Robert J. Mullins

Salesforce.com spent much of the time at its Dreamforce 2012 user conference in San Francisco presenting customer case studies showing how enterprises large and small are being successful implementing social media applications. Most of the presentations came from household name companies such as General Electric, Ford Motor Co. and Men’s Warehouse showing how they are […]

SAN FRANCISCO – On-premise enterprise software companies such as Microsoft and Oracle are scrambling to match Salesforce.com’s strategy of delivering enterprise social networking applications in a software as a service (SaaS) model but have been too tentative in their execution, CEO Marc Benioff told reporters during a post-keynote news conference at the Dreamforce user conference […]

Nitro, which has positioned itself as an alternative to PDF software industry leader Adobe, is introducing Nitro Pro 8 with new features and a new market win as the default PDF reader installed on Lenovo PCs. “It’s testament to how robust the product is now,” that Lenovo chose Nitro over Adobe, said Sam Chandler, founder […]

Salesforce.com is continuing to extend its software as a service business by adding new applications that businesses can use to mine social Web information and use it to keep in touch with current and prospective customers. Salesforce is facing increasing competition from long-established enterprise application software giants, such as Microsoft, SAP and Oracle, and has […]

Microsoft is urging users of its Internet Explorer Web browser to download a temporary patch to prevent hackers from possibly taking control of their PCs. The company posted a security advisory late in the day Sept. 17 advising users to download the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) if their browser is Internet Explorer versions 6 […]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave the strongest indication yet what the company’s new Surface tablet computer would sell for when it comes on the market Oct. 26-between $300 and $800. In an interview with the Seattle Times, Ballmer addressed the pricing issue in only a roundabout way: “If you look at the bulk of the […]

Zuora and companies like it are riding the trend of people and enterprises increasingly procuring products and services on a subscription basis rather than buying them. As a result, companies such as Zuora are emerging to help businesses manage those subscriptions efficiently. At a user conference Sept. 17 in San Francisco, four-year-old Zuora will unveil […]

SelectMinds is a provider of social media-based talent sourcing, alumni management and recruiting software applications delivered in a cloud environment. SelectMinds will be integrated with existing Oracle Cloud Recruiting, Performance Management and Human Capital Management applications. Oracle noted that organizations are looking for new ways to control the cost of hiring qualified candidates for jobs […]

Brocade is making a deeper investment in its fabric and software-defined networking (SDN) strategies by introducing the latest addition to its VDX line of network switches and a new module for its MLXe Series routers. The new hardware was rolled out during the Brocade Analyst and Technology Day the company hosted Sept. 12 at its […]

Acronis, which sells disaster recovery and data protection technology for physical, virtual and cloud environments, has acquired GroupLogic, whose software ensures secure enterprise file access, sharing and syncing, in what an analyst says is a consolidation move already affecting some companies in both areas. The synergy between the two companies is that Acronis offers disaster […]

Cisco Systems is adding new security capabilities to its family of intrusion-prevention and firewall systems, security management software and other products to address the unique, but growing, security needs of consolidated, virtualized and cloud-based data centers. Leading off the list of new products announced Sept. 12 is the Cisco ASA 1000V Firewall for cloud environments, […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Underdog processor maker Advanced Micro Devices has given a nod to its market leading competitor Intel by introducing a new microserver that can run on either Intel or AMD processors and is based on technology from SeaMicro, which AMD acquired in February. The SeaMicro SM15000, with a starting price of $139,000, combines […]