E.piphany says its next generation customer relationship management solution will run on the Solaris Operating Environment.

NEW YORK--Sun Microsystems, Inc., and E.piphany, Inc., who recently inked a strategic alliance, have announced they have teamed to provide retailers with E.piphany's next generation customer relationship management (CRM) solution running on the Solaris Operating Environment. The companies say they will now offer retailers an integrated solution to effectively create, execute and manage inbound and outbound marketing campaigns aimed at providing personalized marketing, sales and service to today's multi-channel consumers.

E.piphany says their CRM solution will enable a single view of retailers' customers and insight about their preferences and buying behaviors, while Sun will provide the security and scalability to enable the unrestricted flow and exchange of customer information. They say the alliance will give retailers the freedom to focus on customer preferences, purchase and post-purchase considerations.

"E.piphany and Sun are the choice for many retailers who want to win in today's Customer Economy," said Vince Bowey, vice president of solutions marketing for E.piphany. "Retailers must evolve from operating with single-channel mindset, which leads to a fragmented and inconsistent customer experience. Retailers turning to E.piphany and Sun know that to be effective, they need a customer management solution built on powerful software, scalable hardware and a robust infrastructure to help them give customers what they want, when they want it."

According to E.piphany, BlueLight, Kmart's electronic retailing site, is using E.piphany's CRM solution runnning on Sun. Dave Chambers, BlueLight's Director of Customer Relationship Management says, "E.piphany allows us to provide customers a more personalized web experience by integrating segmentation data from multiple outside sources with each customer's site behavior data."

"We share a vision of a customer-centric economy, where companies focus their organizations around the customer," said Bob DeLaney, group manager, world wide market development for Sun Microsystems. "Together, E.piphany and Sun provide a proven solution that retailers can trust to address a critical aspect of their business -- customer behavior and satisfaction. If they don't get this right for whatever reason, having great products or services becomes irrelevant."