ePartners To Add NewsGator To MBS Apps

ePartners plans to provide customers of its Microsoft Business Solutions applications with integrated RSS newsfeed aggregation from NewsGator.

Seattle-based ePartners will also use NewsGator Enterprise Server internally, the companies said.

ePartners, which tailors MBS ERP and CRM applications for select verticals, will now also add pertinent news feeds to their portals and applications, said Bruce Steele, executive vice president of strategy for ePartners.

"We have portals and role-based dashboards we've built and will roll them out with NewsGator," Steele told CRN.

He characterized this as a first-of-its-kind joint partnership between a solution provider and a news feed aggregation service. "With Internet Explorer 7, there will be RSS feeds and Microsoft CRM 3.0 has some RSS capabilities, so we'll leverage those," he noted.

NewsGator uses Microsoft Outlook as its delivery vehicle. Given how tightly Microsoft has linked its CRM and ERP applications, the integration of newsfeeds into bread-and-butter business applications should be fairly seamless.

Denver-based NewsGator hopes to forge similar joint efforts with other Microsoft channel partners.