companies and SMBs.

SalesView is powered by the InsideView Smart Cloud, and is thus the first marketing intelligence solution allowing on-demand addition and validation of content. Naturally, SalesView users enjoy other benefits of cloud computing, like real-time information retrieval from social networking platforms and data resources. SalesView presents these news alerts and relationship analysis natively within the Oracle and Siebel CRM platforms, and content from SalesView can be exported to create or modify account and lead information.

In singing his praise of SalesView, Oracle’s Senior Vice President, Anthony Lye, noted that the integration would result in a combined solution surely invaluable “to even the world’s largest enterprises.” Though InsideView focuses on SMBs, Lye certainly has a point. Though many companies balk at the notion of Enterprise 2.0, it’s unlikely that companies eschewing these principles will flourish, and SalesView’s analytical capacity makes it more than just a social networking tool, and places it head and shoulders above other social media products.

Earlier this fall, CRM Magazine announced SugarCRM received their Top Open Source Technology Market Award for the second consecutive year. Given that the economy has left companies rethinking their CRM investments—thereby pushing more CRM providers toward open source and helping open source find a niche—it is a definite feat that SugarCRM not only swept the category but was deemed “head-and-shoulders above the rest.”

SugarCRM’s cloud-based platform is known for being easy to use, and for its adaptability to unique business requirements. Open source helps with this, as current CEO Larry Augustin notes that developers use the code to ease integrations rather to actually modify it. It also gives people a better understanding of the inner workings of the platform, and this comprehension is at a higher level than if it’s a SaaS-only or proprietary closed-source model.

Another indication of SugarCRM’s superior open source offering is their incorporation into Microsoft’s web platform. Microsoft is another strong platform in the open source community, and their application installer platform allows people running on MS OS to install SugarCRM through the installer for open source.

It is of note that while SugarCRM was far above the competition, CRM Magazine does note that their score from this year had dropped a couple tenths of a point. This isn’t necessarily a testament to any lacking in SugarCRM’s open source technology, but it is an indication that more CRM providers are entering the field and advancing their products.

After an impressive Series C round of funding late last month, Marketo has bolstered its position as a major player in the marketing automation industry. Venture capital firm Mayfield Fund made the significant investment, as they were impressed with Marketo’s recent customer success and revenue growth. Mayfield’s admiration comes as no surprise, as Marketo’s B2B on-demand lead generation application garnered them a 30% growth rate last November, when most companies were hard-pressed to hold on to existing clients.

Marketing automation is a fast-growing market, presenting a space that many companies are anxious to fill. As Vasan points out, many organizations use Google Analytics for tracking their site visitors, and use a more traditional CRM provider like Salesforce.com for customer management. Marketo bridges the gap between these two offerings, providing revenue-centered marketing and sales solutions for companies of all sizes, and offering a lead management application, as well as Sales Insight, a product helping sales representatives to prioritize leads and opportunities. Mayfield strongly believes they have the ability to change the market dynamics of the marketing automation.

Mayfield is a top VC firm in the Silicon Valley, managing over $2.8 billion, and they have successfully invested in companies like Atari, Genetech, and security software developer Webroot. A provision of the funding will place Mayfield’s managing director, Robin Vasan, on Marketo’s board of directors.

After vetting over 10 CRM providers for a system, Chicago’s United Center selected a Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution delivered by Sonoma Partners. Sonoma Partners is a leading provider of MS Dynamics CRM within the US, and this latest coup represents the fourth phase of a CRM project for the sports arena that hosts the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago Blackhawks.

The first phase began in 2008, when Sonoma deployed MS Dynamics CRM to the United Center’s Prospecting and Premium Seating departments (where it replaced several Goldmine products). The United Center sought xRM deployments, as they wanted to consolidate their multiple and disparate sales systems. They considered MS Dynamics was the best for the job because it allows users to reuse and update existing components between organizations, and therefore provides a cost-effective and time-efficient procedure. The Bulls and the Blackhawks were both reportedly looking to put forth an aggressive call-center effort—another area in which MS Dynamics came out in front.

Robert Gorman, Director of Information Systems at the United Center, says they chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM for its scalability, as well as its automated workflows and integration with Office, SharePoint 2007, and other vertical market apps. Within the Prospecting and Seating departments, some 30 sales representatives will use the platform to manage customer and prospect lists, track inventory data, manage contracts, and follow up on activities. This CRM system will also be extended to the Corporate Sponsorship and Marketing departments to manage various advertising campaigns, from concourse signs to radio spots.

The next step will be to integrate the Levy dining and catering businesses within the arena, as well as the Community Relations department.