John Pallatto

There is no sign of an IT recession in the latest quarterly reports from some of the biggest names in the industry. But it’s an open question whether Google is dealing with the early stages of an advertising slowdown that could get worse before it gets better. Both IBM and Microsoft reported stellar results with […]

SAP is taking a one-size-fits-all approach to product maintenance, in which customers of all sizes will be switched to an Enterprise Support program regardless of their size or IT budgets. SAP will start transitioning current customers into Enterprise Support this month at no additional cost, but it will start phasing in pricing for this level […]

Enterprises have gained new incentive to adopt the iPhone with the release of the first Oracle application on the iPhone, Oracle Business Indicators, which allows iPhone users to access a variety of business reports, such as financial trends, sales performance results or customer satisfaction surveys, stored on application servers back at headquarters. The iPhone screen […]

In a clear sign that iPhones are rapidly winning acceptance in the corporate world, both Oracle and Salesforce.com wasted no time enabling iPhone to connect to their business applications online. Oracle on July 10 released the first in a series of free front end business applications that will let iPhone users connect to business intelligence […]

Reports have been trickling out of Silicon Valley of a potentially major personal data breach affecting Google employees. But the data breach didn’t result from cunning hackers penetrating a vulnerable corporate network. It’s just another case of computers getting up and walking as a result of an old-fashioned burglary. Valleywag reported July 2 on its […]

Oracle sales and profits showed no sign of an IT recession as the company reported that license revenue grew 28 percent to $7.5 billion for fiscal ’08, the highest growth rate in 10 years. As a sign that Oracle’s strategy of spending tens of billions of dollars to acquire application software properties is paying off, […]

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff wants to make his company as big a player in cloud computing services as it is today in software as a service. Over the last decade, “we focused on software as a service,” Benioff said. Salesforce.com “will really be focused on the platform as a service in […]

With a last-minute name change, NetSuite June 12 released a new version of its software-as-a-service ERP suite tuned for midsize manufacturing companies. Called NetSuite for Manufacturers, the package is part of NetSuite’s effort to compete with SAP for small and midsize companies in vertical markets. The time is right for NetSuite to release this package, […]

After a decade and more of browsing, shopping and transacting on the Internet, millions of us have assembled a confusing clutter of Web site memberships, user IDs, log-ins and passwords. A lot of us have a lot of insecure and downright careless ways of maintaining this collection. Some of us may keep this log-in information […]

After years of promises, Microsoft has finally released a new version of its Dynamics AX enterprise resource planning suite that integrates what were diverse application components into a seamless package. Dynamics AX 2009, a suite of accounting, financial, customer relationship and supply chain management applications, was released June 2. The package is designed to enable […]

RightNow Technologies is trying to differentiate itself in the customer relationship management market by adding what it is calling multi-channel feedback features in its May ’08 release of its on-demand CRM package. RightNow Technologies, which released the May ’08 edition on May 27, believes these features will help solidify its market approach as a top […]

In little more than 10 years, Google has managed to become one of the most recognizable brands on Earth. One of the ways it has achieved this distinction, besides inventing a world-class Web search engine, is by having the good sense to pick a short, simple, memorable and even catchy company name, Google. Then it […]