Oracle will once again host an Oracle CRM Pavilion at its annual OpenWorld conference. The Pavilion will highlight what Oracle is calling a "select group" of independent software vendors (ISVs) and system integrators (SIs) focused on customer relationship management (CRM) system integration.

Oracle said it is only choosing the cream of the crop for its CRM Pavilion at OpenWorld, which runs Oct. 2-6 at Moscone Center in San Francisco. The Pavilion will showcase companies that have demonstrated proven customer success, traction with Oracle's sales organization, and synergy with Oracle CRM's product direction.

These companies will be on hand to demonstrate their solutions, discuss integration concepts, and show customers how to leverage Oracle CRM integration capabilities to make the most of their CRM deployments.

Meet the CRM ISVs

Anthony Lye, senior VP of CRM at Oracle, explained that the CRM Pavilion at OpenWorld is a great way for Oracle CRM customers to see what its partner solutions can bring to the table. "Working closely with these partners has led to many customer successes and product innovations that solve very complex requirements."

Oracle works with its partners to collaborate on product integrations that leverage domain expertise to create deep integrations that are ready to meet customer needs.

A few of the vendors that will be on hand at the CRM Pavilion include Buzzient, an enterprise -class social media analytics firm, Dun & Bradstreet, Fellow Consulting, which develops customizable mobile and offline solutions, Clicktools, Augme Technologies, and BigMachines.

Oracle's CRM Pavilion will also host system integrators who have worked with key CRM ISVs to deploy combined solutions, including IBizSoft and Wipro.

Making Social-Media Connections

Zeus Kerravala, vice president at Yankee Group, says the CRM Pavilion is one more proof point that demonstrates how large the ecosystem around CRM has become.

"CRM is not just contact management anymore. Social media is becoming a bigger and bigger part of this," Kerravala said. "CRM has really become, for a lot of companies, the central point of intelligence for customer-management relations."

As OpenWorld gets under way, Kerravala said he will be looking for any new products and services around automation of the various data silos associated with CRM. That's where he sees challenges.

"We have lots of information silos as far as CRM goes. The question is what do you do with that information? How do you mine the intelligence to learn something useful, particularly around social media? There's lots of social-media information," Kerravala said. "The difficulty is understanding what do to with it."

New details may also emerge around Oracle's acquisition of InQuira. Oracle recently announced that it could now provide customers with a complete CRM and knowledge-management offering that empowers integrated self-service support, online customer forums and agent-assisted CRM.