Renee Boucher Ferguson

A German company, Infineon Technologies, announced that it is working with the U.S. government in its quest to RFID-enable all U.S. passports by the end of 2006. Infineon officials said Aug. 28 that the company received a multi-million piece purchase order from the U.S. government to supply the integrated circuit technology for the electronic passport. […]

VeriChip, the company that makes human-implantable RFID chips, is looking to span its equipment from newborns to the militarys enlisted. The company announced Aug. 24 that it has made the first sale of its infant protection, wander prevention and staff duress system to the Brampton Civic Hospital in Brampton, Ontario. Separately, the company confirmed a […]

In less than three weeks, IBM managed to snatch up four software companies—Webify, MRO Software, FileNet and, most recently, Internet Security Systems. The question is, How will these diverse acquisitions fit into IBMs overall growth strategy? The acquisitions of Webify and FileNet are expected to increase the Armonk, N.Y., companys Information on Demand strategy, while […]

Oracle quietly announced Aug. 23 that it acquired the intellectual property assets of Sigma Dynamics, a company that develops predictive analytics technology. The terms of the deal were undisclosed. Sigma Dynamics, based in San Mateo, Calif., has software that combines customer insight and business requirements in real time to make recommendations regarding customer interactions. Applications […]

NEW YORK—Shortly after announcing on Aug. 21 that Salesforce.com had acquired the small software development company Kieden, CEO Marc Benioff confirmed that he is indeed on the lookout for additional acquisitions. “Were paying attention to what customers want us to do,” Benioff said during an Aug. 22 interview with eWEEK at a Salesforce for Google […]

Entering the metadata technology market, WebMethods announced Aug. 21 the acquisition of Cerebra, a privately held company that develops metadata management software. The terms of the deal were undisclosed. Headquartered in Carlsbad, Calif., Cerebra offers a metadata repository that uses semantic technology—additional context about the datas meaning and usage. Often defined as the data about […]

SAPs move to expand its in-memory technology beyond its business intelligence confines to broader enterprise data sets has sparked debate over the potential threat to database vendors. eWEEK reported in its Aug. 7 issue that, according to sources close to the company, SAP is broadening the scope of its in-memory technology to areas where users […]

IBM made its 20th “Information On Demand”-based acquisition on Aug. 10, with the announcement that it plans to acquire FileNet for $1.6 billion, or $35 per share. FileNet marks IBMs third acquisition in less than two weeks. The company also acquired asset management vendor MRO Software on Aug. 3 for $740 million, and the day […]

SAN DIEGO—Wal-Marts philosophy for its stores is deceptively simple: right product, right place, right time. Rollin Ford, the companys new CIO—he was assigned to the top tech job in April—reiterated that Wal-Mart plans to use RFID, in part, to help the massive retailer achieve its goals. “As I took the helm of CIO I got […]

SAP may have stumbled onto an Oracle killer: in-memory technology that could, in theory, quash the need for a relational database in some cases. eWEEK has learned that SAP has sussed out a way to organize its business intelligence data in columns versus tables, storing and indexing the data in memory and then running it […]

Earlier this week, Oracle announced, finally, that it has inked a deal with IDS Scheer to add the companys business process modeling platform, Aris, to the ever-expanding Fusion Middleware collection. As part of the agreement to include Aris in its Fusion Middleware stack, announced Aug. 2, Oracle introduced new software, the Oracle Business Process Analysis […]

On the heels of second quarter announcement that saw software revenues diluted—to some degree from its recent acquisition of Firstlogic—Business Objects announced July 31 two new offerings that tap, to some degree, Firstlogics technology. Business Objects, which develops software that helps companies extract business intelligence from data, announced a new suite of tools, its namesake […]