RightNow's on-demand CRM suite gets thumbs up from Gartner

RightNow's recently announced hosted customer relationship management solution, RightNow CRM 7.0, comes on the heels of Salesforce.com's announcement of Supportforce.com, just last week. With the new entrant, Gartner's Michael Maoz says that the race is under way among hosted CRM vendors to complete a suite of CRM products for mid-sized companies with modest requirements for sales and service functions. He also makes it clear where he'd place his bet in this race:

RightNow offers the most developed customer service products available in a hosted environment. In Gartner's opinion, the company's development effort is at least two years ahead of Salesforce.com's efforts. Unlike Salesforce.com, RightNow offers users the choice of a hosted or non-hosted solution or both. RightNow's offering also enables users to customize the system. Most competitors force users to migrate to the latest version of the product, even if there is no decisive advantage.