Dennis Callaghan

America Online Inc. on Thursday took the wraps off an executive management overhaul that has been rumored for weeks, with the result being an increased focus on providing broadband Internet services. The Dulles, Va., company, a subsidiary of AOL-Time Warner Inc., announced the elimination of the president and chief operating officer positions and said newly […]

Three D Graphics Inc., a company that develops data charting technology for business intelligence and desktop applications, is spinning off its financial analysis software business into a separate company, to be known as Acumen Financial Solutions Inc., the company announced Tuesday. As part of the move, the companys financial analytics tool, Finesse, will now be […]

After the hijacking of four airplanes last September 11, government agencies and companies involved in mass transit got a clear message that they could be the focus of future terrorist attacks. While there has not yet been a such an attack on trains or buses in the United States, mass transit organizations are slowly beefing […]

Development efforts at NetLedger Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. will provide hosted software offerings of integrated front- and back-office applications accessible via the Web. Such services will enable companies to automate the entire sales process, from generating leads to booking orders, using hosted software. NetLedger this week will introduce a suite of hosted software called NetCRM, […]

Novell Inc. last week announced a pricing plan across its software product lines that reduces license fees for some customers that make the software available as Web services to their customers. The pricing plan creates two categories for user licenses, business-to-consumer and government-to-citizen, so as to make Web services more affordable to large sets of […]

Siebel Systems Inc. announced the appointment late Monday of Richard Chiarello to head its worldwide sales operations after financial analysts had reported earlier in the day that William McDermott, who took over the position 15 months ago, was leaving the company. The company made no mention of McDermott in its announcement and did not respond […]

SAS Institute Inc. announced Monday the formation of a Marketing & Customer Analytics practice in its SAS Americas division. The new practice consists of sales, application analysis and pre-sales support, customer installation and implementation services, and business and partnership development, according to SAS officials in Cary, N.C. The practice is designed to help SAS better […]

Plumtree Software Inc. has rejected an unsolicited takeover bid made earlier this week by the Sutter Opportunity Fund 2 LLC. The bid, valued at nearly $150 million, would have paid $5 a share for each outstanding share of the San Francisco-based corporate portal software developer. While that would have been a premium over the stocks […]

Sutter Opportunity Fund 2 LLC, an affiliate of investment banking firm Sutter Capital Management LLC, has made a bid to acquire corporate portal software developer Plumtree Software Inc., the fund announced Wednesday. The bid, made just three months after San Francisco-based Plumtree went public, will call for Sutter to buy all outstanding shares of Plumtree […]

Enterprises looking to improve employee communications and human resources processes will get a boost from new software from Plumtree Software Inc. and a partnership between PeopleSoft Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Plumtree last week released portal software designed for HR departments. At the same time, PeopleSoft announced an extension of its alliance with Sun, of […]

Collaboration software and service providers have come out with new versions of their offerings to meet customers diverse needs. Digital work space software developer eRoom Technology Inc. last week made available Version 6.0 of its eRoom.net hosted service, which enables teams of employees and partners to share data in a secure electronic meeting place. Separately, […]

Companies that have found CRM implementations frustrating and costly may get some relief from Siebel Systems Inc. and SAP AG upgrades that promise new business process mapping capabilities. Version 7.5 of Siebels namesake customer relationship management suite, which will be announced this week, features a platform for integrating Siebel applications with other vendors software and […]