Renee Boucher Ferguson

In stealth mode Monday morning, Oracle announced its second-quarter earnings a little early. The company, which hosted a conference call with media and analysts at 4 a.m. Pacific time, reported a 57 percent increase in its applications business, up from a 36 percent decrease last quarter. That success, however, was eclipsed by even bigger news. […]

In a move that sparked some controversy, Commerce One Inc. held a fire sale in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, auctioning off not only the company, but the companys intellectual assets. The sale of 39 Web services patents developed by Commerce One went to mysterious high bidder JGR Acquisition Inc. […]

Moving along with plans to extend the life of its mainframe systems, IBM introduced two new application upgrades that add Web services capabilities to traditional green-screen applications. Announced last week, the CICS Transaction Server for z/OS 3.1 provides Web services capabilities, while the CICS Transaction Gateway 6.0 provides J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) connectivity. […]

For years, proponents of PLM said it would one day become pervasive throughout enterprises, enabling companies to better share product information across internal departments and along the supply chains. The challenge then for software developers was to enable users to collaborate using three-dimensional design documents and their associated information from the start of product design […]

Delaware Chancery Court Judge Leo Strine is taking a second look at PeopleSofts poison pill and CAP (Customer Assurance Program) anti-takeover mechanisms. The judge, who in October heard Oracle Corp.s suit against PeopleSoft Inc. that seeks an injunction to block the pill and CAP, has scheduled additional hearings next month. The requested hearings, planned for […]

Although integration is a key component for moving RFID information from tags and readers to back-end systems, standards and technologies for such processes are still in the early stages of development. To aid customers today, EAI (enterprise application integration) software veteran SeeBeyond Technology Corp. has released a software adapter that helps users build connections to […]

Two of PeopleSoft Inc.s biggest shareholders arent waiting for Oracle Corp.s Friday deadline to act on the latter companys “best and final” $24-per-share tender offer in its quest to acquire PeopleSoft. And their decisions to tender are split. Capital Guardian Trust Co., which owns about 10 percent of PeopleSofts outstanding shares, has said it will […]

With the refusal of PeopleSoft Inc.s board of directors to accept Oracle Corp.s “best and final” tender offer last week, the acquisition is once again in the air and with no landing zone in sight. Although Oracle has given PeopleSoft shareholders until midnight Friday to tender their shares or else it will withdraw its updated […]

The U.S. Marines Corps is deploying radio-frequency identification technology to provide previously unheard-of visibility into the location and delivery of supplies and equipment. Up to now, information about shipping equipment and supplies has been limited to port-to-port data—that is, when the supplies arrived at or left a port. But by years end, that situation will […]

A pair of EDI stalwarts are ramping up process integration services as complementary solutions for business-to-business customers. Global Exchange Services Inc. and Sterling Commerce Inc., which between them move billions of supply chain documents through hundreds of thousands of trading partners, plan to add enhanced process integration as a service to better enable collaboration. For […]

PeopleSofts board of directors is refusing yet again to entertain Oracles all-cash tender offer, according to a news release issued by Oracle on Wednesday afternoon. The offer, which stands at $24 per share, or $8.8 billion, is Oracles “best and final” offer. Oracle Corp., of Redwood Shores, Calif., raised its bid Nov. 1 from $21 […]

Corio Inc., which develops hosted application management and infrastructure services software, is working on an offering that will let companies rent testing infrastructure software. Due next week, the Corio Testing service lets users rent on a pay-as-you-go basis the sandbox testing and simulation infrastructure used in ERP (enterprise resource planning) implementations and upgrades for functional […]