Oracle's past year has been full of drama and landmark acquisitions, but company President Charles Phillips adopted a conservative tone for his Monday morning keynote address opening this year's OpenWorld conference for Oracle's customers, partners and developers. His low-key speech outlined Oracle's open, standards-based product development plans and the Fusion architecture it's developing to integrate functionality from its ever-expanding collection of business applications.
Oracle's agreement to buy Siebel Systems immediately raised questions about the future of Siebel's CRM OnDemand service -- a venture in which Oracle rival IBM is deeply involved. Executives from both Siebel and Oracle say the hosted CRM (customer relationship management) service will go forward, but IBM is likely to be left out of Siebel's OnDemand future.
Salesforce.com plans to accelerate its push to become a hosted applications platform by launching AppExchange, a Web site intended as a bazaar of on-demand software. The unveiling is expected at Salesforce.com's Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco.
Salesforce.com kicks off its third annual Dreamforce user conference on Monday, capping a year in which the company has solidified its position in the CRM (customer relationship management) market and begun expanding its technology into a broader hosted applications infrastructure.
IBM took the wraps off its Notes/Domino 7 platform as it started shipping the latest version of its collaboration applications and development system.
Sage Software released a new version of Act on Tuesday, a step toward what the company says will now be annual overhauls of its nearly 20-year-old contact management software.
Sun Microsystems has recently open-sourced the code for its implementation of JavaServer Faces (JSF), its framework for building user interfaces to Java-based Web applications.
As it prepares to consummate its merger with BEA Systems, Plumtree Software is going ahead with plans to launch a major new version of its portal software at its user conference next month.
Sybase is preparing to release in mid-September a major new version of its database software, ASE (Adaptive Server Enterprise) 15. The update focuses on greater security and scalability features, with significant advances in areas such as encryption and manageability, according to the company.
Automobile repairs and recalls annoy manufacturers as much as they do consumers, adding billions annually to their business costs. IBM hopes a new bundle of software and services it has developed will help auto manufacturers cut their warranty costs by deploying an analytics-based early warning system. The company is at this week's AutoTech conference in Detroit to talk about its work over the past 18 months developing the product.
BMC Software Chief Financial Officer (CFO) George Harrington resigned Monday and was immediately replaced on an interim basis by the company's treasurer. BMC offered few details about the unexpected change in its executive lineup, but said Harrington's resignation was not tied to any financial irregularities.
Manufacturing-focused ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications maker Infor Global Systems is adding another technology to its acquisition-assembled portfolio, announcing Thursday that it has bought Formation Systems, a developer of PLM (product lifecycle management) software for process manufacturers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
IBM released on Wednesday Workplace Designer 2.5, a development tool it hopes will help users bridge the gap between its legacy Lotus Notes/Domino architecture and the Workplace platform IBM has declared its future for collaboration applications.
Carly Fiorina has reached a deal to pen a memoir about her dramatic career, which went on hiatus in February following her ouster from Hewlett-Packard Co. after a turbulent five-year run as the company's chief executive.
Oracle has finally shipped the newest version of its Oracle Collaboration Suite, two years after the software's last major update and more than a year after its intended release date.