Renee Boucher Ferguson

BOSTON—Microsoft has announced—finally—its version of on-demand CRM software. For more than a year the software giant has nosed around the fact that its working on customer relationship management as a service, but it wasnt until its annual Worldwide Partner Conference here July 11-13 that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live made its formal debut. On July 11, […]

BOSTON-Microsoft is, without actually saying it, positioning its Dynamics AX 4.0 release for the enterprise to compete with products from the likes of SAP and Oracle. And its working hard to convince partners that moving forward with the Dynamics brand is the winning approach to take. At its Worldwide Partner Conference here July 11 through […]

At Microsofts worldwide Partner Conference in Boston July 11-13, the company again is hoping to go vertical via its massive Microsoft Business Solutions partner channel to become a bigger enterprise resource planning player. At the Worldwide Partner Conference in Minneapolis last year, the push from on high was to create a sea change within the […]

Wary of mounting acquisitions in the business applications sector harming his enterprise resource planning investment, John Rogelstad searched for an alternative that could carry his small cut-and-sew manufacturing company to the next level. He took an unexpected turn down the open-source ERP road. The director of operations at Marena Group, a manufacturer for post-surgical garments, […]

After months of discussions with industry leaders about the potential uses for RFID, the European Union is opening talks to the public. The EU launched on July 3 a public forum, “Your Voice in Europe,” in which citizens (and other “stakeholders”) are encouraged to discuss the potential uses and potential threats of RFID (radio-frequency identification). […]

For companies developing business process management software, nobody said it better than Dylan: The times they are a-changin. There is increasing pressure from a host of new competitors taking a newfound process-centric approach to application and platform development, from traditional middleware vendors like IBM and BEA to ERP (enterprise resource planning) providers such as SAP, […]

On the heels of second-quarter earnings announcement that showed a significant increase in application sales, Oracle made two additional applications-related announcements this week that could have an impact on the market. Oracle co-president Charles Phillips announced June 26 during a press call that the company would rip and replace Siebels OnDemand hosting infrastructure: Gone is […]

PLM software developer Agile Software announced June 28 its entrance into the process manufacturing sector with the acquisition of Prodika. The terms of the deal were undisclosed. Prodika develops PLM (product lifecycle management) software for the consumer packaged goods industry, with a particular emphasis on the process-heavy, recipe-dependent food and beverage sector. A relative upstart—Prodika […]

On-demand enterprise resource planning software developer NetSuite is taking SAAS (software as a service) mainstream by selling its software directly to consumers through a partnership with CompUSA, announced June 27. In addition to its retail stores, CompUSA, one of the nations biggest business-related retailers, racks up more than $1 billion a year selling services and […]

Business intelligence software developer Actuate announced June 26 the 9.0 edition of its namesake platform—an upgrade to be sure, but one that bridges two basically disparate worlds. Actuate 9 takes the companys proprietary business intelligence software platform and brings in BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools), its Eclipse Foundation-based open-source reporting project. BIRT essentially integrates […]

Salesforce.com is taking a stab at an area thats seen little in the way of massive user adoption in the past: PRM, or partner relationship management. The company announced June 26 its Partnerforce, Salesforce Partner Edition, an on demand service that combines the concepts and functionality of online partner management with online CRM (customer relationship […]

Oracle reported June 22 a phenomenal fiscal fourth quarter for 2006, beating its own and analysts guidance. But Oracles Q1 06 guidance—an increase of between 18 to 25 percent on revenue already increased by 25 percent this fourth quarter to $4.9 billion—surprised most everyone on the after-market earnings call on June 22. Perhaps, initially, even […]