Renee Boucher Ferguson

In its quest to become the dominant enterprise software maker, Oracle Corp. acquired two retail-based software developers this summer—Retek Inc. and ProfitLogic. At its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco last week, the company took the next step in its vertical plan by announcing a separate retail track—a new brand, essentially—that integrates in-house expertise with the […]

SAN FRANCISCO—During his OpenWorld keynote address here Tuesday, John Wookey, Oracle Corp.s senior vice president of applications, drilled down on how Oracle plans to protect users current application investments as it marches toward the development of its next-generation Project Fusion suite. “Were often thought of as the ones to be embracing the next idea and […]

Oracle announced its 10th acquisition in six months Tuesday at its annual OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. Oracle Corp. will acquire Global Logistics Technologies, aka G-Log, a logistics and transportation management software developer. The terms of the deal are undisclosed. G-Logs suite of software allows users to plan, optimize, execute and analyze their supply chain. […]

As part of a sweeping realignment of its software and related services portfolio—geared now more than ever toward enabling SOA implementations—IBM announced last week a slew of new and enhanced software offerings from its WebSphere integration portfolio; a tighter integration between WebSphere, Rational and Tivoli products; and new services to support service-oriented architecture deployments. The […]

The questions raised about Oracle Corp.s $5.85 billion acquisition of CRM giant Siebel Systems Inc. last week wont have any answers soon, say users and analysts. Oracle has ongoing acquisition integration work to maintain—its acquired nine companies in as many months—and its in the throes of Project Fusion, a combination of its own software and […]

At the EPCglobal US conference in Atlanta last week, a host of companies introduced products and services that further extend RFIDs reach and capabilities. IBM, for example, announced that three companies focused on radio-frequency identification—OatSystems Inc., Marc Global and TrueDemand Software Inc.—are porting their software to IBMs WebSphere RFID Premises Server, which will result in […]

SAN FRANCISCO—At Oracles OpenWorld user conference here on Monday, Charles Phillips, Oracles co-president, opened with a keynote address highlighting the companys Fusion strategy—middleware, applications and partnerships. At the same time, Phillips touched on a partnership announcement with IBM that could, depending on the outcome, prove a ground-breaker in the IT industry, analysts said. During his […]

IBM has taken the next step—more of a leap, actually—to better enable users to respond to changing business processes through an SOA. As part of a sweeping realignment of its software and related services portfolio—now geared more than ever toward enabling SOA (service-oriented architecture) implementations—IBM announced Tuesday a slew of new and enhanced software offerings […]

Microsoft Corp.s next-generation applications strategy, formally dubbed Microsoft Dynamics, will at last give users a common interface across the companys Office business applications and provide more control over business processes. With the completion of Dynamics, Microsoft is for the first time giving users the ability to edit graphical processes presented through the user interface. By […]

At its Dreamforce 05 user conference in San Francisco this week, Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff detailed the next wave in on-demand computing for the company. During his keynote address Monday, Benioff unveiled the details of AppExchange, Saleforce.coms new platform for sharing applications and components, an offering Benioff likened to the eBay of the […]