Renee Boucher Ferguson

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 Hobbled by an IT infrastructure that in some aspects is outdated, the U.S. Army is honing its supply and logistics IT […]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 […]

PeopleSoft Inc. on Thursday announced that it has inked the biggest deal yet in its 17-year history. Mexicos Tax Administration Service (SAT) last week signed a $50 million, two-year contract with PeopleSoft to have its federal tax collection and investigation systems rewritten onto a single PeopleSoft platform. SATs tax system sits on 66 databases across […]

Oracle on Wednesday announced the first set of upgrades to E-Business Suite Version 11i.10, which include a number of functional enhancements to its SCM (supply chain management) module. Following industry efforts to add lean manufacturing, globalization and compliance features, Oracle Corp. focused on those areas with the 11i.10 upgrade. Oracles supply-chain enhancements aim to make […]