VerticalFalls will continue operations as a professional services firm that will resell the integrated solution, as well as provide implementation services, data migrations, training, support and business consulting.

"Financial services organizations are experiencing regulatory pressure to implement standard reporting processes that necessitate retaining the history of customer interactions and records of customer risk tolerance, among other key criteria," explained Joe Bergera, ACT! senior vice president and general manager for Sage Software. "By integrating ACT! with the acquired VerticalFalls technology, we will deliver business critical contact management and compliance features that brokerage firms, financial advisors and others in the financial services industry need in today's marketplace."

The ACT! industry solutions strategy combines the market-leading productivity features of ACT! with value-added, industry-specific functionality. ACT! industry solutions are available on the ACT! Premium platform, which is designed for scalability, ease of deployment and administration, and a seamless online/offline user experience. Sage Software introduced its first ACT! industry solution, ACT! by Sage Premium for Real Estate, in May 2006.

"The increased importance of record retention, data privacy and compliance tracking within the financial services industry makes the linking of these processes with contact management capabilities especially interesting," said Laurie McCabe, research vice president for AMI-Partners, Inc. "Productivity tools such as ACT! that have the scalability, data security and flexible deployment attributes required by many financial services companies can have significant appeal to a large segment of this market."