Renee Boucher Ferguson

Picking up the war cry of business applications rival SAP for service-oriented architecture, Oracle on Tuesday announced a new SOA and integration platform. Oracle Corp. also quietly disclosed its acquisition of Collaxa Inc., a small, independent business process management software developer whose technology drives Oracles new SOA platform, Oracle BPEL Process Manager. BPEL [Business Process […]

Fueled by a growth-through-acquisition strategy, Sovereign Bancorp Inc. grew exponentially in the last 10 years. But the $35 billion financial services institutions growing pains were particularly acute in 1999, when it acquired 281 bank branches from the former BankBoston Corp. In the struggle to absorb the new branches into its IT infrastructure, Sovereign, in partnership […]

Oak Grove Systems, which makes business process management software, on Tuesday will announce the next iteration of its process engine that spans both Microsoft .Net and Java development environments. In beta now, Reactor 6.0 provides interoperability between both .Net and Java environments through a Web services interface, officials said. The engine is used to automate […]

Spend management software maker Ariba said Monday that its acquisition of FreeMarkets is nearly complete, with both companies shareholders voting to approve the deal. The merger, first announced last January, is expected to close Thursday. With FreeMarkets Inc. flying under the Ariba Inc. banner, the two companies will focus exclusively on spend management, but with […]

To help companies better handle the influx of application and Web service security alerts, the OASIS standards consortium on Wednesday announced the ratification of a new standard. The Application Vulnerability Description Language 1.0 provides a standard method for exchanging security vulnerability information that may occur in applications and Web services, said officials at the Organization […]

Manufacturers evaluating software to manage product information from inception through retirement are getting several new options to consider, thanks to a couple of mergers and a new offering from IBM. The goal of each option is to give companies a better handle on product information to improve design, manufacturing, marketing and servicing of those products. […]

Microsoft Business Solutions—the small and mid-sized business applications arm of Microsoft Corp.— announced on Monday the availability of Great Plains 8.0. According to the company, the upgraded suite comes with some 120 enhancements that amount to more functionality for distribution, manufacturing and project accounting; better usability throughout the suite; and integration with the Microsofts Portal […]

Lawson Software Inc. is overhauling its ERP suite to be more open, flexible and modular in an effort to make it easier for customers to add functionality to their Lawson systems. The strategy, according to officials in St. Paul, Minn., calls for creating an architecture that enables faster development, breaks its applications into flexible components […]

NetSuite Inc., which makes hosted enterprise resource planning software for the small and midmarket sector, is severing its relationship with Oracle Corp.—its marketing relationship, that is. Since 2001, NetSuite has branded its family of applications aimed at small businesses with Oracles moniker. As of July 1, the company will rebrand its Oracle Small Business Suite […]

Wrapping up the second week of a trial that has the U.S. Department of Justice seeking a federal injunction to block Oracle Corp.s proposed acquisition of rival PeopleSoft Inc., the Justice Department leaned on testimony from Oracle President Charles Phillips to bolster its case. The Justice Department played its taped deposition of Phillips Friday in […]