Renee Boucher Ferguson

The long wait for a decision is over. And Oracle Corp has prevailed. For the moment at least. Judge Vaughn Walker, presiding over the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Calif., handed down his ruling in the U.S. Department of Justices case to block Oracles hostile takeover of PeopleSoft Inc., according to court records released […]

Integration is a key factor with any large ERP implementation and ongoing maintenance, and Oracle Corp. is catching on. At its London-based OpenWorld event this week Oracle announced better integration between its namesake Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control and its Applications Manager that is designed to facilitate more efficient operations with the 11i.10 version of […]

ERP software maker SSA Global Technologies Inc., struggling as many enterprises show less inclination to buy from smaller ERP vendors, is remaking itself and its offerings. After nine acquisitions in three years—including manufacturing ERP providers Baan Co. and Marcam Solutions Inc.—the company provides basic enterprise resource planning functionality as well as add-on modules for tasks […]

During local, state and national elections, the Chicago Sun-Times receives data from various sources in varying formats, as does its competition. With every second counting in the effort to be the first to inform readers of breaking news—particularly with the upcoming November elections—the challenge for metropolitan daily newspapers like the Sun-Times is to be able […]

For all its promise of cost savings, enterprises disillusioned and dissatisfied with offshoring IT labor are starting to bring that work home. Language barriers, time zone differences and even unscheduled overtime are just some of the issues causing some U.S.-based enterprises increased frustration and pushing them to not just reconsider their offshoring policies but scrap […]

With little more than a month left for JDA Software Group Inc. to close on its $100 million acquisition of QRS Corp., QRS pulled the plug on the deal in favor of a $116 million acquisition by Inovis International Inc. QRS announced today the termination of its merger agreement with JDA and said it will […]

More than two years after Hewlett-Packard Co. merged with Compaq Computer Corp., integration of the two companies IT systems is still causing HP headaches. The Palo Alto, Calif., company expects to announce next week the results of an internal investigation into how a bungled integration of separate HP and Compaq implementations of SAP AGs enterprise […]

In the budding radio-frequency identification industry, several top-tier IT providers are jockeying to become the RFID infrastructure leader. Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM and Sybase Inc. are each developing architectures or middleware that will provide a standardized method for moving data from an RFID tag reader into a back-office ERP (enterprise resource planning) system, where it […]

IBM and Metastorm Inc. are each offering upgrades to help companies better manage and analyze their business processes. IBM last week released a new WebSphere business process modeling tool, called WebSphere Business Integration Modeler Version 5, which is designed to make it easier for users to discover how their processes work and how they should […]

As the current situation in Iraq illustrates, the problem of getting supplies to troops on the battlefield is less about having items available and more about knowing where those items need to be distributed. Hobbled by an IT infrastructure that in some aspects is outdated, the U.S. Army is honing its supply and logistics IT […]

The fracas with Oracle over its $7.7 billion hostile bid to acquire PeopleSoft has cost the latter company a boatload of cash. PeopleSoft Inc. said Monday in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it has spent $70 million to date to fend off Oracle Corp. From June 6, 2003—the day Oracle launched […]

As it moves toward a service-oriented architecture that encompasses its enterprise applications and its NetWeaver integration platform, SAP AG is rewriting its proprietary Web Dynpro user interface development technology to incorporate pattern-based development. SAP wants to simplify development by creating reusable components that will result in 80 percent less coding for corporate developers building composite […]