Enterprise Headlines and Excerpts, 1-15 April 2011

Tax day. Meh.

Some highlights of the first half of April:

Marin County tries using racketeering charges against Deloitte and SAP. Do Marin County residents realize their paid employees are wasting their money this way? And after wasting so much money with an ill-advised ERP project?!?

Larry Page takes over CEO role at Google, shakes up management team, promises more innovation and social networking. Eric Schmidt did an amazing job there, supported by Sergey and Larry. Hopefully, Larry learned something from Eric over the past 10 years or so …

The Enterprise Software market continued to consolidate, with the Infor acquisition of Lawson still in progress, and with Apax announcing it would acquire and merge Epicor and Activant.

HP and Oracle continued their legal shenanigans, with HP suing a former manager who moved to Oracle, and with Mark Hurd continuing to fight the release of Gloria Allred’s letter to HP. I’m sure shareholder value is being created there somehow …

Steve Ballmer was rated as the worst CEO by some, and Marc Benioff was rated as the best by others. Is that a shock to anyone?

C3 finally (partially) emerges from stealth.

Cisco closed their Flip business, and announced how they will refocus to compete.

IBM entered the public, private, and hybrid cloud business.

Microsoft got a law passed in Washington (state, not DC) allowing them to sue companies who buy anything from companies accused of pirating Microsoft (and other) software. WTF?!?

Some of Microsoft’s apps get an initial strategy for moving to the cloud, although some would say the initial announcement offers little functionality in the short run and sounds more like hosted than SaaS.

VMware announces a new cloud initiative, offering an open source platform as a service (PaaS) project.

Headlines and excerpts:

• #Priceline founder targets tech giants in patent #TROLL suits
  The 15 lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court of Delaware, say these companies are infringing Walker Digital-owned patents covering things like e-commerce, private social-networking communications, online auctions, and a driving directions tool with visual cues.
  
• #Lawson Unveils New Software, as #Infor’s Offer Looms
  While the Infor bid was an unwanted distraction at CUE 2011, Lawson did its best to divert attendees’ attention from unanswered questions about the future of the Lawson company, its employees, and products with lots of educational events, speeches, a product expo, social mixers, and several brand new products. 

  Shiny New Products!

  At the top of the new product list is the Lawson Marketplace, a new Web service where Lawson customers, including M3 and S3 users, can download add-on items that can “help boost user productivity and efficiency.” The apps are developed by Lawson and business partners, and can be purchased by a credit card.
  …
  Lawson also launched a new business intelligence tool called Lawson ViewPoint…
  …
  Lawson also announced the Mashup Designer, a new tool that Lawson customers can use to build their own composite applications, without programming….

  Last but not least, Lawson launched Analytics for Healthcare, which will be available next month.

• Shinn’s selling price for Hornets less than top offer
  Afterward, he said he plans to donate much of his wealth to charity, and for the same reason, rejected a $350million offer from Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison. 

  “He sent me an offer in writing and I just couldn’t find it in my heart to do it,” Shinn said, adding that he worried Ellison would move the club to the West Coast.

• Despite huge salaries, CEOs cling to their perks
  #Oracle spent $4,642 on legal advice for CEO Larry Ellison to help him figure disclosure requirements tied to his personal political contributions. The software maker also spent nearly $1.5 million for Ellison’s home security services. Ellison has collected more than $1.8 billion in Oracle compensation in the past decade and has a net worth that ranks sixth on Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest.
• SCO Group Assets Officially Sold to UnXis
  Under the sale terms, UnXis retains all customer contracts, the rights to the UNIX and UNIXWARE trademarks and installed base of over 32,000 customer contracts in 82 countries, including major enterprise customers in finance, manufacturing, retail, quick-serve restaurants, consumer electronics and state and federal government, the company said. 

  The company plans to build industry-leading consulting and support services ensuring leading-edge operations and Unix operating systems on new and existing hardware platforms, it said, as well as to double its resources in engineering, technical support and customer relationship management.

• Panaya Automates #Oracle EBS Upgrades ( #3PM)
  Panaya, announced today the first Upgrade Automation solution for Oracle E-Business Suite R12. The new SaaS offering saves 50% of the cost and effort associated with Oracle EBS upgrades by simulating the R12 upgrade on a cloud-based supercomputer and showing Oracle customers what will break during the upgrade and how to fix it. 

  Oracle EBS upgrades to R12 can be challenging because of the uncertainties involved: identifying system customizations, figuring out what will break during the upgrade, and what needs to be tested; And fixing the code issues introduced by the upgrade is labor intensive. Panaya’s Upgrade Automation SaaS maps all the EBS system customizations and shows Oracle customers’ IT teams what will break during the R12 upgrade. It also shows them how to fix these issues and tells them exactly what they need to test. Since the solution is offered as SaaS, there is no hardware to purchase and no software to install. The solution in non-invasive and setup takes only 20 minute

• Apax says $12.50 tender offer for #Epicor has begun
  The offer is part of a plan by private-equity firm Apax Partners to combine Epicor with Activant Solutions Inc., a privately held company that Apax is also buying. Activant makes business management software for retail and wholesale distribution businesses and is based in Livermore, Calif.
• Procurement Gets Social with #Ariba
  The project, called Vision 2020, aims to help shape the future of procurement through an online forum (www.futureofprocurement.com) in which leading thinkers can share their insights on an ongoing basis.
• #IBM Takes Cue From Cloud for New Pricing Model
  The new pricing scheme will let application providers who offer their software as a service pay for IBM software, including WebSphere Application Server and IBM DB2, on a monthly basis as they use it… 

  Also, IBM has chosen 20 of its most popular products and will let its customers mix and match the use of them in order to meet their monthly revenue commitment. For example, if a customer signs up to pay for US$10,000 worth of software, the customer can use $7,000 worth of WebSphere and $3,000 worth of DB2, or any other combination that adds up to $10,000.

• YouTube – #Salesforce.com Paris Cloudforce, 2011, Bienvenue
  Marc Benioff, Chairman et CEO de salesforce.com, donne un bref aperçu de salesforce.com et présente le Cloud 2, la nouvelle génération d’applications d’entreprise crées pour la collaboration et inspirées des applications grand public telles que Facebook.
• #VMware Changes the Game with Launch of Open #Cloud Platform
  Cloud Foundry will be run by the Mozy team, which is moving from EMC and wil be part of VMware. VMware executives explained in an interview yesterday that the Mozy team has the experience of developing a backup service.
• Learn more on #VMware #Cloud Foundry
  Cloud Foundry, a VMware-led project is the world’s first open Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. Cloud Foundry provides a platform for building, deploying, and running cloud apps using Spring for Java developers, Rails and Sinatra for Ruby developers, Node.js and other JVM frameworks including Grails.
• #VMWare Disrupts #PaaS Space With #Cloud Foundry
  Cloud Foundry is both hosted and available as open source. More interestingly, it can run on your laptop or a single server or 1000s of VMs or, even, hundreds of dedicated servers. Apart from their hosted offering, their open source version can run on any public cloud or private cloud or traditional datacenters. In short, VMware has completely disrupted the PaaS space with this announcement.
• More #NoSQL for #Oracle #MySQL
  The changes allow the NoSQL technology to run within the MySQL server process, which is said to reduce latency for memcached queries. On individual computers, NoSQL currently only uses one InnoDB table, but multiple tables are planned to become available in the future. “Key” and “value” in memcached are each columns in this table. Multiple columns can be defined as the value of a memcached key; a customisable character is used to separate individual entries. As the data is stored in an InnoDB table, it can be queried and edited via SQL commands. The integrated memcached daemon has so far only become available for Linux. 

  [Cool – Oracle is still investing in MySQL for scale, not just to compete with Microsoft SQL Server at the low end … -DBM]

• #Oracle: Embrace the Choice
  It may find itself in a similar situation as SAP which has had a hard time scaling its own SaaS solutions because it is addicted to own version of premium products and partners.
• #OpenSource Heroku Grows Up Under #Salesforce.com’s Wing
  The traction among firms willing to make Heroku the PaaS of choice for helping their enterprise customers deploy Ruby applications in the cloud helps validate Heroku’s approach to cloud computing, and it’s just another way that life for Heroku is changing for the better since becoming part of the Salesforce.com cloud family.
  …
  Part of the added benefits are technological, too. Sebastian says Heroku already connects to Salesforce.com’s Force.com and Database.com services via API, which should please existing Salesforce.com customers, at least, and Sebastian promises more advances to come in the coming months.
• #OpenSource #Salesforce.com Heroku Extends Partner Ecosystem with Accenture, Pivotal Labs and Over 50 More to Deliver #Cloud Solutions
  The ecosystem surrounding Heroku’s platform includes developers, domain experts, educators and trainers, architects, consultancies, customers, and technology providers. The Heroku Partner Program joins the Heroku Add-on Provider Program, launched last year to enable developers to seamlessly access Heroku’s best-of-breed cloud services. The Heroku Add-on Provider Program provides key services and technology for web application development. Recent Add-on technologies added to the program catalog include faster-than-real-time video encoding/transcoding from Zencoder and IndexTank, a massively scalable search solution used today by major web properties such as Reddit and WordPress.com. 

  To learn more about Heroku and sign up for a free account, visit: http://heroku.com/signup.

• The Principal Financial Group Supports International Growth with #Oracle Fusion Applications
  The Principal deployed Oracle Fusion Workforce Compensation, part of Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM), in just four months.
  Through business process change and adopting Oracle Fusion Workforce Compensation, The Principal reduced its compensation cycle for a pilot group of employees from 10 weeks to a mere three weeks, streamlining the process, and delivering real-time data to its leaders as they made compensation recommendations for a global workforce.
  Through 2011 and 2012, The Principal plans to deploy Oracle Fusion Performance Management, Goal Management, Talent Review and Workforce Compensation across its entire workforce.
  The Principal is simultaneously implementing Oracle Fusion Procurement to have greater control and insight in its supplier and procurement processes.
• #SAP Opens New Fast Lanes to Help Companies Run Better
  SAP has introduced an additional 15 distinct offerings as part of its quarterly release cycle. These offerings allow customers to address a variety of areas, such as: 

  * Finance, sales and procurement functions can look to improve the performance of their core operations by increasing process efficiency, agility and visibility while at the same time reducing risk with the SAP® BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management, SAP® Business Objects Sales and Operations Planning and SAP® Treasury and Risk Management rapid-deployment solutions.
  * IT departments can streamline processes, including incident and problem management, change and service asset management, knowledge management and financial management, with the SAP® IT Service Desk Operation rapid-deployment solution.
  * Manufacturers must coordinate activities across many distributed plants as well as integrate various systems and applications across global operations. SAP® Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SA

• #SAP – Rapid Deployment Solutions
  Sales, Service, and Marketing
  * SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM)2 – Implement essential CRM functionality quickly and affordably, while helping to reduce risk and create a predictable path towards your vision.
  * SAP Business Communications Management2 – Help lower the total cost of implementing inbound contact center and reporting functionality, while improving operational excellence, enhancing customer service, and gaining flexibility to meet changing needs.
  * Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM2 – Provide your sales team with mobile access to customer information at their fingertips. 

  Supply Chain and Procurement
  * SAP BusinessObjects Sales and Operations Planning2 – Drive efficiencies and effectiveness around your sales and operations planning process with better analytics and communication.
  * SAP BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management2 – Leverage existing systems for procurement data, while providing the business with visibility and insight into impacts on spend, sa

• Accel hires Paul Wahl for corporate IT investments
  Technology venture capital firm Accel Partners , whose investments include Facebook and Macromedia, has hired ex- #SAP and #Siebel executive Paul Wahl to strengthen its enterprise IT business. 

  As CEO-in-residence, Wahl will identify, invest in and mentor start-ups that help organisations to reduce the complexity of their IT infrastructure, Accel said on Monday.
  …
  Wahl has worked with Accel on past investments including as a board member at Qliktech, one of Europe’s most successful venture capital investments, which went public on the NASDAQ last year.

  Wahl ran the American business of German business software giant SAP in the late 1990s and went on to become chief operating officer of customer relationship management software company Siebel, which has since been bought by Oracle.

• #Microsoft Putting ERP in the Azure #Cloud
  [Single tenant or multitenant? -DBM]
  The next major releases of Dynamics will run on Azure, and customers “will be able to move to the cloud on their own terms,” Microsoft said in a statement.
• #Microsoft Unveils Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and Vision for #Cloud ERP
  “Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 frees customers from the electronic concrete that has plagued the ERP industry for so long,” Tatarinov said…
  * A new level of agility through a set of Unified Natural Models, which serves as a library of business processes that reflect real-world situations, and enables customers to easily modify their organizations and processes to meet their changing business needs.
  * Simplicity across the board, through the intuitive RoleTailored experience and access to context-sensitive business intelligence (BI) that is relevant to the work at hand. The familiar Microsoft Office user interface drives adoption, and the enhanced BI capabilities help customers uncover fresh insights that can lead to faster and more informed decision-making.
• Seven Questions For Doug Hauger, Head of #Microsoft’s Azure #Cloud Platform
  Daimler just did their new version of the smart car. They wanted a service so you can check the status of your car when its charging from your smart phone, locate it, et cetera. They turned it around in a couple of weeks on Azure and launched it at the same time as the car launched…
  Many standard applications have some level of customization, and so we’re seeing a lot of hybrid applications, where customers are extending them into Azure. We have a case with Coca-Cola Enterprises which has a back-end order-processing app, that they’ve extended into Azure. And what they wanted to do was get more reach and more agility for the front-end. So they built a secure connection between their data center and Windows Azure and then extended the application out to their partners and customers, essentially people like Domino’s Pizza who order Coca Cola products. We’re seeing a lot of these cases of existing applications being extended like that.
• #IBM Takes Half Step Toward #BPM Integration
  IBM Business Process Manager, which will be announced on Monday at IBM’s Impact Event in Las Vegas, is described as the “unified platform” customers are after. The product does provide a new shared process repository and administrative interface that will serve as the new front end of IBM’s BPM portfolio. But the separate process engines, which actually run the processes, and the associated development environments, used to create and modify the processes, are all still there behind the scenes. 

  BPM systems give business and IT a shared environment in which they can collaborate around process models — visual diagrams that are easy for business analysts to understand, but that also enable IT to add executable code. These systems then let you monitor and quickly change processes to improve performance or adapt to new business conditions, but without the extensive coding and development work associated with conventional application development.

• #Oracle Announces Oracle’s #PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack
  New capabilities in PeopleSoft FSCM 9.1 Feature Pack 2011 include:
  PeopleSoft Mobile Inventory Management, a new application within Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Supply Chain Management suite, helps improve inventory accuracy and labor productivity by automating mobile inventory transactions for users of Microsoft Windows-enabled mobile devices and handheld scanners.
  Enhancements to Oracle’s PeopleSoft Strategic Sourcing module with capabilities around managing documents associated with requests for quotes/information and bid analysis and award functionality that gives users more control and security over their sourcing events.
  Important integrations that streamline the financial planning and period end close processes. Oracle’s Hyperion Planning is now integrated to PeopleSoft Financials 9.1 enabling customers to plan and manage organization budgets at all levels. Additionally, Oracle’s Hyperion Disclosure Management is now integrated with PeopleSoft Financials, allowing customers to
• Customer Value Delivered: #SAP’s Community Approach to Social Business
  SAP has not only recognized and embraced the value of social networking for business, but also invested in it with the belief that it helps SAP customers maximize the value of their IT investments in ways that were not possible before. The expansive SAP Community Network (SCN), a key component of an SAP user’s social media universe, is a clear sign of that commitment. It is a social network for SAP professionals. Within customer organizations, it serves people in various roles, including developers, IT professionals, business analysts, purchase decision makers, and end users. It hosts the largest aggregation of SAP experts, partners, industry opinion leaders, and SAP employees collaborating to increase the return on customers’ SAP investments. 

  SAP Community Network is focusing its strategy and delivery of benefits on three key pillars of value for 2011: social innovation, social intelligence, and social commerce. Let’s take a closer look at each pillar.

• #Oracle Introduces Oracle’s AutoVue 20.1
  [Version 20?!? -DBM]
  New ECAD features which support end to end design to manufacture processes: Customers in the electronics and High Tech space can now visualize work-in-progress designs via support of Cadence non-archived files while manufacturing engineers can perform thorough manufacturability reviews through better support of variants, overlays and polarity.
  Improved support for paper-based processes: Customers in asset-intensive industries that need to print a variety of engineering, plant and maintenance documents can take advantage of major printing improvements that enhance performance and stability.
  Partners can take advantage of the new integration enablement capabilities to build customized solutions and extend visualization throughout the enterprise. Integration enablement capabilities include:
  Hotspots: Enable visual navigation and actions and deliver tighter integration with enterprise applications by connecting visual information to structured data. With AutoVue hotspo
• #Lawson acquisition a one horse race?
  But speaking to CBR, Richardson, ex-AMR head of research, said he didn’t think Lawson would fit well with Oracle or SAP. “I find that hard to believe [they would bid for Lawson]. Neither wants anything to do with the AS/400 platform. With my analyst hat on, I can’t see it. People may say SAP, Microsoft or even HP, I’ve known Léo [Apotheker, HP CEO] for along time and I can’t see them stepping in and doing it. I think they have much bigger ambitions than buying a midrange player in this market.” 

  And Oracle? ERP is not a huge focus for them at the moment, Richardson thinks: “In some ways Oracle is like us; they’ve got products in every category. If you were to draw a grid of what companies may want to buy there are very few boxes it doesn’t check – CRM, SCM, PLM,” he told CBR. “The difference is Oracle hasn’t really gone directly after the ERP market for a while. Its sales people are most comfortable selling to the Fortune 500 and they’ve already made their decision on that. Most of the

• H-1B visa numbers take a nosedive
  “There is fairly large unemployment in the US, so there are people available there at reasonable salaries.” 

  [And still some people believe that H-1B visas are not used to lower IT wages in the US -DBM]

• #Microsoft Convergence 2011: Dynamics #ERP & #CRM Upgrade Sentiment
• The Sentiment At #Microsoft Convergence 2011
  # Customers expect to upgrade ERP and CRM in 12 to 18 months. Good news for Microsoft partners. Most ERP and CRM customers plan to upgrade within the next 12 to 18 months (see Figure 2). Many plan to upgrade ERP (18.0%) and CRM (13.1%) in the next 6 to 12 months.
  # Cloud adoption remains partly cloudy. While there are numerous benefits to cloud adoption for clients, 34.4% of ERP customers showed no interest. Most CRM customers expected to make the shift to the cloud (see Figure 3). As for the shift to office in the cloud, 18.0% planned to make the shift 24 months from now.
  # Leverage Microsoft investment. Informal conversations highlighted interest in mobile development, greater sharepoint adoption, and interest in Power Pivot. Most customers felt Microsoft had turned the corner and began to innovate as of the Windows 7 launch.
  # Explore Two Tier ERP remains hot.
• YouTube – Bhusri Says #Workday May Hold IPO in Second-Half of 2012
  Aneel Bhusri, a partner at Greylock Partners and co-founder of Workday Inc., talks about the outlook for an initial public offering by Workday. Bhusri also discusses investing in the technology industry and secondary markets. He speaks with Cory Johnson and Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg)
• #Informatica Builds Bridges Between Business Systems
  Gartner thinks Informatica has 23% of the data integration field, behind only IBM’s (IBM) 27%. 

  But the company also services the closely related data-quality sector, which involves monitoring and scanning data for flaws, missing fields, duplications and other errors. Data quality is a smaller and more fragmented market but is growing faster, Gartner says.

  Informatica is also going where many of its larger competitors aren’t. For instance, it has specialized cloud data-integration services, a specialty not yet addressed by some larger vendors, analysts say.

• #Oracle User Conference Reaches Out to #MySQL Community
  The annual O’Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo hits the Hyatt Santa Clara in Santa Clara, California, next week (April 11-14). The annual gathering of the Dolphinistas (Dolphinarati? Dolphinators?) looks to be an exciting event. The list of keynoters includes former MySQL AB CEO Mårten Mickos, now CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, the company behind the open source cloud platform of the same name, and Michael “Monty” Widenius, the always intriguing author of the original version of MySQL and now project lead of MariaDB. 

  Meanwhile, at roughly the same time (April 10-14), about 2,500 miles away at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, organizers of the 2011 Collaborate Oracle Users Conference are hoping to attract their share of the MySQL community. In fact, this will be the first time they’ve been asked to participate.

• Planning for #OpenSource MariaDB 5.6 at the #MySQL Conference 2011
  The MySQL users conference 2011 is starting next week. I plan to organize a MariaDB BoF where we can together discuss the plans for 5.6 and collect requests and suggestions. Black drinks and chocolate will be served, so come prepared! 

  Most of the developers of Monty Program Ab will be at the conference and we will also have a booth so you should have no problem in finding someone to talk to about MariaDB there.

  Monty Program Ab is also organizing a MySQL/MariaDB/Drizzle store engine summit. Follow the link if you are interested in attending!

• Eric Schmidt and Ronald Lacey: Separated at Birth?
  Ronald Lacey is the actor who played the sinister Nazi interrogator Major Arnold Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Google‘s Eric Schmidt and Ronald Lacey: separated at birth? You be the judge …
• #Salesforce.com’s Best Shopping Bets
  I expect Salesforce.com to continue to make numerous point purchases of relatively small players that are innovating in various corners of the collaboration world. However, I would also recommend the company pursue more strategic acquisitions in the following areas to strengthen its position in the market: 

  BI/Analytics…
  E-Commerce Billing/Provisioning..
  E-Procurement…

• C3: The Boom in Energy Resource Management Software
  C3 is not alone in this marketplace, and has some worthy competitors, SAP and Hara. It’s interesting to note the C3 is somewhat a fusion of the SAP and Hara attempt in this space.
• U.S. Weighs New Stock Rules
  Currently, companies can issue shares privately without incurring onerous reporting obligations if they have fewer than 500 shareholders. The SEC is considering raising that limit, though it’s unclear by how much. The rule was designed to protect investors who owned shares in companies that were growing but not required to disclose their inner financial workings. Some investors say the SEC should stop companies from getting around the rule, which they say remains an essential safeguard.
• Technology IPOs: SEC Might Raise Shareholder Limit
  The 500 shareholder rule is thought to have been a big reason why Google decided to go public in 2004 after delaying for a while. It’s thought a big reason why Facebook decided to do its last round of funding from a “special purpose vehicle” built by Goldman Sachs with money from tons of their rich private clients was to get around that SEC rule. 

  So if the SEC changes the rule it might be a further disincentive for tech companies to go public. Tech companies like Facebook and Zynga are deciding to stay private ever longer, getting funding and liquidity through late stage funding rounds and private markets.

  On the one hand, the SEC rule was always hard to understand: why does it matter to whether a company must report publicly how many shareholders it has? On the other hand, the secondary markets are increasingly looking like a disaster in the making and plenty of investors and employees are waiting for a bunch of tech companies to finally go public to give a boost to the tech ecosyst

• How #IBM And #HP Are Strengthening Their IT-For-Sustainability Offers
  HP is partnering; IBM is acquiring. HP is going to bring enterprise carbon & energy management (ECEM) software to its customer engagements via partnerships with Hara and C3. 

  Both companies’ products will fit well with the top-down, corporate-wide approach that HP is adopting; they are designed for C-level aggregation, analysis, and reporting of corporate resource consumption and resulting emissions. And they are the most prominent of the clean-sheet-of-paper startups in the ECEM market; Hara with a good customer list and C3 with an enviable set of backers (although still in quasi-stealth mode).

  Meanwhile, IBM is adding Tririga to its Tivoli-anchored set of software acquisitions aimed at corporate asset and resource management, which most prominently includes Maximo (bought in 2006). It promises to integrate Maximo’s enterprise asset management with Tririga’s workplace management systems over the next couple of years. IBM is still missing a true ECEM software system, but we would bet

• #IBM makes like #Amazon with ‘SmartClouds’
  The SmartCloud Enterprise+ offering, which will be available sometime in the second half of this year, allows for customers to buy slices of x64 or Power servers, and run their applications on them. IBM also jacks up the SLA to 99.9 per cent availability, and will no doubt charge a premium for that extra availability when pricing is announced along with availability. It will be interesting to see what kind of premium, if any, IBM will try to charge for running software on top of logical partitions on its own Power Systems machinery. 

  IBM chose Red Hat’s KVM-based Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization as the hypervisor layer in its Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud service, which launched in March 2010 and which is based on x64 servers. Big Blue is, however, using VMware’s latest ESXi hypervisor on its production SmartClouds based on x64 processors.

• #IBM Forecasts $7 Billion In #Cloud Revenue
  Cloud computing is no longer an area of investigation and experiment for IBM. CFO Mark Loughridge has stated he believes cloud services will generate $7 billion in revenue for IBM by 2015. 

  It’s basing its approach on its interactions with existing customers, such as FritoLay, American Airlines, and IndiaFirst, over the last four years. “The cloud is not one thing, one size fits all,” said Ric Telford, VP of cloud services, in an interview Wednesday in advance of the event.

  “Over the last few years, there’s been a lot of tire kicking. Then you get to the more mainstream adoption. We feel we are entering that wave of computing now,” he said.

  That means, in addition to offering basic cloud infrastructure, IBM will offer services to help customers build their on-premises, private clouds or integrate their data center operations with external cloud suppliers. It expects the IBM cloud to be primary target of such efforts, but doesn’t rule out using its expertise in integration to connect

• YouTube – #IBM lays out its #cloud computing strategy
  IBM vice president of technology strategy and growth initiatives Lauren States sits down with V3.co.uk to discuss the company’s new Enterprise and Enterprise Plus cloud computing platforms.
• #IBM Unveils #Cloud -Computing Initiative Aimed At Large Companies
  IBM says its offering includes more features aimed toward large enterprise customers, such as heightened security, data privacy and the ability to certify the system for regulatory requirements. Moreover, IBM is offering a plethora of options, including public, private and hybrid clouds. 

  “This is a strong advance among several in the industry for helping enterprise IT take advantage of cloud technologies and new cloud business models,” said Frank Gillett, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. “IBM’s announcement isn’t unique, but it’s a good step forward.”

  A typical client would spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on the new offering, IBM’s Mills said, though the amount will vary based on what services the customer is using.

  “There’s no reason why (companies) couldn’t move some fairly significant production work (to the cloud) and literally start to spend hundreds of thousands or even millions a month,” he said.

• #IBM’s Business #Cloud Gets Real
  I asked Mills if this announcement was another way of saying the tech is now housebroken. “Perhaps not a bad term,” he said. “IBM has always put a premium on security, auditability, and reliability. There have been things like Amazon EC2 [the bookseller’s wildly successful cloud lease offering, more popular with startups and divisions than the core computing of big companies] – this provides IBM quality of service. 

  “That isn’t to take away from Amazon, it’s just largely for small business. But you have to choose your design points, and this is a design for medium- and large-sized business.”

  Your move, Mr. Bezos. And while we’re at it, let’s see if Google’s App service, and the business-oriented things they’ll do around the Chrome store, see that reliability kicked up a notch.

• Page Preps #Google For OS War Against #Microsoft
  It does not take much to see that Google will be challenging Microsoft on the OS level later this year from the very bottom of the market where Google can easily achieve millions of sold units as long as the price of these devices remains in the $200 range. It could establish Google as a major OS player that will battle Microsoft for a substantial share of the OS market.
• Chrome: Why It’s Important To #Google
  But the same could be said about Google Apps and Microsoft’s Office and enterprise server business, and Google didn’t promote that division’s leader, Dave Girouard, to a senior VP position.
• Open letter to #Microsoft marketing John Dvorak’s Second Opinion
  Redmond’s always opted for the monopoly cash-cow income, and except for the Xbox 360 has never sold anything new. (Kinect might be a winner.) It’s up to you to change all this. I wish you luck.
• With antitrust mutters growing, #Apple boosts presence in DC
  Its lobbying expenses last year were dwarfed by the nearly $7 million that tech rivals Microsoft and HP each spent. Apple‘s lobbying budget ranked 21st in the industry, behind much smaller companies, such as Expedia and eBay (EBAY), according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. 

  In some ways, Apple’s Washington image mirrors that of co-founder Jobs: enigmatic and secretive.

• Steve Wozniak says would consider return to #Apple
  “There’s just an awful lot I know about Apple products and competing products that has some relevance, some meaning. They’re my own feelings, though,” said Wozniak, who is currently chief scientist of storage start-up Fusion-io. 

  Asked his opinion of Apple today, he said: “Unbelievable. The products, one after another, quality and hits.”

• HB 1495 – 2011-12
  Regarding the unfair competition that occurs when stolen or misappropriated information technology is used to manufacture products sold or offered for sale in this state.
• SUBSTITUTE HOUSE BILL 1495
  Any person who manufactures an article or product while using stolen or misappropriated information technology in its business operations after notice and opportunity to cure as provided in section 5 of this act and, with respect to remedies sought under section 6(6) or 7 of this act, causes a material competitive injury as a result of such use of stolen or is appropriated information technology, is deemed to engage in an unfair act where such an article or product is sold or offered for sale in this state, either separately or as a component of another article or product, and in competition with an article or product sold or offered for sale in this state that was manufactured without violating this section. A person who engages in such an unfair act, and any articles or products manufactured by the person in violation of this section, is subject to the liabilities and remedial provisions of this chapter in an action by the attorney general or any person described in section 6(5) of t
• #Microsoft wants different standard in patent fight
  Microsoft wants the court to apply the lower preponderance of the evidence standard, which would make it easier to invalidate i4i’s claims. 

  “i4i’s argument rests on a distorted view of (the patent and trademark office’s) examination and reexamination procedures,” Microsoft argues in its filing.

  The dense legal argument aside, options are thinning for Microsoft. i4i filed a suit in 2007, claiming that Microsoft violated one of its patents covering the way the software giant used XML, or extensible markup language, in its Word program. After losing the original case, Microsoft appealed, and lost that case as well. The company filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case last November.

• #Microsoft v. i4i response brief
  The only justification the government can offer for the clear-and-convincing-evidence standard is that there must be a bright-line rule, even in cases where the purported justification for a heightened standard is (as the government charitably puts it) “less obvious.” U.S. Br. 30. The government’s concerns with a dual-standard approach ignore that lower courts applied that approach for decades without any difficulty. But if a single standard is necessary, the absence of any justification for a heightened standard in this or indeed any case suggests that the preponderance standard – the default standard in all civil litigation – should apply.
• #Google considers bowing to oversight
  Google is close to bowing to government oversight for the first time in order to win approval for a big merger, a move that would allow it to complete its controversial $700m purchase of US travel technology company ITA Software. 

  The development comes just as arch-rival Microsoft is on the brink of escaping the close scrutiny of US regulators for the first time in nearly a decade, a watershed moment in its own dealings with the competition authorities.

• #Oracle’s hardware selling focuses on software regulars
  “I know buying Sun didn’t look obvious,” said Catz, who added that the past fiscal year has been “a clean-up year” after the Sun deal. Oracle managers integrating Sun have identified “so much incredible technology, way more than I think we even realized,” she said. “It’s like going on a treasure hunt.” 

  The focus now is shifting to selling the treasure, Catz said, with attention on the 300,000 customers for Oracle’s database software.

  “Let’s say we get 20%, 60,000 customers,” said Catz. “Just the big guys, the guys who want to run a lot of data and want to run it fast. That’s where we are going with Exadata.”

  Pricing information Oracle distributed for Exadata late last year prices a “full rack” Exadata Database Machine at $1 million and the companion Exalogic cloud software at $1 million more. The addition of application clusters and management software adds more depending on the use.

• #IBM to launch Websphere 8 in June
  Robinson noted that the software, even in beta, seems to load much more quickly. And it does feature a number of notable new capabilities, he added. The installation framework should ease deployment, especially for organizations that need to install the software across different hardware platforms. Another new “drag-and-drop” feature allows a Java application to be placed in a “live” folder that would make the application instantly operational, which should simplify testing for developers. 

  Considerable work has also been expended on integrating Websphere’s internal Java messaging with IBM’s enterprise service bus software, called Websphere MQ.

• #Salesforce.com Has Defied Gravity for Too Long
  Prognosis: The outlook for continued revenue increases looks to be solid for the foreseeable future, as the company is in the vanguard of firms surfing the on-demand subscription model wave. However, I believe the stock has gotten way ahead of itself. I have been saying this and been wrong to this point for some time. However, it is my belief that CRM and other high beta stocks have been primary beneficiaries of Quantative Easing II (QE2). When this program winds up at the end of June, these stocks should be highly vulnerable to a significant pullback.
  Concerns: There are a myriad of items that concern me besides this stock’s ridiculous price to earnings ratios:
  1. Increasing competition…
  2. Insiders: There have been over 230 insider transactions over the last six months, and they have all been “Sells”.
  3. Consensus earning estimates for both this year and next have come down over last 90 days.
• #OpenSource #Hadoop Summit 2011 – #Yahoo! Developer Network
  Date and Time:
  June 29, 2011
  Doors open at 8 A.M. 

  Location:
  Santa Clara Convention Center
  5001 Great America Parkway Santa Clara CA, 95054
  Venue | Maps & Directions

  Agenda:
  Morning keynotes and tech talks, afternoon track sessions and an evening cocktail reception. Details coming soon.

• Leo’s #HP #cloud plans, Cuban’s home VAR message lead March stories
  HP VARs wary of Apotheker’s vision
  Most HP VARs were intrigued by but unsure about Hewlett-Packard’s cloud computing and software strategy as outlined by CEO Leo Apotheker at the HP Summit. They wanted to hear more at HP’s Americas Partner Conference, and some wondered whether Apotheker’s cloud strategy would include partners beyond large service providers. And, many wondered if Apotheker was the right man to lead HP going forward.
• #Google Bids $900 Million For #Nortel #Patent Portfolio
  Nortel’s portfolio consists of about 6,000 patents and patent applications covering wireless and wired communication technologies. Whether Google sees Nortel’s patents as a way to enter new markets remains to be seen, but the telecom company’s portfolio could prove useful with the development of software-defined networking (SDN), which Google is promoting through its participation in the Open Networking Foundation, or with the development of white spaces networking, among other projects. Google says that if its bid is successful, Nortel’s patents will help it and the open source community with projects like Android and Chrome. 

  If Google wins the June 2011 auction and courts in the U.S. and Canada approve, the deal will rank as one of Google’s biggest, behind only its purchases of DoubleClick and YouTube, and its 2005 search deal with AOL.

• Feds Redefine ‘IT Worker,’ As Tech Unemployment Falls
  The breakdown below shows the share for each of the total 3.8 million IT jobs this past quarter:
  — Software developers: 25%
  — Computer and information systems managers: 15%
  — Computer support specialists: 13%
  — Computer programmers: 12%
  — Computer systems analysts: 11%
  — Computer occupations, all other: 6%
  — Network and computer systems administrators: 6%
  — Web developers: 4%
  — Database administrators: 4%
  — Computer network architects: 2%
  — Information security analysts: 1%
  — Computer and information research scientists: 0.5%
• #Cisco CEO calls for dramatic cuts and a narrowing of priorities
  Cisco controls more than 70% of the global market for network routing and switching products, but it nonetheless faces strong competition from big companies like IBM, Oracle and Hewlett-Packard, plus a host of newer, smaller players in the software and ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) businesses, Chambers said.
• Text of Chambers #Cisco staff memo
  We now need to prepare ourselves for what’s next, as you will see Cisco make a number of targeted moves in the coming weeks and as we move into FY12. These actions will be based on uncompromising integrity and will represent a very simple set of guiding principles:
  1. We will not fix what’s not broken…
  2. We will take bold steps and we will make tough decisions…
  3. We will accelerate our leadership across our five priorities and compete to win in the core…
  4. We will make it easier for you to work at Cisco, as we make it easier for our customers and partners to work with Cisco…
• Ex- #Wipro CEO to lead #Dell Services’ Apps, BPO unit
  Vaswani will also take over as the chairman of its India operations, the world’s No. 2 personal computer maker said in a statement issued late Tuesday, adding, he will report to Steve Schuckenbrock, President of Dell Services. 

  As executive vice-president at Dell Services applications and business process outsourcing unit, Vaswani’s focus will be on building next-generation service offerings and grow Dell‘s process capabilities globally, Dell added.

• The IT failures greed / blame cycle ( #ITfail)
  Greed and blame play a profoundly important, and deeply negative, role on IT projects.
• SEC charges two with insider trading in #Oracle – #Sun deal
  Central to to the complaint, filed in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey, is Matthew Kluger, a corporate associate who worked in the mergers and acquisitions department of the private equity and venture capital law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR). 

  The filing alleges that Kluger stole non-public information relating to the mergers and acquisitions of the eleven firms, then passed this information to an unnamed middleman, who executed trades and profited illegally to the tune of $693,000 on HP’s acquisition of 3Com in 2009 and Intel’s acquisition of McAfee last year.

  The middleman allegedly passed the information on to Garrett Bauer, a Wall Street trader who executed trades on the other nine companies, based on other insider information that came from Kluger, raking in $31.7m in ill-gotten gains.

• Two Charged With Insider Trading In #Oracle-#Sun, #HP-#3Com, #Intel-#McAfee Deals
  Bauer, after learning last month that the FBI and IRS were investigating him in relation to the insider trading scheme, destroyed his pre-paid cell phone on March 13, and five days later told “Middleman” to burn about $175,000 in cash that Bauer gave to “Middleman” because of concerns that Bauer’s fingerprints were on the cash, the SEC alleged.
• S.E.C. v. Kluger and Bauer
  To date, as a direct result of receiving material nonpublic information from Kluger, Bauer has traded in at advance of at least nine (9) pending mergers and acquisitions involving companies that were advised by Wilson Sonsini. Bauer’s trades generated over $31.6 million in illegal profits. Kluger, the Middleman, and Bauer shared the profits from the insider trading in advance of these nine public announcements. The Middleman and Kluger each profited by approximately $342,000 as their share of the insider trading profits, most of which they received in cash. 6. The Middleman traded in advance of two (2) pending mergers and acquisitions involving companies for which Kluger provided material nonpublic information. He profited by at least $693,000. The Middleman gave Kluger approximately $160,000 in cash as his share of the profits from the insider trading scheme. Overall,… Kluger profited by at least $500,000 from the insider trading and the Middleman profited by at least $875,500.
• Despite Everything Ballmer Remains Secure As Ever ( #Microsoft)
  Mr. Ballmer is one of those figures in the industry who generates a equal venom and adoration. His departure from Microsoft has long been predicted, but there he remains. Not only is there no hint of any wish to oust him, it is hard to see who would replace him if he went. 

  It seems the monkey-dancing, “developer”-chanting CEO is going to be around for some time yet.

• #Microsoft Windows 8 screen shots
• Is #Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer really the worst tech boss?
  When asked “Do you approve of the way your CEO is leading the company?” 40 percent of Microsoft employees surveyed said yes, according to Glassdoor.com. No. 1 is Google’s outgoing CEO Eric Schmidt, who scored a 96 percent approval rating in the annual tech boss approval survey.
• Tech CEO Report Card: Schmidt Goes At All-Time High Approval Rating; eBay’s Donahoe Climbs As Yahoo’s Bartz Falls In Past Year
  As Google CEO Eric Schmidt prepares to hand over the reins, his employee approval rating is at an all-time high – and the highest among his peer group CEOs, according to new analysis from Glassdoor.com that evaluated employee opinions of 12 large technology companies over the past two years1. Based on surveys submitted by Google employees over the past 12 months (March 2010-March 2011), Schmidt’s approval rating is 96%, up three points from the prior 12-month period. 

  He’s followed closely by Apple’s Steve Jobs, who — even while on medical leave — has a 95% approval rating, down 3 points from the prior year. During the same period, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Oracle’s Larry Ellison both dropped four points to 83% and 73% approval respectively.

• #Microsoft’s office: Why insiders think top management has lost its way
  Of 16 ex-softies I polled, half thought it was time for Ballmer to leave. But it’s not like the other half necessarily thought the company’s CEO was doing a good job. A few did — but most of the others wondered who else might do better. 

  Maybe that’s the most damning criticism offered by those who’ve devoted much of their work life to Microsoft: it is so unwieldy and complex a beast that even some of those who spent an hour or more telling me everything that’s wrong with the company concede that, short of breaking it into two or more parts, the board has no choice but to stick with Ballmer and hope he can harness the company’s considerable talents and turn things around.

• #HP sues former exec at #Oracle
  HP claims Adrian Jones, its former head of enterprise sales for the Asia region, stole documents and e-mails on a USB device which contained proprietary and valuable information about HP’s products and customers. 

  HP said in its lawsuit that it was about to fire Jones in February after an investigation into his relationship with a subordinate and spurious expense claims. Before any action was taken, Jones resigned and joined Oracle shortly after.

• #Microsoft, #Oracle, #Intel, #Cisco, #Google, #Amazon.com, #Dell add heft in #Nasdaq 100 rebalance
  Microsoft Corp. which goes from a 3.41% weighting to 8.32%;
  Oracle Corp. up from 3.32% to 6.68%;
  Intel Corp. up from 1.75% to 4.20%;
  Cisco Systems Inc. up from 1.56% to 3.66%;
  Google Inc. up from 4.18% to 5.77%;
  Amgen Inc. up from 1.07% to 1.92%;
  Amazon.com Igoing from 2.50% to 3.16%;
  Dell Inc. rising from 0.47% to 1.08%;
  …
  and Yahoo Inc. going from 0.49% to 0.86%. 

  The biggest losers in the rebalancing were Apple Inc., down 8.16% to a 12.33% weighting; Qualcomm Inc. dropping to a 3.48% weighting from 5% and Starbucks Corp. whose weighting will fall from 1.79% to 1.08%.

• Bill Gates on international aid and development
  “Europe has been very generous… it’s important Europeans hear about the incredible success of the aid they’ve given”
• #IBM to battle #Amazon.com in the public cloud
  Competitive pricing disclosed
  An official IBM Charge Schedule lays out price per instance in four tiers: Copper, Bronze, Silver and Gold. A Copper RHEL instance costs $0.19 per hour, and Gold is $0.46 per hour. Windows instances start at $0.10 per hour. 

  IBM will also sell reserved capacity, just as Amazon Web Services (AWS) does, for those looking for a long-term discount. Reserved Capacity is significantly cheaper, although a six-month commitment will cost a minimum of $1850 per month.

  A Reserved Capacity RHEL instance costs $0.0154 per hour and a Gold instance will run you $0.30 per hour. Windows pricing starts at $0.064 per hour. Licensing is either determined by the application you consume or bring-your-own-licensing (BYOL). The pricing appears to be in line with other public cloud services like AWS and Rackspace.

• Epicor Agrees to be Acquired by Apax Partners for $12.50 per share
  The offer price represents a premium of 11.2% over Friday’s closing stock price, an 18.9% premium over the average closing price for the previous 30 calendar days and a 34.4% premium over the average closing price for the previous 52-week period. The transaction is valued at approximately $976 million. Apax is providing 100% of the equity financing for the acquisition. Shareholders representing approximately 19% of Epicor’s outstanding shares have entered into support agreements with Apax in connection with the transaction. In addition, Elliott Associates, which beneficially owns approximately 13.5% of Epicor’s outstanding shares, has indicated that it supports the transaction.
• Activant Solutions Inc. Agrees to be Acquired by Apax Partners
  The acquisition of Activant is conditioned upon the concurrent closing of Apax’s acquisition of Epicor, the expiration of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act and other customary closing conditions. Activant expects that the acquisitions will close by the end of the second calendar quarter of this year.
• Apax Partners to Acquire Epicor Software Corporation and Activant Solutions, Inc.
  Apax intends to combine Activant and Epicor to create one of the largest global providers of enterprise applications focused on the manufacturing, distribution, services and retail sectors. Following completion of the merger, the combined company will be named Epicor Software Corporation and will no longer be a publicly traded company. It will have over 30,000 customers and $825 million in annual revenues.
• The ERP Graveyard Scorecard
  Scorecard key: Number of tombstones refers to the number of times a product or company has been acquired.
• #Epicor, #Activant … last one out, please turn off the lights
  Does anybody really think that things will improve for Epicor users and partners? Let alone those of Activant (whose PE recap five years ago followed a spree of mini-Infor style acquisitions in the distribution space). And how long will it be until this new Epicorivant decides it needs to acquire another mini-Infor like Consona (and, not inconsequentially, provide an exit for its own PE investors)?
• #ERP Consolidation: Envisioning “Choice” in the Future
  But, eventually, the number of viable ERP choices (including cloud vendors, which will inevitably commence consolidation at some point) will likely be able to be counted on two hands, and maybe even one. (I mean, are any VCs funding ERP software startups these days?)
• Apax Partners to Buy U.S. Software Makers #Epicor, #Activant for $2 Billion
  Private equity firms such as Apax are resuming takeovers after the financial crisis almost halted buyouts for two years. Apax, which is investing an 11.2 billion-euro ($15.9 billion) fund raised in 2007, dropped a 6.4 billion-euro bid in January to buy ISS A/S, the world’s largest cleaning-service provider, after the owners asked for more money. The transaction would have been the largest leveraged buyout in Europe since the credit crisis. Apax is planning to start marketing a new fund later this year, a person with knowledge of the matter previously said.
• Equity firm to buy #ERP vendors #Epicor, #Activant for $2B
  “There is a race to get to $1 billion [in revenue]. At $1 billion, software companies gain economies of scale that allow the right amount of R&D. It’s imperative to get to that size to compete and invest,” Wang said.
• #Google’s Page presages bolder era; some uneasy
  In the three months since the announcement that Schmidt would step down to become executive chairman, Page has wasted little time taking greater control of the company and hacking away at some of the bureaucracy, according to a Google executive who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about internal matters. 

  Page’s first official day on the job was also marked by the resignation of Google’s Senior Vice President of Product Management, Jonathan Rosenberg.

• Can greentech help prevent another Fukushima? ( #C3)
  Siebel, who made his fortune in database software, is one eco-neophyte. He plans to talk about C3, which has been in stealth mode since 2009. In October the company raised $48 million in a private offering, according to a filing with the SEC, roughly doubling its total funding. Siebel has recruited a blue chip board, including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former energy secretary Spencer Abraham. 

  While the company’s minimalist web site remains vague, some early speculation centered around the idea that Siebel would use his software knowledge to create an easy, automated way for companies to track and trade their carbon emissions. That would likely work best under a cap-and-trade or carbon tax system. Neither policy seems politically viable in the U.S., at least for the time being. (Whether the idea of carbon-trading markets is doomed will likely be another major topic at the conference.)

• IT growth expected to rise eight per cent in US
  The company predicts that software will claim the largest share of the market, with an estimated $219bn of spending in 2011. IT equipment sales could net an estimated $100bn from the US public and private sector, while communications equipment could bring in $108bn. 

  Telecom services are slated to hit $197bn, while IT services could net an estimated $78bn. IT outsourcing will bring in a projected $104bn on the year.
  

• #SAP Sales OnDemand – Addressing the Lingering Questions
  Future SAP LOB OnDemand Apps will be built using the same role-based, socialized approach. Now that SAP has clarified its “core and edge” on-demand platform, it will be easier going with the design/rollout of new LOB apps. If SAP can hold to their plan, which includes Career OnDemand and Travel OnDemand both slated for ramp-up in the second half of 2011, that will be a significant improvement on previous years when internal design and platform issues held SAP back from new LOB on-demand products, unless you want to count Carbon Impact, which is technically a simpler “edge” app that runs on the River platform intended for lightweight on-demand apps. 

  This is not the place to describe SAP’s “core and edge” on-demand platform in detail; I’ve already done that elsewhere. What we can say is that SAP has had a breakthrough in terms of leveraging the ByDesign multi-tenant architecture for Line of Business as well. This solves vexing technical and platform ecosystem problems. At the Boston eve

• #Infor Revolutionizes the Enterprise User Experience with New Consumer Grade Interface
  # Fusing industry processes, analytics and enterprise applications, Infor Workspace provides a consumer grade user experience with single sign-on, common look-and-feel, and seamless navigation across multiple applications deployed either on-premise or in the cloud.
  # Infor Workspace is simple to use and easy to understand, designed to enable end-users to learn, ask, suggest, share and experience – all in ways previously unavailable for enterprise applications.
  # Infor Workspace provides real-time in-context business intelligence for faster more accurate decision making.
  # Infor Workspace is the first tool that allows applications to coexist and bring in outside information including KPIs, dynamic alerts and other tools targeting key functions within the application for the user. Such tools include: 

  * Mapping tools that provide visibility into locations of goods, inventories, assets and supply chain networks.
  * Currency and time conversion that provides critical information for

• Enterprise headlines and excerpts, 15-31 March 2011
  #Oracle has a phenomenal quarter. Paul Allen disses Bill Gates. Patent, trademark, and IP issues galore. Salesforce.com continues cash-based acquisition spree. HP continues rolling out its new strategy. HP and Oracle continue their war. Gosling joins Google. CIOs want to reduce the number of applications they maintain. IBM turns 100. World political turmoil and aftermath of Japan earthquake/tsunami hit the IT industry.
• Next Gen Enterprise: Enterprise headlines and excerpts, 2011-03-31
  Oracle has a phenomenal quarter. Paul Allen disses Bill Gates. Patent, trademark, and IP issues galore. Salesforce.com continues cash-based acquisition spree. HP continues rolling out its new strategy. HP and Oracle continue their war. Gosling joins Google. CIOs want to reduce the number of applications they maintain. IBM turns 100. World political turmoil and aftermath of Japan earthquake/tsunami hit the IT industry.
• #Google CEO wanted political donation removed: book
  Google blocked software engineers in China from having access to its code base used to invent new products, the book said, because it feared government officials might force them to reveal private information.
• ‘LizaMoon’ Mass #Microsoft #SQLServer #SQL Injection Attack Escalates Out of Control
  The researchers said they’d been contacted by people who have seen the code in their Microsoft SQL Server 2003 and 2005 databases. The vulnerabilities weren’t within the database software, but “most likely in the Web systems used by these sites, such as outdated CMS and blog systems,” Runald said.
• #Google: Larry Page fosters Google’s start-up spirit
  “Eric did not have the ability to make decisions with the clarity and autonomy of a traditional CEO, like a Jeff Bezos or a Steve Jobs,” said Steven Levy, author of the upcoming book “In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.” “The question is: Will Larry be free to make those big decisions or will the decisions still go through a committee? Google has been vague about that.”
• ERP Provider #Lawson Software Reports Q3 as #Oracle Acquisition Rumors Swirl
  Lawson grew ERP license sales by 6% to $33.8 million. License sales represent the smallest piece of Lawson’s revenue pie. Software maintenance contracts are the greatest contributor; they rose 9% to $97.4 million in the quarter. Consulting sales were flat at just under $65 million. 

  Net income shot up to $21.4 million against $1.7 million in the prior-year quarter. Lawson noted in a press release that it managed to raise operating margins on its M3 ERP software, an offering tailored to the manufacturing and distribution industries.

• #Oracle – Jobs, Training, & Companies | Skills | LinkedIn
• Marin County claims racketeering against #Deloitte and #SAP, part one
  [SAP] “is not alleged to have been defective or to have been misrepresented. Nor is SAP alleged to have been engaged to implement the software,” it states. “The allegations sound like a claim for breach against Deloitte, as the County separately has alleged in another proceeding.”
• Half of #SAP users ‘dissatisfied’ with system performance
  Almost half of SAP customers (43 percent) are dissatisfied with the system’s response times across all components, according to a global survey.

Enterprise Headlines and Excerpts, 1-15 April 2011 is copyrighted by Dennis Moore. If you are reading this outside your feed reader or email, you are likely witnessing illegal content theft.

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