The latest events in the CRM market continue to demonstrate that only organisations that have made strategic investments in customer insight and marketing execution technologies will be able to deliver now on their marketing plans. Long, complicated and distant plans are not on for today's marketing director, and those without strategic investments will be joining the "wait and see" Siebel crowd after recent announcements. This week, Unica had a disappointing IPO and SSA Global plans to rescue Epiphany. These actions contradict the position that these companies have a strong proposition to take to market. With failed R&D strategies and weak trading positions, the hard truth is that the both companies are now behind the investment curve and will continue to lose market share.

SAS, the leader in business intelligence, has set the bar for providing the insight and intelligence, dedicating 25% of revenue to R&D to ensure its technology is revolutionary. In fact, Unica raised less for its IPO than SAS spends on R&D in a month!

Whilst Epiphany's software is widely yet thinly used across mobile operators, utilities and banks, there is little overlap with SSA's customer base, creating a whole new set of challenges for the future for product development and integration. Based on SSA's current investment in R&D, the future does not look rosy for Epiphany.

We can expect further price dumping and cost cutting as insecure organisations focus on shareholders not customers. Where is the customer's viability and future proofing in all this?

With its SAS®9 intelligence platform and suite of customer intelligence solutions that includes marketing automation, only SAS can continue to deliver the customer intelligence applications and the R&D that future proofs organisations' CRM investments. No wonder Gartner has us climbing, IDC says we're outpacing the market and Forrester says we are shaking up the market. Expect more consolidation and noise to come… and SAS to remain in its fortunate position to have the widest portfolio of intelligence solutions on the market, and as the world's largest privately held software company - no shareholders to please!