Scopus Technology Inc is extending its customer support software for use across multiple sites and between different organisations in two stages, beginning with Scopus Extended Enterprise One, EE1, due this week. Claiming the new release leap-frogs competitors like Vantive Corp and Clarify Corp, which provide inside the enterprise systems, the Emeryville, California company says EE1, and EE2, which follows in the fourth quarter, will provide a means for organisations to link partners, facilities managers, vendors, resellers and field staff into a single customer support and information network. It hopes that what it is offering will help bring about the end of those infuriating technical support calls where the frustrated customer can often be passed around different parts of an organisation, racking up long-distance call charges, in search of an answer, and then end up with several different answers to the same question. Moreover, Scopus sees EE1 and EE2 as the way to offer integrated customer support on products that are increasingly multi-sourced. It cites the example of a Personal Digital Assistant that could be built with Sony Corp hardware, run General Magic Inc software and use AT&T Corp communications. A customer should not have to start calling each vendor to get a problem solved, it argues. Scopus’ existing SupportTeam, SalesTeam and technology employs an Oracle or Sybase relational database and a search engine that locates likely solutions to a customer’s problems, directing calls to the most appropriate support technician, along with all of that customers’ information. EE1 adds remote access and remote database replication to SalesTeam and SupportTeam. Scopus RemoteTeam enables a remote site to act as a local client by accessing the central customer support database over electronic mail. RemoteTeam sites can fill in the same customer query forms as local sites and send them as attached electronic mail documents to the server, where they are converted, like others gener ated locally, into SQL statements that update the customer information records and interrogate the database.
New version later this year
A new WorldTeam module uses Scopus’ own replication technology to update all other participating databases with new customer and product information over wide area networks. With EE2 later in the year, Scopus will enable multiple sites to act as full customer support nodes. A new Enterprise Server core will provide event and time-based synchronous replication over electronic mail (rather than wide area networks) to multiple, remote sites, and update all disconnected nomadic databases automatically when they come back on line. A cut-down version called SiteManager – effectively Scopus Lite – comes with an integrated SQL database and a plug-and-play installation process for getting additional sub-sites, administered by the central central server, up and running as the support network expands beyond a single organisation. EE2 will also include a new version of RemoteTeam that will support access from disconnected or nomadic database clients and other clients with no local storage facilities. EE1 is out at the end of the month; RemoteTeam costs $9,000 for a 50-user server module plus $300 for each supported client. WorldTeam is priced from $20,000 per server. The company is opening a European headquarters outside Paris to which its existing UK unit will report, in its bid to shift its revenue base, currently split 85% for the US and just 15% elsewhere, to 60% in the US and 40% for the rest of the world. The company is promising an announcement on Microsoft Corp Windows NT and an SQL Server95 strategy in 30 days. Scopus Technology has bagged Norwood, Massachusetts software support company Corporate Software Inc, and US reseller MicroAge, Tempe, Arizona, as initial EE1 wins. It claims 150 customers and 15,000 users worldwide for its existing lines; it has 110 staff and claims a 250% annual growth rate with 14 profitable quarters already be-hind it. International Data Corp believes the customer
support systems market will grow to $500m by 1998 from $185m last year.
