Vantive Corp, Clarify Inc and Scopus Technology Inc are running over each other so much in the external help desk market and their products are so similar, that even some customers and consultants have trouble telling them apart. So says Morgan Stanley & Co, which was watching the Support Services conference in San Francisco recently and came away with the impression that all the vendors in the sector expect the financial and manufacturing software companies to enter the market soon, although they have already taken longer to do so than the vendors thought, but all-rounder Oracle Corp is expected to make the leap first. The market still seems hot, according to Morgan Stanley’s Chuck Phillips, despite the heavy discounting for which each company of course blames everybody else. It is so hot in fact that Remedy Corp doesn’t have enough time to respond to lengthy requests for proposals. Scopus is going for the telecommunications, retail and banking vertical markets, as well as call center applications and facilities management. The products go into beta testing in a few weeks time and Scopus is rewriting its client software in Java at the moment. Clarify’s focus is also on the telecommunications market and field service applications. It is under the impression that Microsoft Corp will help sell its products to key accounts, which Phillips was suitably sceptical about. In the meantime, Vantive is going for the brute force of volume and market share leadership. The company has apparently stopped trumpeting its three tier architecture, as it is not that different anymore and tricky to implement, and instead is quoting references and boasting of market share. Computer Associates International Inc was also present and according to Phillips, Computer Associates is increasingly tying its Paradigm support product to CA-Unicenter, with two-thirds of recent deals said to be driven by Unicenter help desk integration requirements. Paradigm generated revenues of $411m for Computer Associates last year.
