It's been a while since I sent out a newsletter. I have been dragging my feet waiting on some new announcements and features.

     I remember when summer used to be our slow time here as mid-season kept everyone from installing new software -- not so much the case anymore and we have been swamped. Not many companies are hiring in this economy but we just added several new faces.

     CPS continues to perform in line with last year (a record year for us). I'm sure some of you have noticed longer hold times for tech support. The following re-org here includes new full-time employees to handle calls. The details:

     Technical Support. The lifeline of the daily operations. CPS has grown into a global corporation. We have over 1,000 installs in more than a dozen countries around the world. Just as someone in the States gets frustrated getting support from India, someone from Japan gets frustrated getting support from the USA. So our approach, as the saying goes, "Think Locally, Act Globally", or in our case, "Local Support for a Global Product".

     We now have local support in place in three globally strategic locations. Our Pittsburgh office in the USA remains as the core Tech Support group for CPS and will cover the Americas (North, Central and South). Our Netherlands office will be the first line of support for the European countries. Our Thailand office will be the first line of support for Asia. As the world turns, each office will be able to help out in any emergency for any other part of the globe. So if there is the need to work on an issue overnight, we have the ability to shift it to regular office hours at one of our other support groups.

     CPS - USA

• Bill Hickey, who has led the Technical Support group for the last few years, has accepted a position in our sales group.
• Cory Rupert, from Technical Support, has accepted the position of Technical Support Manager, replacing Bill Hickey. Cory's years of support and training, his knowledge of the products and his ability to remain calm at the helm made him a natural for the position.
• Zach Lee, from Technical Support, has been promoted to the new position of Enterprise Software Support Specialist.
• Tam Tran has accepted a position with CPS as Software Support Specialist.
• Jonathan McHenry has accepted a position with CPS as Software Support Specialist.
• Mike Boyle has just finished a summer internship in Tech Support in our Pittsburgh office.
• We are currently interviewing for a new intern if you know anyone.

     CPS€ - Netherlands

• Devin Donlou, from our CPS-€urope office in the Netherlands, spent a month training in our USA tech support.

     CPS - Asia

• Khun Ya (Panyaphon) has been promoted to the new position of CPS Client Manager in our Thai office.
• Khun Kim (Sillawat Butezayapun) has accepted a software engineer position in our Thai office.
• We are in the process of adding another software engineer position in our Thai office.

     We have also been working on a new methodology for software releases that we hope will substantially stabilize the product releases. This has been over 6 months in the making and includes a substantial investment in automated regression testing tools. There's always a fine line to balance the non-stop development of new features and products without breaking the old ones.

     We are 18 months into our work on PA-DSS certification for credit card processing. The final report is over 120 pages long and has been submitted to the auditors for review. We have passed the software review already. Best case is mid-September for official certification listing.

     ETS recently sent out announcements of additional PCI-DSS fees and a PCI Prioritized Approach worksheet for the ETS product. Please note that this has nothing to do with CPS. If you have any questions on those fees or worksheets, please contact ETS directly.

     Next week, look for a new Customer Statement report feature. We have been working on this for almost a year and it is finally ready. The new report gives you the flexibility to list charges on the statement by any combination of the Product Description, Sale Category, Location Sold or General Ledger description.

Until Next time,

Enjoy :)