Renee Boucher Ferguson

As Oracle waxes eloquent about Fusion Middlewares platform uptick—the company announced April 4 that 30,000 customers are using Fusion Middleware—and SAP AG gears up for its yearly Sapphire user conference, customers are still largely in the dark about imminent technology changes at both companies. A recent report by IT research firm Forrester Research of Cambridge, […]

Honing its software compliance skills, SAP announced April 3 the acquisition of Virsa Systems, a privately held company that develops enterprise risk management software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 1996, Virsa has an interesting pedigree. Its investors include SAP Ventures, the investment arm of Walldorf, Germany-based SAP AG, Kleiner Perkins Caufield […]

In the scheme of all things SOA, IBM is staking a huge claim. The company announced April 3 eight new products and 20 product enhancements—all geared toward helping companies implement a service-oriented architecture. The biggest story for IBM is its breadth of software currently available. Where its honing in on SOA is around component reusability, […]

At its convergence 2006 conference here, Microsoft gave a distinct nod to on-demand software with the announcement March 27 of the next edition of Dynamics CRM 3.0. Version 3.0 brings a new edition of CRM (customer relationship management) created for “hosters”—sort of—and a bevy of new adapters that bridge Dynamics CRM to BizTalk and then […]

Microsoft has again tapped the nether regions of the western half of the United States for software innovation. The company announced April 3 the acquisition of ProClarity of Boise, Idaho, a company that develops business intelligence software. More specifically, ProClarity develops analysis and visualization software that already works with the Microsoft technology that gathers and […]

What happened to George Paolini? Thats the question that has slowly bubbled to the surface following SAPs announcement March 28 that it appointed Zia Yusuf as executive vice president to lead SAPs platform ecosystem development efforts. Yusuf, who formerly lead SAPs Corporate Consulting Team, Corporate Strategy Management team and the Design Services Team, is taking […]

Microsoft is by all accounts looking to Dynamics, its evolving suite of ERP applications, to be a development platform rivaling SAP AGs NetWeaver and Oracles Fusion Middleware. At its Convergence 2006 conference in Dallas that ended March 28, Doug Burgum, senior vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions, said a platform approach to ERP has been […]

With major enterprise resource planning application developers Oracle, SAP and Microsoft in the midst of developing their respective next-generation suites based on service-oriented architecture concepts—all due in the 2007 to 2008 timeframe—users may soon find themselves in a quandary: Pay for an “upgrade” or look to the competition. A new study released by Gartner Group […]

Richard Ulrich, a member of Wal-Mart Stores RFID Strategy Team, said he believes there are definite benefits to be had from item-level tagging—particularly in streamlining checkout processes. He also said he believes those efficiencies will be significantly delayed unless a global standard is agreed upon. “What is required in the supply chain?” Ulrich asked, during […]

With the next iteration of its Cognos 8 Business Intelligence platform, announced March 27, the company is entering the search market—the enterprise search market, that is. The Cognos Go! search service takes the approach of Google—enabling users to quickly search for and find relevant information through a browser interface—but with a twist. Rather than look […]

Lombardi Software is working to make business process management as easy as checking e-mail. The company announced March 27 the availability of a new product that integrates the Lombardi TeamWorks BPM platform with the Microsoft Office system. Lombardi for Microsoft Office 2003 enables users to “participate” in a business process directly from their desktop using […]

Microsoft might be late to the game with a software-as-a-service offering for business applications, but its working to lay the foundation for service-enabled applications with its Dynamics application architecture, according to industry insiders. The company will announce March 28 at its Microsoft Convergence conference in Dallas a Web services integration layer that will be delivered […]