Renee Boucher Ferguson

Building on its Enterprise Services Architecture vision, SAP AG has rolled out an induction program for companies looking to service-enable their organizations. SAPs ESA Adoption Program, unveiled Wednesday, provides a combination of software and services that amounts to a formalized approach for helping companies implement an SOA (service-oriented architecture)—or just service-based processes—based on SAPs NetWeaver […]

With momentum building behind its Enterprise Services Architecture and NetWeaver integration platforms, SAP AG is banking on a transformation from applications vendor to platform provider, and the company is betting its future on its ability to build a developer community around NetWeaver. Fully aware that only widespread adoption from the ISV and systems integration community […]

In 2003, at the tender age of 34, Shai Agassi became chief technology developer of SAP AG—a role he assumed from the Walldorf, Germany, companys venerable co-founder, Hasso Plattner. Now, Agassi is again shaking things up at SAPs highest levels. The first non-German to be appointed to SAPs Executive Board three years ago, Agassi earlier […]

IBM is boosting its already-hefty suite of WebSphere integration products with its $1.1 billion acquisition of data integration developer Ascential Software Corp. Ascential, of Westboro, Mass., will bring functionality in several key areas, including data transformation, data cleansing and data profiling, along with classic ETL (extraction, transformation and loading) tools—all capabilities that are useful as […]

Microsoft Corp. is acquiring code from a little-known analytics company that should help the software maker beef up analytics capabilities in Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains ERP suite. The code, called Webhouse, comes from Microsoft partner Professional Advantage Pty. Ltd., of Sydney, Australia, and will be used as part of a series of upgrades to […]

Once a traditional EAI (enterprise application integration) software provider known primarily for its “bus” model of integration, TIBCO is adding another layer to its platform—and making strides to compete with the likes of IBM in the areas of data and mainframe integration. TIBCO Software Inc., of Palo Alto, Calif., announced Monday its new namesake DataExchange […]

The bidding war for retail software developer Retek Inc. is heating up, with Oracle Corp. lobbing its second counteroffer against SAP AGs second acquisition bid. Oracle said after the close of the market Thursday night that it would best SAPs $11-per-share offer for Retek—announced earlier in the day on Thursday—by a quarter, increasing its offer […]

The race is on. SAP AG announced Thursday morning, along with Retek Inc., that SAPs North American subsidiary has increased its tender offer for Retek to $11 per share, besting Oracle Corp.s previous counteroffer by $2 a share. Reteks board of directors is unanimously recommending to its shareholders that they accept the revised offer from […]

With the ratification of the Web Services Distributed Management standard last week—and of a critical component in that standard called Common Base Events—IBM is working to align and integrate CBE concepts into its business process management capabilities. The goal, said IBM officials, is to provide more insight into issues occurring in business processes as they […]

With the success of companies such as Salesforce.com Inc., which provides hosted customer relationship management software to 13,900 customers, other, smaller software companies are looking more closely at the hosted model. Supply chain planning software developer JRG Inc. announced last week new hosted software for the consumer packaged goods industry, JRG On Demand Supply Chain […]