Renee Boucher Ferguson

New York-At an event Jan. 15, here at Gotham Hall, a renovated bank with towering pillars, gilded filigree and Old-World grandeur, Cognos CEO Rob Ashe worked to draw a parallel between the building’s structure-solid, impressive-and the company’s latest platform release, Cognos 8.3. He also touched on Cognos’ imminent merger with IBM, a deal that will […]

Some members of Congress and security advocates are strongly objecting to a new rule put out by the U.S. State Department on Dec. 31, 2007 , mandating the use of “vicinity-read” RFID technology in passport cards that will be issued for Americans that travel to Canada , Mexico , Bermuda and the Caribbean . The […]

After months of waiting for the Real ID Act regulations to be spelled out, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced Jan. 11 the final rule establishing minimum security standards for state-issued driver’s license and identification cards. The bottom line for security and privacy advocates: RFID technology will not be required as the mandated machine-readable […]

When Brittan Elementary School District in Sutter, California quietly kicked off a pilot program in 2005 that required its students to wear an identification badge implanted with an RFID chip, the program ignited a massive privacy debate that resulted, two years later, in anti-RFID legislation. Now a small school district in Rhode Island , Middletown […]

Salesforce.com is ramping up the New Year with a focus on its platform play, Force.com. The company announced Jan. 3 it hired a new executive, Polly Sumner, to lead the Force.com team (the last one left after 4 months on the job) and a big customer win with Carlson. Salesforce is also hosting a Tour […]

With SAPs acquisition of Business Objects set to close this quarter, the deal leaves a rarely-asked question regarding Business Objects long-standing relationship with IBM: What impact will the SAP buyout have on Business Objects relationship with IBM? IBMs relationship with Business Objects spans more than a decade and has deepened over the past couple of […]

Open-source ERP software developer xTuple on Jan. 3 will launch a new three-tiered network service, the xTuple Network. Dubbed XTN for short, the network is essentially a suite of managed services designed to help users better maintain and upgrade their xTuple enterprise resource planning applications. While XTN is a step in the right direction when […]

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission’s technology enhancement plan that puts GPS systems, credit card scanners and monitors in the city’s 13,000-plus taxis has come under fire again—this time from a passenger who hacked the computer monitor and gained access to its operating system. On Dec. 1 software engineer Billy Chasen posted a […]

The business intelligence sector may be consolidating, but John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects, believes market opportunities are expanding. The office of the CFO has been the traditional customer for BI, but Business Objects hopes to make those tools accessible and useful to a greater variety of roles within the enterprise. This, in turn, would […]

On the ropes from Oracle’s recent unsolicited buyout offer, BEA Systems has bought itself a little more time to find another buyer. The company announced Dec. 20 that its 2007 annual shareholder meeting has been rescheduled to spring 2008, giving BEA another 30 days to get its financial house in order. BEA said in a […]

Oracle surprised Wall Street analysts and investors Dec. 20 by reporting better than expected fiscal second-quarter 2008 earnings, particularly in the area of software license revenue, much of which can be attributed to the fact that its acquisition strategy is finally paying off. Oracle announced Dec. 20 that its earnings were up 35 percent to […]

On-demand enterprise resource planning vendor NetSuite said Dec. 26 that it has closed its initial public offering. The much-vaunted IPO, launched Dec. 10, has raised $185.4 million in the sale of 6.2 million shares at $26 each—a take that far exceeds the company’s initial expectations. NetSuite officials said in a Dec. 6 statement that they […]