Renee Boucher Ferguson

The controversy is over; Oracle has once again been victorious in acquiring a company with a less-than-willing shareholder constituency. Oracle announced June 21 that Portal Software shareholders had tendered 32 million shares—about 74 percent of the companys outstanding stock, and enough for Oracle to acquire the billing software company for $220 million, or its original […]

OASIS, the international standards group, announced June 20 that a new standard has been ratified to help facilitate data sharing during times of national or international crises. The standard, EDXL-DE (Emergency Data Exchange Language-Distribution Element), smoothes the progress of data exchange across local, regional, tribal, national and international organizations in both the public and private […]

IBM is doing its part to advance the service-oriented architecture movement. The company announced June 14 its namesake SOA Business Catalog, a services repository of sorts that allows users to search for information on SOA services. The searchable services are really a combination of software code, intellectual property and industry-based best practices culled from internal […]

With its latest acquisition, Oracle is bringing together its on-demand and on-premises customer relationship management software with a stable of integrated telephony components. Oracle announced June 13 the acquisition of Telephony@Work, a company that provides IP-based software infrastructure for call center services. This is Oracles 21st buy in the past two years. The terms of […]

IBM is doing its part in furthering the service-oriented architecture movement. The company announced June 13 its namesake SOA Business Catalog, a services repository of sorts that allows users to search for information on SOA services. The searchable services are really a combination of software code, intellectual property and industry-based best practices culled from internal—think […]

Radio frequency identification is traveling deeper into public spaces, particularly in the city of Hoboken, New Jersey. With 40,000 residents crammed into its one-square-mile borders, and the city situated along the New Jersey Transit path into New York City, Hoboken is quite literally overrun with cars. “Were basically the sixth borough of New York. Were […]

The Food and Drug Administrations Counterfeit Drug Task Force announced June 9 its recommendations for the pharmaceutical industry regarding the use of radio-frequency identification technology to fight the proliferation of some 35 million counterfeit drugs in America. The report recommends that the FDA remove its “hold” on its so-called pedigree act, reinstating the 2007 deadline […]

After a dozen years spent building out Siebel Systems customer relationship management functionality—work, in part, that led Siebel to dominate its industry for nearly a decade—Ed Abbo is once again mired in developing CRM functionally. Abbo, now the senior vice president of CRM products at Oracle, which acquired Siebel for $5.85 on Jan. 31, is […]

With some Portal Software shareholders kicking up dust over an acquisition offer from Oracle they believe to be unfair, Oracle announced June 7 that it would extend its $220 million offer for Portal. Oracle has set the new deadline for shareholders to tender their holdings to June 20, at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. The […]

The June 6 announcement of Microsofts new Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is more than a continuation of the companys business intelligence strategy, its a galvanizing force that puts a product in front of its many disparate technologies, industry watchers say. PerformancePoint Server 2007, due in the first half of 2007, expands Microsofts footprint beyond BI, […]

Microsoft has long talked about its RFID strategy but has had little in the way of actual products. Thats about to change with a small point release of BizTalk Server 2006 that will be available to users the first half of 2007. At the U Connect 2006 Conference for supply chain management in Nashville from […]

Chris OKeefe was, in a former life, an IT manager in charge of customer relationship management implementations at TIAA-CREF, a prestigious financial institution that handles some of the nations largest academic retirement funds. But he said he was fired for telling the truth: that TIAA-CREFs IT test environment was unencrypted and that Sonia Radencovich, a […]