Renee Boucher Ferguson

The tension mounted as Oracle readied its first-quarter 2007 earnings report after the close of market Sept. 19. It was clear the company was going to do well—preliminary reports were published the previous week—but no one knew exactly how well. Or the implications for Oracles biggest competitor, SAP. The numbers, on face value, tell a […]

Oracle announced strong first-quarter 2007 earnings after the close of the market Sept. 19. Total software revenues were up 29 percent to $2.7 billion, with database and middleware license revenues up 15 percent and applications new license revenues up 80 percent. Larry Ellison, CEO of Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle, attributed most of Oracles success in […]

Theres been a lot of activity at SAP over the past couple of years as it ramps its Enterprise Services Architecture roadmap. But the company is, in a sense, taking a step back so that customers can catch up. At its recent TechEd conference Sept. 12-15 in Las Vegas, SAP essentially announced that it is […]

A new consortium, the International Technology Alliance, has been tapped to by both the United States Army Research Laboratory and United Kingdom Ministry of Defense to conduct a study to explore RFID and secure wireless technology that will support future collation operations. The study, which could play out over a 10-year period and cost about […]

WebMethods, which develops process integration software, announced Sept. 11 plans to acquire Infravio, a company best known for its service-oriented architecture governance repository and its work on standards-setting groups. WebMethods will pay about $38 million for Infravio in a deal that is expected to close by the end of September. Based in Cupertino, Calif., Infravio […]

LAS VEGAS—After a lot of media hype and speculation, SAP has finally announced its namesake Enterprise Search, an application that allows SAP users to leverage search capabilities across their enterprise and provides contextual information to boot. The announcement was made at the companys annual TechEd conference here Sept. 12-15. While a lot of software companies […]

LAS VEGAS—The big take-away for users at this years annual TechEd conference Sept. 12-15 here is the fact that SAP is “stabilizing” its next-generation ERP suite—for the next five years. Any upgrades to the MySAP ERP (enterprise resource planning) 2005 suite, announced in May, will come in the form of enhancement packages that customers can […]

After the notoriously buggy technology shift of Oracles 2000 move from client/server to Web-based applications with its E-Business Suite 11i, the company isnt taking any chances with its next big development undertaking. Oracle, in Redwood Shores, Calif., has implemented a zero-defect policy for Fusion Applications, its next-generation suite of ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications, expected […]

At the launch of its annual TechEd conference in Las Vegas Sept. 12, SAP will announce a new community to support the IT industrys move toward service-oriented architectures. The community will stress process integration. SAPs Business Process Expert community is intended to be a collaborative environment where business process experts can share information, experiences and […]

A little more than a year after it formed in August 2005, the RFID Consortium is one step closer to its goal of developing a patent pool for RFID-based technology. The RFID Consortium announced Sept. 5 that it has hired Via Licensing to administer a licensing program around UHF (ultra high frequency) radio-frequency identification, the […]

Salesforce.com, the poster child for the software as a service movement, previewed Sept. 9 new across-the-board customization capabilities in its upcoming Winter 07 release, and also launched a new commentary-based Web site. The new site, which Salesforce has dubbed “The Idea Exchange,” offers a place where users can comment on new software features, offer up […]

After Oracles move in 2000 from client/server to Web-based applications with its E-Business Suite 11i—a notoriously buggy technology shift—the company isnt taking any chances with its next big development undertaking. Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., has implemented a zero-defect policy for Fusion Applications, its next-generation suite of ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications expected in […]