Stories by Stacy Cowley

Week of crashes highlights on-demand peril

Salesforce.com's crash on Tuesday came amid a spate of outages at hosted service providers, a run of bad luck that suggests the "on-demand" software wave may require customers to temper their demands.

Salesforce.com outage cuts users off

Salesforce.com's "on demand" CRM (customer relationship management) system came up short in meeting demand on Tuesday, when some customers found the hosted software service unreachable for most of the day.

Oracle turns to Fortify to secure source code

Startup source-code security technology developer Fortify Software scored a major triumph on Tuesday as Oracle announced plans to use Fortify's tools to seek out holes in Oracle's database and middleware software.

IBM deepens Alphablox integration with WebSphere

IBM shipped the latest version of its Alphablox analytics software last week, adding deeper integration support for linking the software with its Rational Application Developer and WebSphere Portal Server products.

Oracle feels Q2 growth pains in applications business

Oracle's string of acquisitions this year helped it grow its revenue 19 percent in its just-ended quarter. Still, the company is struggling to increase its applications sales as much as it forecast it would when it took over PeopleSoft.

Experian buys PriceGrabber.com for $485 million

Financial services company Experian got into the holiday shopping spirit on Wednesday by acquiring PriceGrabber.com, a popular online comparison shopping site. Experian's parent company, London-based Gus, said it paid US$485 million for PriceGrabber.com.

SAP continues toying with hosted ERP

Business software giant SAP will move into the hosted software market sometime next year, but getting the product right has proved tricky, according to SAP's products and technology group head, Shai Agassi.

Top vendors align on SOA programming model

A pack of top software vendors gathered Wednesday to unveil a new specification the companies hope will simplify application development within SOA (services-oriented architecture) environments.

Cape Clear set to release new ESB software

Cape Clear Software is about to release a new edition of its ESB (enterprise service bus) software, adding new security and scalability features to its SOA (services-oriented architecture) platform software.

Competitor files suit over ICANN-VeriSign deal

A newly formed lobbying group instigated by one of VeriSign's rivals filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the settlement agreement VeriSign struck last month with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the regulatory group that oversees the Internet's technical infrastructure.

Google attracts developers

Google's heft means that where it goes, developers follow. This year, the company has been an accidental catalyst for two major advances in Web application development: AJAX and mashups. Google didn't invent or evangelize either technology. It just quietly began making use of them, and the Web followed in its wake.

IBM employees play with podcasting

What do you get when you hand 320,000 employees the tools and corporate podcasting guidelines to internally publish their audio creations? In IBM's experience, lower phone bills and better, more informal internal communication.

Sonicwall buys two companies to expand SMB line

Security appliance maker SonicWall has acquired data backup technology maker Lasso Logic and the assets of remote access developer EnKoo, the company said Monday. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.

Salesforce.com subscriber count, revenue keep growing

Salesforce.com pushed its subscriber total to 351,000 in its most recent quarter, as the upstart hosted CRM (customer relationship management) software vendor turned in third-quarter financials showing a continuation of the company's rapid growth.

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