06/17/2008

Amdocs (NYSE: DOX), the leading provider of Customer Experience Systems, and IBM (NYSE: IBM), today entered into an alliance and original equipment manufacturer agreement under which Amdocs will embed the IBM DB2 Data Server and the IBM Optim Data Growth solutions with Amdocs' customer management solutions.

ebizQ received the following:

This new solution will help companies improve the customer experience and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by maximizing overall application performance and availability, while significantly reducing storage and other hardware costs.

Earlier this year, Amdocs introduced its CES 7.5 Customer Experience Systems product portfolio. This new portfolio includes Amdocs CRM 7.5, a customer management suite that gives companies solutions to manage and differentiate how they interact with customers throughout their purchasing, service and support processes, allowing them to deliver consistently personal customer experiences. Amdocs and IBM are developing a roadmap to tightly integrate Amdocs CRM with IBM’s DB2 and the Optim Data Growth products to specifically capitalize on the advanced data management capabilities of the IBM products, providing a level of integration seldom offered by other customer relationship management vendors. This new level of integration is expected to offer features and benefits to customers such as:

• Advanced CRM database compression and archiving tools to significantly reduce storage hardware costs and maximize system performance;



• Automated data recovery utilities that protect customers and agents from system downtime;



• Seamless, real-time user access to archived customer data to support personalized, efficient customer interactions;



• Integrated data governance, regulatory compliance and other audit tools to avoid business disruption and reduce database administration.

"Global companies of all sizes are seeking to improve the customer experience, which requires the ability to handle all customer interactions in a personalized, accurate and efficient manner. This requires resources to ensure high performing, always-available CRM systems that provide real-time access to all customer data. The latest collaboration between Amdocs and IBM will provide a solution that enables companies to deliver personalized customer interactions with much lower hardware costs, greater system performance and reduced regulatory compliance risks," said Guy Dubois, executive vice president at Amdocs.

"In adopting Amdocs CRM as a strategic solution for BT’s internal service management operations, usage will increase across our enterprise, as will the need to archive historical Amdocs CRM data," said Rob Parker, program manager at BT. "IBM's Optim is an integral component for archiving Amdocs CRM data that has high transaction rates and data retention requirements, allowing us to significantly reduce hardware expenditures and meet Amdocs CRM performance and availability service level agreements."

"Today's business environment demands companies to have a more detailed understanding of the data generated from their customer relationships in order to stay competitive," said Rob Thomas, vice president, Information Management at IBM. "Through our collaboration with Amdocs, we will deliver a joint solution that can help clients unlock the value of key business data, which is what IBM’s Information on Demand strategy is all about."