Renee Boucher Ferguson

SAN FRANCISCO—Whats Oracle got to hide? That was my first question on the second official day of Oracle OpenWorld scheduled Oct. 22-26. I arrived at the press registration desk and asked for a copy of my meeting schedule—standard procedure for any of the two-dozen or so conferences I attend every year. The response: There is […]

SAN FRANCISCO—Oracle unveiled the next major version of its flagship E-Business Suite Oct. 25 at its annual OpenWorld event here. Company officials said the latest suite, Version 12, is a proof-point in Oracles Applications Unlimited program that promises continued enhancements to its individual suites—Oracle E-Business, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel—as Oracle works toward Fusion Applications. […]

SAN FRANCISCO—During his Oct. 24 keynote address here at OpenWorld, Oracles annual user conference that brings together Oracle E-Business, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel customers under one roof, Thomas Kurian laid out the components of Oracle Fusion Middleware. Kurians intent: persuade the hordes of users in attendance to use Fusion Middleware in their organizations to […]

SAN FRANCISCO—Asserting that to win acceptance in big companies Linux requires enterprise-grade support, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said his company would provide full support for Red Hat Linux. While Oracle will remove the Red Hat trademarks from the Linux it distributes, Ellison denied that this would in any way “fragment” the Linux Market. Oracle needs […]

Business intelligence software developer SAS announced a bevy of new products to help companies better predict and manage business fluctuations, at the BetterManagement Live conference in Las Vegas from Oct. 23 to 25. SAS commissioned a study that showed, essentially, what BI companies have been lamenting all along: that while there is a much broader […]

The IT issues at the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund, one of the nations largest private retirement systems, have once again reared an ugly head. Increasing problems with TIAA-CREF forwarded to eWEEK from disgruntled customers, coupled with a seemingly large number of complaints filed with TIAA-CREFs New York oversight board, […]

Oracles two-and-a-half-year spending spree on over 20 companies has sprung forth a whole new era of competition: third-party companies that support Oracles software stepchildren—PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel—at about half the maintenance cost offered by Oracle. Rimini Street, one such company that sprung up last year, announced that its going global Oct. 25 at Oracles […]

SAP AG, after a less-than-stellar second quarter, rebounded nicely in its third quarter of 2006 with a 16 percent increase in new software license sales. In the third quarter, announced Oct. 19, SAPs new license revenues rose to $866 million. But while SAP beat analyst expectations of $848 million in new license sales the company […]

LOS ANGELES—There have been some serious public policy challenges to radio-frequency identification and, in turn, to EPCglobal, the standards-setting organization aligned to the supply chain side of RFID. Those issues could impact the progress of EPC, the electronic product code and standards set forth by EPCglobal to accommodate technology and company-to-company communication around RFID data, […]

LOS ANGELES—About 200 people left home a day early to attended a pre-conference event held here in the western wing of the LA Convention Center on Oct. 11 with one goal in mind: figure out what EPCglobal is all about. Questions from audience members were so basic that attendees likely could have gone to the […]

With the design and deployment work for the U.S. Department of Defenses extensive RFID network completed in late September, industry experts expect a ripple effect across the supply chain industry, with more companies moving to add RFID dollars to their budgets. RFID vendors arent wasting any time coming out with new products to meet the […]

Granted, its only been one day since Salesforce.com announced Apex, its new programming language and platform. Not enough time for anyone to really digest whats going on, right? Wrong. The response to Apex from customers (and, not surprisingly, partners) has really been overwhelmingly positive. I spent a good amount of time Oct. 9 and Oct. […]