Robert J. Mullins

Google announced on its blog June 5 the acquisition of Quickoffice, a maker of office productivity applications, a move that’s intended to give Google an edge over Microsoft in the mobile computing space. Quickoffice apps enable users to view, create, edit and synchronize documents on devices using any of the leading mobile operating systems on […]

The IT industry is drawing attention to the transition of computer networks from the IPv4 standard to IPv6, declaring June 6 as IPv6 Day 2012, but a new survey shows that North America is behind other parts of the world in IPv6 adoption, though it’s poised for more robust growth soon. More than 2,000 organizations […]

Oracle is acquiring Collective Intellect, a company offering a cloud-based social intelligence application, which helps companies understand and respond to consumers’ conversations on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The Collective Intellect acquisition, terms of which were not disclosed, will become part of Oracle’s software as a service (SaaS) products and Social Platform […]

Software as a service provider Salesforce.com announced plans June 4 to acquire Buddy Media, a provider of a social media marketing platform, for $698 million in cash and stock, but a stock analyst warns that Salesforce faces formidable competition when Oracle unveils its cloud service offering later this week. The Buddy Media platform allows customers […]

If enterprises are going to embrace the coming Microsoft Windows 8 operating system, especially for use on tablet computers, they should strongly consider buying tablets built on the Intel x86 processor architecture rather than on the ARM architecture because x86 would be more compatible with their existing Windows environment, an enterprise software industry expert says. […]

Microsoft seems to have smoothed out some of the glitches in the Metro user interface in the upcoming Windows 8 operating system, but a look at the Release Preview version of the operating system, unveiled May 31, shows some work still needs to be done before the general availability release, analysts say. Microsoft unveiled the […]

Sales of servers running the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 operating system grew a scant 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2012, dwarfed by the 16 percent jump in sales of Linux OS servers based on revenue, according to a report from IDC. An IDC analyst says the difference may be due to a couple […]

This reporter drives a 2001 model car and recently visited the dealer to get a new floor mat to replace one that wore through on the driver’s side. He was told the dealer stopped carrying that model floor mat in its inventory as of April 24. Microsoft Windows XP was released the same year that […]

Microsoft’s acquisition of the Internet voice and video calling service Skype was completed in October 2011 and lately some market observers said they have seen little evidence that Microsoft is making much profitable use of Skype. However, news broke on May 29 that Microsoft is going to enable PC manufacturers to preinstall a Skype application […]

Cisco Systems, citing industry forecasts that up to 90 percent of network traffic will be video by 2015, is placing more of its eggs in the video networking basket, executives said, with an emphasis on video conferencing and collaboration in the enterprise space and delivering multiple entertainment streams to consumers. “Cisco is in the video […]

Cisco Systems’ chief technology officer gave a hint as to what new software technology for routers that the company will unveil at its user’s conference next month in San Diego, but she and other execs remained tight lipped about exactly how Cisco will deliver Software-Defined Networking to bring greater intelligence to network traffic management. CTO […]

Rumors and reports are circulating that sometime in November the Microsoft Office application software suite will be available on the Apple iOS-powered iPad and the multiple tablet brands running Google Android. If it happens, it could be both good news and bad news for Microsoft. The latest report about versions of Office for tablets was […]