Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-06-23

• Oracle 4Q Net Down 7.2% On Stronger Dlr, Econ Weakness
  Oracle Corp.'s (ORCL) fiscal fourth-quarter profit declined 7.2% as the stronger dollar and continuing economic weakness weighed on revenues and earnings. But stronger-than-expected new license sales and continuing cost management helped the company beat Wall Street expectations, giving some comfort that the company is weathering the storm. Shares were up 2.8% at $20.44 in recent after-hours trading, reflecting broad comfort that the company is managing well through the downturn. Oracle's stock has been rebounding since hitting a three-year low in March.
• Oracle software sales beat forecasts, shares rise
  New software sales, a closely watched revenue measure, fell 13 percent to $2.7 billion in Oracle's fiscal fourth quarter ended May 31. Analysts were expecting them to decline about 18 percent.
• Oracle revenue, profit fall
  For the second consecutive quarter, Oracle announced a cash dividend of 5 cents per share.
• Ed Abbo is leaving Oracle
  News has broken that Ed Abbo will be leaving Oracle at the end of this month. The "legacy" applications will be organizationally under Thomas Kurian, who already has the Fusion (and other) Middleware products, BI, Fusion Applications, and Tools, and who will doubtless get some of the pieces acquired from Sun.
• Oracle CEO Ellison Changes Tack on Cloud Computing
  On Tuesday, Mr. Ellison appeared to change his tune. During a call following Oracle's fourth-quarter results, Mr. Ellison said the company's Fusion products -- software that aims to tie together technology from many of the Redwood City, Calif.-based company's acquisitions -- would be "on-demand ready," suggesting they would be available on a pay-as-you-go basis. He added that a portion of Oracle's revenue from Fusion products could come from subscriptions in the future, rather than from one-off sales. Licenses to most Oracle products have a one-time fee, but can be augmented with maintenance and support, which would be charged separately. The comment immediately provoked interest from analysts, one of whom asked if Oracle was now getting into cloud computing. Mr. Ellison admitted the company was getting "a little bit" into the space.
• Oracle Corporation F4Q09 (Qtr End 05/31/09) Earnings Call Transcript
  Thanks Jeff, well we’re obviously pleased with our Q4 results and with our exceptional performance throughout the year. In constant dollars we beat the top end of our new license guidance, we beat the high end of our total revenue guidance, and we delivered the highest Q4 operating margin in our history crossing the 50% mark for the first time. Once again we grew margins and revenues substantially faster then our peers. We grew faster then SAP in every region around the world including its home base of Europe where our applications business grew 5% in constant currency versus negative 27% for SAP’s most recent quarter.
• Oracle Corporation F4Q09 (Qtr End 05/31/09) Earnings Call Transcript
  And then of course we’re going into other spaces as well with our Fusion applications which we haven’t talked about yet which come out I guess, we are code complete on Fusion applications. We’ll be announcing them later this year. Customers are trying them out and we’ll start delivering next year. All of our Fusion applications are on demand ready. They are designed to be not only on premise but ground up design to be a [inaudible] service. So we see all of our application software, not just on Salesforce automation but all of our application software going forward being sold in two ways. Both on demand, software as a service and on premise with the same code base and we think we can be the number one applications company, the number one on premise application company and the number one on demand application company. That’s our goal.
• Oracle's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2009 Earnings
  Results were announced on June 23, 2009. * Listen to the analyst conference call Webcast replay (archived through June 30) * Safe harbor statement (PDF) * Q409 Earnings press release and financials (PDF) * GAAP to Non-GAAP reconciliation table (PDF) * Q409 supplemental tables (PDF)
• Micro Focus Ups Offer for Borland
  The board of Micro Focus International on June 18 announced that it has increased its cash offer to $1.15 for each outstanding Borland share. This values the acquisition of Borland’s equity at approximately $88 million. On May 6, when Borland and Micro Focus announced plans to merge, Micro Focus was offering $1.00 for each Borland share, which had a value of around $75 million. However, on June 1, a third party entered the scene with an offer to pay $1.20 per share for the Borland shares. In a press statement on the new offer, Micro Focus said, "Further to the announcement made on 1 June 2009, the financial buyer that made a preliminary non-binding indication of interest for Borland Software Corporation has withdrawn from the process."
• What is going on in the BI/DW world?
  What can customers learn for their internal systems from the acquisitions that Oracle does and how it deals with integrating companies? A3: Well, my observation, first hand, is that we really invested a lot on data quality. Here we built a system that cleanses all customer data and then gets fed into a single instance for all Oracle leads. We now have this down to a science and it saves a lot of effort and money. Mike added that we do a lot on publishing the lessons we learn from implementing BI EE for example at Oracle. Technotes on metalink for example. The other observation Mike had was really about us choosing what to use, and ensuring customers understand how we use products. When do we use OBI EE and when do we use OLAP, just to name an example.
• India's IT growth to slow down in 2009
  The research firm's local analysts said at its Directions conference Saturday, the overall growth of India's IT-ITES industry will crawl to 10.8 percent in 2009, generating revenues worth some 3,095.73 billion rupees (US$64 billion). Exports are projected to expand 11.2 percent to over 2,000 billion rupees (US$41 billion). Last year, the Indian IT-ITES industry grew 14.4 percent with revenues of US$58 billion (2,790 billion rupees).
• MySQL Creators Move to Keep MySQL Open
  "Oracle doesn't know yet what it's going to do with all the products from Sun and even if they did, they couldn't talk about," Feinberg said. That just adds to the ability of people like Monty to create a lot of negative hype about the whole thing."
• Infor Flex - The fast track to product innovation
  # Flex Upgrade—Upgrade to the latest release of your current solution with minimal or zero license fees and fast, cost-effective implementation services. # Flex Exchange—Exchange your current Infor application for another Infor solution on a like-for-like basis, for a nominal transaction fee and very competitive services rates.
• Ray Ozzie
  Video: The Potential of Cloud Computing – Churchill Club, June 2009 Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, has an expansive discussion on the past, present and future of cloud computing.
• Flex should also include down, not just up
  But there is no downgrade path. If customers only want a low-touch plan – some bug fixes, minimal number of support calls, regulatory updates – you have to keep paying at full rates. As I have written before, customer needs and vendor delivery speeds (and their support costs) vary considerably making it very hard to justify a single maintenance rate across the product lifecycle – so my suggestion about letting maintenance rates float
• Infor juices up its maintenance program value with Infor Flex
  On the other hand, by my observation, Infor gets "outsold" by other vendors, even in situations where it is the incumbent supplier. Current economic conditions are likely limiting its ability to more aggressively and thoroughly present its leading products, such as Baan and Syteline. Hopefully, the new Infor Flex program will provide a more compelling value proposition, allowing Infor to win more deals where it already has a customer relationship. I would like to see this program succeed. In these days, customers need more alternatives, not fewer.
• Infor Flex: innovation or fail?
  Infor today announced Infor Flex, a program designed to keep customers happy and keep those all important maintenance dollars flowing Infor’s way. At first viewing, the Infor prgram looks exciting:
• Infor Flex Reflects Proactive Maintenance Policy
  The bottom line - Infor Flex provides unique value in a rapidly consolidating market In many recent surveys, the top customer priorities for 2009 include upgrading, updating, or replacing legacy applications. Many enterprises face decisions as to which vendors to keep and upgrade with; and which vendors to jettison and migrate from. Amidst this move to upgrade, many vendors have imposed maintenance support increases or vendor imposed upgrade time lines based on support costs. Infor’s policy adds a fresh perspective by offering choice, value, and predictability. In fact, these new policies may engender good will among loyal customers and be just enough incentive to keep competitors from poaching existing accounts. The only thing that would make this offering better would be flex down options for lower tiered options akin to third party maintenance, but that might be asking too much!
• What really happened with SAP Business ByDesign?
  Recently, insiders have approached me with more detail about the train wreck BYD is turning into. Here is my summary of what I have recently learned:
• SaaS BI vendor LucidEra to shut down
  Founded in 2005, the company's last round of funding came nearly two years ago in August 2007, when it raised $15.6 million in Series B funding, according to LucidEra's website. It's customers, who must now either bring their BI and analytics functions in house or find another BI vendor, SaaS or otherwise, include Enterasys Secure Networks, Serena Software, and Parature.
• Private Equity Analyst Conference | Agenda
  Scaling Down: Is The Venture Industry Finally Headed Down The Right Path? The venture industry exploded in the ‘90s, thanks in part to more interest by limited partners. But as both VCs and institutional investors will tell you, bigger certainly was not better. As more firms began investing, returns fell. Now nearly 10 years after the .com bubble popped, there is a growing sense that the industry is poised to downsize. The time has come, say some, where firms will close down and partners will retire. But just how severe will this reduction be? What type of firms will stay alive and what will it mean for both existing venture-backed companies and those looking to raise capital?
• Earnings Preview: Oracle to report fiscal 4Q
  Oracle Corp. is scheduled to report its fiscal fourth-quarter results after the market closes Tuesday. The following is a summary of key developments and analyst opinion related to the period.
• Oracle Of A Slow Software Recovery
  While the past 18 months' recession has pummeled some information technology companies to the brink of collapse, Oracle so far seems to have almost enjoyed the pain. It's been lightly bruised, even as its competitors have absorbed far more damaging blows. And Oracle has taken advantage of smaller companies' troubles to make a string of bargain buyouts. But as the economic climate catches up with Larry Ellison's software giant, the company's sado-masochism may be reaching its limits.
• Lane named chairman of CMU’s Board of Trustees
  Venture capitalist and former Oracle Corp. President Raymond Lane has been named chairman of Carnegie Mellon University’s Board of Trustees, effective July 1.

Update on Oracle Applications leadership change

Here is the text of the e-mail sent out at Oracle by Chuck Rozwat announcing Ed's departure. This note confirms Ed's departure at the end of the month, and indicates that the "legacy" ("Applications Unlimited") team will report to Chuck after Ed's departure (although it has been widely rumored that the legacy apps will be reporting to Thomas Kurian).

Ed Abbo will be leaving Oracle as of June 30th. He has decided that his next career objectives can be best met outside of Oracle. Ed’s contributions and presence will be missed.

Some of you may not be aware of this, but Ed has had two separate “tours of duty”. He joined Oracle out of graduate school as part of the winter class of '86, and was part of the team that built Oracle's first internal customer support system. He also worked in Oracle Consulting when it was first established and later in the Sales organization as part of the Strategic accounts team.

He joined Siebel Systems in early 1994 where he held a number of positions leading to CTO and head of engineering, where he was at the time of the Siebel acquisition in late 2005. Ed led the effort to secure Oracle’s clear leadership in the CRM market through the Siebel Product Line and the fast growing CRM On Demand business. In 2007, he was asked to take on the additional responsibility to run the Applications Unlimited group. During this time, Ed has been the “face” of Oracle Applications to our customers, analysts and press, delivered on the Applications Unlimited commitment to continued product releases and innovation across Oracle's Application product lines, and established a strong organization and leadership team that will ensure our continued success.

Please join me in thanking Ed for his significant contributions to Oracle, and in wishing him good fortune in his future endeavors.

As of July 1, I will be directly managing the Applications Unlimited Group.

Chuck

Good luck to Ed (and Thomas, and Chuck, and all the team)!

Ed Abbo is leaving Oracle

News has broken that Ed Abbo will be leaving Oracle at the end of this month. The "legacy" applications will be organizationally under Thomas Kurian, who already has the Fusion (and other) Middleware products, BI, Fusion Applications, and Tools, and who will doubtless get some of the pieces acquired from Sun.

Ed was a greatly respected professional, and will surely be missed at Oracle and by Oracle's customers. Obviously, Thomas also is very successful, so it seems likely he will do a great job with his new responsibilities.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-06-21

• Expect Tech Mergers to Increase
  Thus far in the 2Q09, there have been 612 deals for a total value of roughly $43Bn versus 646 deals done in 1Q09 for a measly $9Bn. Clearly the big deal is back and while the first quarter was the first quarter in years to not have a $1Bn dollar deal, we’ve had 8 thus far in the June quarter (including eBay (EBAY)/Gmarket, Oracle (ORCL)/Sun (JAVA) and now Data Domain (DDUP)).
• Predictions and info for Oracle Fusion Middleware launch
  Oracle will explicitly or implicitly reveal its plans (and post-merger org structure) for Java in the post-Sun-acquisition period for Fusion Middleware at the Fusion Middleware (FMW) launch on July 1. # Oracle will deprecate Eclipse (which they don't control) quickly, trying to move Java developers to JDeveloper (which they control). JDeveloper will have tight links to FMW components as well as generic Java, which Oracle will tout as benefits. My $0.02: this is a futile and silly effort, as Eclipse is so much more than just a Java development environment, with an ecosystem that creates enormous value around it. Oracle should come to some "understanding" with IBM and just adopt Eclipse. # Oracle will show a lot about how Fusion Apps will adopt FMW on July 1 (especially the Java Platform and WebCenter). This is likely to be a real game-changer. I am not certain that other ERP vendors will be able to deliver anything like the compelling user experience, social capabilities, and productivi
• Honey, I shrunk the VCs
  If entrepreneurs learn to get along without VCs, that might indeed be the death of venture capital.
• SAP ABAP + Java Stacks on Amazon Cloud Computing
  In this post, I describe how I setup the windows environment used to install relatively modern SAP ABAP and Java stacks, using the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) to store persistent data. I needed to: * install appropriate the Windows 2003 Server environment, * get copies of the install SAP ECC6 IDES software for Netweaver 7 / DB6 / windows
• Used Software Rights Upheld In SusenSoftware Win Over SAP
  Enterprises seeking to optimize enterprise software costs should consider the used software or secondary market as an option. It appears that the legal precedents have been set. Now’s the time to pick up additional SAP R/3 4.7, Oracle 11i EBS, or Infor Baan 4CIV licenses! Resellers, VARs, and distributors should take the opportunity to create this new market. Pressure from vendors will most likely be limited as the sentiment in the courts now side with the customer.
• Free Is the New SaaS
  Well, SmartRecruiters is an end-to-end recruitment solution for companies with up to 2500 employees. And it allows organizations to manage their recruitment processes — create requisitions, post them, source candidates, assess candidates, screen them and hire them — automating the whole process, as well as giving organizations a career website so they can post their own jobs on their site. So it is a fairly complete recruitment solution, specifically designed for SMBs.
• Used Software Licences | Purchase & Sale | Second-Hand Market
  usedSoft trades with second-hand software licences, which have been resold at least once by developers or dealers directly to users. Those licenses handle non-material copyrights for software. Used software is traded basically for two reasons: First, applications may run out of use, e.g. after mergers and insolvencies. Second, software licences are purchased, but do not get to be used. For instance, the market research company Gartner estimates that 42 percent of the CRM software licences are unused. According to Meta Group, 15 percent of the sold business intelligence tools have never been used at all. Thus, the purchase of second-hand licences offers the user companies significant saving perspectives compared to the initial software acquisition – without having to cope with any disadvantages in exchange, since * software cannot wear out. * usedSoft guarantees and notarises the legal security of an acquisition by purchase and sales invoices, respectively licence certificates
• Oracle Unveils New Release of Oracle’s Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
  Product Risk Management – Supplier performance changes, component shortages, price reductions and other global value chain uncertainties contribute to the high-risk environment companies face today... Enterprise PLM Backbone – Many existing design and document management applications fail to deliver strategic business value because of difficulties in integrating them with other business applications. In contrast, Agile PLM 9.3 provides a complete Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that allows companies to integrate it’s various components to existing engineering and enterprise systems. This enables companies to seamlessly deploy these PLM services and achieve their business objectives while managing costs. Some of the key features introduced in this release are: ... User Productivity Tools – Agile PLM 9.3 enhances user productivity by leveraging a Web 2.0 User Interface. Lab tests of Agile PLM 9.3 using real product data from a large global customer showed a 70 percent reduction in cl
• Indian ADRs shed $5 bn in market valuation in one week
  Among the entities listed as American Depository Receipts (ADRs), Sterlite Industries and Wipro, together lost little over USD 3 billion. Sterlite's market capitalisation dropped by USD 1.70 billion whereas that of Wipro declined by USD 1.36 billion.
• TechM set to announce major decisions in Satyam today
  Eighteen top officials of Tech Mahindra, including its Chief Executive Officer Vineet Nayyar and global operations head C P Gurnani, who joined the Satyam board on June 1, were already camping at Satyam’s Infocity campus in Hyderabad since the last three days. They were engaged in meetings and discussions with Satyam’s top 90 leaders for charting the IT outsourcing company’s future road map, going ahead. “Taking stock of Satyam’s new businesses, re-branding the IT outsourcing company while maintaining a ‘joint virtual integration’ of both the companies (Tech Mahindra and Satyam) strengths, considering a second preferential issue for picking up the remaining 20 per cent stake in Satyam in the event of its stock surging past the offer price of Rs 58 to nearly 80, and on how to fully utilise the capabilities of the existing staff under the ‘Virtual Pool Programme’ will be the main decision-making issues at tomorrow’s meet,” sources said.
• Mahindra renames Satyam, unveils new business plan
  Mahindra Satyam brand would be based on values of good corporate citizenship, professionalism, quality focus, and the dignity of the individual
• Tech Giants Ramp Up Their Online Offerings
  But now the Redwood Shores, Calif., company is developing more than 10 online software programs, including ones that track employees and job applicants, say people briefed on the matter. Oracle declined to comment. Meanwhile, Germany's SAP says it expects to release an online purchasing tool later this year, plus two other applications next year. H-P said earlier this month it will develop online versions of almost all its business software. And Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. have also moved into online software over the past year.
• Microsoft shares look 'super cheap'
  "With both Windows 7 and Bing, Microsoft for the first time in eons is giving off the aura of a company that is innovating and listening to users. That has helped the stock rebound more than 50 percent off the March low -- but there should be plenty more to come," it said.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-06-20

• Charles River Ventures Hires That F@!&edCompany Guy
  Kaplan went on to found AdBrite, which is now one of the top 25 ad networks. Kaplan is still chairman of AdBrite, but he’s been tinkering with his own projects for most of this year, including several fun Twitter apps like flirt140 (Twitter dating), fast140 (a typing challenge game), Tweetname (domain name registry via Twitter), AlumTweet (Classmates.com for Twitter), and HitMeLater (a snooze button for email). He says he has about 16 sites or apps that are currently live.
• TechCrunch Layoff Tracker
  # Total Layoffs Since August 27, 2008: 474 # Total Employees: 338,270
• Video: 60-Second Pitch: Microsoft SQL Server 2008
  In this episode, Matt Dunstan, application platform group product manager at Microsoft, pitches his company's SQL Server 2008 data management product to IT director of law firm Norton Rose, Jeff Roberts; former Associated Newspapers CIO Ian Cohen and Fiona Davis, operations director at silicon.com's parent company, CBS Interactive.
• Oracle tried to sell Sun hardware biz
  The Register's source qualified the price Oracle was asking for Sun's hardware business as "unrealistic." Oracle declined to comment for this article.
• Oracle: On a Shopping Spree?
  Although Oracle (ORCL) announced the purchase of Conformia Software on Wednesday, the market is currently buzzing with speculation that the tech giant has closed – but not yet announced – a much larger transaction. Several sources have indicated that Oracle has acquired GoldenGate Software. The two companies have had a deep relationship for some time and while a deal has been kicked around in the past, talks stalled because GoldenGate always priced itself higher than Oracle was willing to spend. We haven’t heard what Oracle ended up paying for GoldenGate, which we understand was generating slightly more than $100m in trailing sales.
• As Oracle prepares to buy it, Sun's loss widens on a 20-percent sales drop
  Stripping out one-time charges, including $46 million for a restructuring that has cost thousands of workers their jobs, the latest quarter's loss amounted to 7 cents per share. Analysts were expecting a loss of 19 cents per share, but the numbers don't directly compare because Sun subtracted out charges that analysts didn't.
• Ghost of Satyam scandal haunts Infosys investors
  Though Balakrishnan presented a bright picture of the IT giant which achieved a revenue of US$ 4.66 billion and a net profit of US$ 1.28 billion in the fiscal 2009, one investor asked the auditors of the firm if they have physically checked the bank accounts of the company and made sure that the account statements are correct. He said he was compelled to raise this issue because of the Satyam fiasco where the investors had taken the Satyam books for granted thus resulting in the greatest corporate fraud in India.
• Interview: Azim Premji
  In a nondescript office near Paddington station, one of India’s richest men goes on the defensive. “Yes, I am going to pass over large sums of shares to my foundation,” says Azim Premji, founder of Wipro Technologies. “You will see it in due course. But write about it then, please.”
• Satyam Computer — Open Offer: Reject
  Investors who hold shares of Satyam Computer Services can reject the open offer made by Tech Mahindra. The offer price appears unattractive in the light of Satyam’s future prospects, with the recent financial disclosures showing the company’s financial position to be much better than expected.

Predictions and info for Oracle Fusion Middleware launch, July 1

I saw some interesting tweets and have been hearing other rumors and facts regarding Oracle Fusion Middleware and Applications, and Oracle's upcoming announcement on July 1. Here is what I was able to glean and infer based on this information.

First, my predictions:

• Oracle will explicitly or implicitly reveal its plans (and post-merger org structure) for Java in the post-Sun-acquisition period for Fusion Middleware at the Fusion Middleware (FMW) launch on July 1.
• Oracle will deprecate Eclipse (which they don't control) quickly, trying to move Java developers to JDeveloper (which they control). JDeveloper will have tight links to FMW components as well as generic Java, which Oracle will tout as benefits. My $0.02: this is a futile and silly effort, as Eclipse is so much more than just a Java development environment, with an ecosystem that creates enormous value around it. Oracle should come to some "understanding" with IBM and just adopt Eclipse.
• Oracle will show a lot about how Fusion Apps will adopt FMW on July 1 (especially the Java Platform and WebCenter). This is likely to be a real game-changer. I am not certain that other ERP vendors will be able to deliver anything like the compelling user experience, social capabilities, and productivity which will be available with Oracle's new Fusion Applications. Of course, many application customers will stick with their legacy apps, but new implementations (and license purchases) will likely lean heavily towards Oracle Fusion Applications when they are available for financials/HR, which I predict will be around the end of this year. Incidentally, I heard that something like 1000 applications staff from the "legacy" apps at Oracle had been moved several (6 to 9) months ago to Thomas Kurian's group to work on beefing up the functionality in the Fusion Applications.
• There will be no major pricing changes with the new middleware (as compared to today's pricing). However, customers probably will have to buy new licenses as this will be viewed as new products rather than upgrades.
• There will be a new advanced rules engine included in FMW.
• WebCenter and Portal will be upgraded significantly and well-integrated.
  

Conceptual architecture diagram of Oracle's product offerings (click on it for a larger version):



Presenters at this event:

• Hasan Rizvi: Senior Vice President, Fusion Middleware
• Dave Shaffer: Vice President, Oracle Integration
  
• Duncan Mills: Senior Director, Product Management, Tools
  
• Margaret Lee: Director, Product Management, Tools and Middleware (?)
  
• Ted Farrell: Chief Architect & SVP, Tools & Middleware
• Sue Harper: Senior Principal Product Manager, SQL Developer
• Christina Kolotouros: Director, Product Management, WebCenter and Portal
  
• Forest Yin: Director, Product Management, Identity Management products
• Mike Lehman: Senior Director, Product Management, Java Platform

If you have any additional information or rumors or inferences to share, please twitter me or leave a comment on this blog.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-06-19

• Jobs Had Liver Transplant
  Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave from Apple Inc. since January to treat an undisclosed medical condition, received a liver transplant in Tennessee about two months ago. The chief executive has been recovering well and is expected to return to work on schedule later this month, though he may work part-time initially.
• Trends: Vignette bets big on beta-SaaS
  Hosted beta testing may not be new. But it's far from the norm. It's an underutilized (to say the least) alternative to the usual "Go fly our kite in a storm and report back to us" type of beta testing. I think it could catch on bigtime, though, for many of the same reasons SaaS has gotten so much traction lately. Content management vendor Vignette, it turns out, is placing a major bet on "beta-SaaS." The company says that ahead of the next major release of their flagship Vignette Content Management offering, beta customers will be able to take advantage of something called the Vignette Virtual Environment (VVE) Program (known in Austin as "the sandbox"). The company says that VVE will provides beta testers with virtualized instances of V-next running on a full technology stack, with a great deal of infrastructure already configured, so that testers can hit the ground running.
• What's to Come for Ariba?
  when I peer into my Spend Management crystal ball, I see three things based on my recent interactions, product analyses, customer discussions and channel checks. Down and dirty, here they are. First, Ariba's solutions are in the process of emerging from a massive transition. Anyone who thinks they know them and who is not familiar with the new direction, capabilities and differentiation should take a seat in the corner. I'm suitably impressed in this regard and see big things for Ariba in regards to customer traction and product innovation in the coming year. This is not the Ariba we all knew 12 months ago. Or even 6 months ago for that matter.
• Tech giants back ID interoperability project
  The project brings together more than 40 member organisations, and counts companies such as AOL, BT, CA, Intel, The Internet Society, Fidelity Investments, Novell, NRI, NTT, Oracle, PayPal and Sun on its board of trustees. Kantara was initially formed by organisations with a particular focus on identity, including The Internet Society, Libery Alliance, OpenLiberty.org and XDI.org.
• Oracle seen posting quarterly profit decline
  Wall Street analysts expect Oracle /quotes/comstock/15*!orcl/quotes/nls/orcl (ORCL 20.62, +0.37, +1.83%) to post earnings, excluding one-time items, of 44 cents a share for the period ended in May, and $6.5 billion in revenue, according to data from Thomson Reuters. That compares to earnings, excluding one-time items, of 47 cents a share and $7.2 billion in revenue in the same period last year. Analysts also generally expect Oracle's new software-license revenue to fall 24%. The new license number is a key metric for the company because it represents new sales to customers rather than providing maintenance for existing software. Oracle itself has said it expects new software license revenue to fall between 17% and 27% from the quarter last year.
• Oracle: Morgan Stanley Ups Target; Sees "Solid" May Qtr
  Morgan Stanley software analyst Adam Holt this morning repeated his Buy rating on Oracle (ORCL), and raised his price target on the shares to $26, from $20. Holt sees a number of catalysts for the stock coming, including a “solid” earnings report for the fiscal fourth quarter ended May, the launch of the latest version of the company’s Fusion middleware, and the close of the Sun Microsystems (JAVA) acquisition in July. Holt says the Sun deal should add 15 cents a share to EPS in FY 2010. The analyst notes that at 12.8x times his calendar 2010 EPS estimate, ORCL shares trade for about a 25% discount to the Nasdaq Composite, “leaving multiple avenues for further price appreciation as earnings move higher through the summer.”
• SaaS, On-Demand and Cloud ....shift happens..
  Although I do agree with Sikka's comments; SAP has deep process and business intelligence from years of working with large enterprises and they can build a far superior On-Demand platform using that knowledge. The advantage of SAP is also there weakness (too much to chew) though and the reason it is taking them longer to deliver an On-Demand platform.
• MySQL Founders Form Open Database Alliance
  "The Alliance also aims to unify all the different MySQL forks so that there is only one community-developed branch of MySQL instead of three or four as before," Widenius said. Ed Boyajian, CEO of EnterpriseDB, supplier of a commercial implementation of the competing PostgreSQL open source database, said the formation of the group underscores a fracturing of the MySQL community. ''I think it’s a definition of a fractured community,'' Boyajian said during an interview discussing his own company’s new Postgres Plus Advanced Server, launched this week. ''That process started with the Sun acquisition and the uncertainty around what happens with Oracle is accelerating, and guys like Monty want to protect the community of interest.''
• HP and Red Hat Integrate SOA Tools
  The pact gives Red Hat a way to offer governance and policy management to its JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, while it gives those that use HP’s SOA Systinet a lower cost enterprise service bus alternative for points within a SOA environment.
• Sun's Rock Doomed From Start, Analysts Say
  Rock may have gotten buried under the weight of its costs and high expectations, said Gordon Haff, principal IT adviser at Illuminata. Sun has refused to comment on Rock's future, but Haff said that the report of its demise "certainly is a very believable rumor."
• Oracle kills Virtual Iron-ware
  In a letter to Virtual Iron's sales partners, Oracle says it "will suspend development of existing Virtual Iron products and will suspend delivery of orders to new customers." And in a second letter to a partner speaking with The Reg, the company says it will not allow partners to sell new licenses to anyone - including existing customers - after the end of this month (i.e. in 11 days). Before then, partners can only sell licenses to existing customers under certain conditions. "Until June 30, 2009, Oracle may approve granting add-on licenses to existing Virtual Iron end customers, or licensing end customers who had demo’d or otherwise evaluated the former Virtual Iron products and do not require further delivery," the second letter reads.
• Gosling: What's Good for Google May Not Be Good for Java
  In a wide-ranging discussion with eWEEK, Java creator James Gosling sheds light on where he sees innovation in Java, the future of the platform, the legacy of Sun and the new Java Store, among a variety of other topics. In what Sun said was his only formal interview at what could have been the last JavaOne conference, Gosling sat down with eWEEK Senior Editor Darryl K. Taft to engage in an annual tete a tete, which this time proved to be both enlightening and emotional. In this segment, Part 1 of the two-part Q&A, Gosling takes Google to task, talks up the Java Store, and discusses OSGi and more.
• Page 2 - Gosling: There Is Life for Java After Oracle-Sun Buyout
  There are 0 user comments on this Application Development story. Table of Contents: 1. Gosling: There Is Life for Java After Oracle-Sun Buyout 2. Adjusting to a New Culture Rate This Article: Poor Best E-mail Print PDF Version Gosling: There Is Life for Java After Oracle-Sun Buyout - Adjusting to a New Culture ( Page 2 of 2 ) A: Yeah, I'm hopeful. I mean it's certainly plausible. It would certainly be interesting being a part of a software company. And they're deep in all the technologies that we do. So they clearly care about this stuff. I could see it going all kinds of different ways. Q: But their history as a citizen of the Java ecosystem, how would you grade them? A: Colorfully.
• Misunderstanding Magic Quadrants, MarketScopes, and More
  Sometimes you will also hear criticism that Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision do not matter as decision criteria for customers. I think the evaluation criteria within Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision give a well-rounded view of a vendor and its place in a particular market and that is really the point of a Magic Quadrant. A 2×2 matrix is a really convenient way of showing the relative comparison of vendors. However, there are actually a number of different ways we could choose to present the results based on how the scoring is actually done.
• EDS's David Gee on the spectrum of cloud and outsourcing options unfolding before IT architects
  We pose these and other "fluid sourcing" future questions to David Gee, Vice President of Marketing at EDS, in an interview by me, BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner. It comes as part of a special BriefingsDirect podcast series from the Hewlett-Packard Software Universe 2009 Conference in Las Vegas this week.
• IBM/ILOG BRMS 7.0
  With these releases Rule Team Server, ILOG’s collaboration environment, and its Microsoft Office editing tools will be shared across the Java and .NET development tools. The developer tools for Java remain in Eclipse and the .NET tools in Visual Studio but the web and Office-based tools are now shared. Rule projects are stored in a common repository across the three deployment options – Java, .NET and COBOL – and both the Java and .NET platforms can now deploy as Decision Services.
• i2 Announces Software-as-a-Service for Fabless Companies
  i2 Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITWO) today announced the availability of i2 Planning On Demand, an integrated demand and supply planning software-as-a-service (SaaS) for growing fabless semiconductor companies. The solution is designed to allow fabless companies to dramatically increase forecast accuracy and customer delivery performance while optimizing investments in inventory.
• Progress Software Net Falls 52% Amid Dollar, Revenue Weakness
  Still, the business-software maker boosted its diminished fiscal-year earnings forecast slightly as it projected earnings this quarter below analysts' estimates. While reiterating its sales view, Progress projected fiscal-year earnings of $1.72 to $1.81 a share, compared with March's once-again reduced view of $1.70 to $1.80. For the third quarter, it projected earnings of 38 cents to 41 cents a share on revenue of $120 million to $123 million. Wall Street was expecting 42 cents on $122 million, according to a survey of analysts by Thomson Reuters.
• Fifty Tech Startups You Should Know
  BusinessWeek and market researcher YouNoodle have teamed up to identify 50 tech startups flying under the radar. Our list includes fledgling tech companies—most started in 2005 and later—from the U.S., China, India, Israel, and Russia that are attracting some early buzz and are poised to grow beyond their regional or niche-market origins.
• IT Bill of Rights - An Open Letter to the Global Technology Services Community
  On this day, the 19th of January in the year 2009, we in the field of information technology services set forth a new set of standards by which clients and service providers shall interact to form unmistakable and mutually beneficial partnerships. Under this global declaration all clients of IT services and outsourcing firms shall have:
• Salesforce.com Updates Mobile CRM for iPhone
  As soon as you heard Apple (News - Alert) was updating its iPhone software you knew what was coming next -- and sure enough: Salesforce.com officials say the Salesforce CRM Mobile application has been updated to "take full advantage of the new iPhone (News - Alert) 3.0 OS software," giving customers features including the ability to cut, paste and copy, clone records, create custom filters and manage tasks using a new calendar interface."
• SuccessFactors Announces SuccessGold: New Customer Support Offering Tailored for Medium-Sized Businesses
  SuccessGold includes all of the benefits of SuccessStandard plus: * Planning and alignment around a customer's HCM calendar and peak use periods to ensure maximum preparation and effectiveness of the customer support team; * Ongoing focus, oversight, and administration of the support experience by a support account manager who will ensure all cases are handled effectively; and, * Personal orientation to the Customer Success team, which includes an overview of CS, best practices for customer support, and a preview of available online knowledge and training resources to help them be most successful.
• Salesforce.com: Customer relationship software on demand is in demand
  Stock Analysis: Salesforce.com is a moderate-risk stock. Consider buying a 25% position in CRM now then buy another 25% in three months, if U.S. and global economic conditions don't worsen substantially. Under any circumstance, don't buy more than 50% of your CRM position before October 2009. Sell/Stop Loss if you were to buy shares in this company: $17.
• SalesForce.com pitches cloud computing in Microsoft territory
  Salesforce.com was in Seattle on Thursday promoting its cloud-computing product ahead of Microsoft's anticipated announcements this summer about its competing product Azure. Chief Executive Mark Benioff gave a speech at the Grand Hyatt in downtown Seattle to customers in an event called CloudForce, which is touring the globe.
• EnterpriseDB revs Postgres database
  Hopefully EnterpriseDB won't take Oracle compatibility too far and develop a sudden urge to take over the world or buy a big yacht.
• Constant Contact
  By 2004, the company changed their name to Constant Contact and in October 2007 completed its initial public offering. Today, the company has over 150,000 worldwide clients that depend on its Web-based email marketing service to communicate with their customers. Reflecting on her years as CEO Goodman said, “My most rewarding business moment … was reaching 100,000 customers and having a really fun party." And "my scariest business moment ... happened in summer 2001 with less than one payroll in the bank, writing the shutdown plan. It was just a very dark week or two."

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-06-17

• Sapped council staff offered SAP counselling
  Harrassed Somerset County Council staff are to benefit from "support sessions" designed to help them face the trauma of a SAP implementation which has so far seen the software not quite providing local government operatives with "the visibility to pinpoint inefficiencies", the "capabilities to transform them into competitive advantage", the "foresight to identify new opportunities, "the agility to respond, the functionality to optimize your operations", or indeed "the resources to extend best practices to your entire value chain".
• Staff get stress support after SAP go-live
  The council says the difficulties are teething problems.
• Infor Forms New Advisory Council for Channel Partners
  Seeking to strengthen relationships between Infor and its value-added resellers (VARs), the Infor Channel Advisory Council was chartered to be a representative body for Infor's partner network with a set of goals that are mutually beneficial. The council provides Infor partners with agenda topics in advance of meetings to solicit feedback and insight to share with Infor leadership. Once meetings have been completed, the council relays information, conclusions and decisions back to the partner network. By providing a direct line to decision-makers at Infor, the company empowers partners and gains key marketplace and industry insight. Bringing VARs together with Infor technology and sales leadership enables Infor to work in unison with partners to establish consistent global standards and share valuable information on product direction and sales strategy, helping boost channel sales and performance. The group will also help to recruit new partners with deep industry expertise and knowle
• IBM investing $100 million in mobile research
  Mobile enterprise enablement With more business users relying on their cell phones, companies need a way to manage and easily deploy information to those devices. IBM's new technology dubbed "BlueStar" is striving to automate the use of mobile phones and applications within a large enterprise... Emerging market mobility According to information that IBM obtained from Internet World Stats, 83 percent of the world still does not have regular Internet access through a computer. IBM Research has set up a pilot in southern Indian to help consumers and small business owners find and share Internet information via their cell phones. People in the program speak into their phones to grab content, so Web-enabled smartphones are not even needed. Enterprise to end-user mobile experience Here IBM wants to build a better relationship between the mobile user and the back end. By analyzing consumer and business habits, the mobile Web would get better at providing personalized content.
• The Infor Blog: Expanding Payment Options for Customers
  our customers have asked us for it. Given the importance of preserving cash in the current environment, there is considerable advantage for customers in rolling-out new technology initiatives and business strategies in a way that lets them fund these programs over time. Many companies are using the downturn to put programs into place that will enable them to emerge as stronger, more competitive organizations—and our software is a large part of that.
• Intel, Oracle, PayPal Back ID Technology Interop Group
  The Kantara Initiative, formed to promote interoperability among identity verification applications and services, launched on Wednesday with big-name backers like Oracle, Intel, eBay's PayPal, AOL, CA, Novell, Fidelity Investments, Liberty Alliance, Boeing, Internet Society and British Telecom. Enterprise vendors, large companies and technology startups have in recent years developed a wide array of identity applications and services, creating a growing need to address this technology fragmentation, said Roger Sullivan, an Oracle executive who is president of the Liberty Alliance and of the Kantara Initiative.
• Kantara Initiative: Shaping the Future of Global Identity
  Swahili for "bridge"; Arabic roots in "harmony" Kantara Initiative: Bridging and harmonizing the identity community with actions that will help ensure secure, identity-based, online interactions while preventing misuse of personal information so that networks will become privacy protecting and more natively trustworthy environments. Join us!
• Official Google Enterprise Blog: What's different with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook
  [GOOGLE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE ENTERPRISE!-DBM] For that reason, we worked to ensure that as many plug-ins as possible continue to work, like salesforce.com and WebEX. Unfortunately, some plug-ins don't yet work with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, and we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a few of the more common ones: * Microsoft Office Outlook Connector * Acrobat PDF Maker Toolbar * Outlook Change Notifier
• E-City, First Super-Specialty Electronics Store in the Middle East, Uses Retail Solutions from SAP
  [The right way to implement SAP-DBM] The successful implementation of the SAP software was completed in only four months, with the support of a dedicated SAP task force.
• SAP CEO Confirms Operating Margin Target
  German software company SAP AG's (SAP) Chief Executive Leo Apotheker Wednesday confirmed the group's 2009 operating margin goal, but said it was still too early to speak of a market recovery. SAP still hopes to attain an operating margin of between 24.5% and 25.5%, providing service related revenue declines not more than 1% this year, he said, on the sidelines of a press conference in Paris. Apotheker said it was still too early to speak of a market recovery at this stage. However, "Current market trends are better than in the past months," he said.
• SAP chief sees signs of improvement in sector
  Asked if he still banked on an upturn in 2010, Apotheker told reporters: "I think that, provided there is no further major shock, one would expect things to be a little better in 2010 than 2009." Apotheker separately told Reuters Television SAP had no plans for a rights issue, while its job cuts programme was progressing and would be completed sooner than planned.
• America's Cup boat design shrouded in mystery
  The team's design co-coordinator, Grant Simms, told CNN that the design would not be revealed until the latest possible point. "It's quite unusual and we are trying to keep it a secret as long as we can. MainSail special Discover incredible super-yachts and get your sailing fix! Go to MainSail homepage » "We are hoping to stop our opponents from seeing it and reacting to it," he said.
• Oracle Buys Intellectual Property Assets of Conformia
  Today Oracle announced that it has acquired the intellectual property assets of Conformia Software. Conformia’s Product and Process Lifecycle Management (PPLM) software has unique capabilities for Life Sciences companies to manage drug design, development and transfer to production across Bio, Pharmaceutical and Chemical drug components. Oracle plans to integrate Conformia’s product and technology into Oracle Agile PLM solution to offer an end-to-end solution for managing drug development, packaging and commercialization. Oracle plans to provide integrations to Oracle applications, Oracle Health Sciences applications and 3rd party systems. This combination will enable Pharmaceutical and Bio-technology companies to accelerate innovation, meet regulatory objectives and improve productivity. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-06-16

• PostgreSQL delivers alternative for MySQL users wary of Oracle's Sun acquisition
  The latest version of Postgres Plus, being released today is touted by EnterpriseDB as “the fifth-generation of Oracle compatibility technology,” which allows Oracle customers to move applications to the EnterpriseDB database. This version of Postgres Plus is designed to require “minimal migration effort” for Oracle customers looking for a low-cost, open source-based RDBMS as an alternative to giant vendor’s proprietary database products.
• Gartner Advises Organisations to Monitor IT Service Providers' Actions to Increase Their Flexibility and Avoid Bankruptcy
  IT service providers are facing some challenges that include the rise of renegotiation of multiyear and outsourcing contracts, the development of alternative delivery models, and the need to balance price reductions. Gartner predicts price erosion in infrastructure outsourcing from 5 per cent to 20 percent through 2010. For application services, there has been a broad set of price reductions, from the single-digits in India to the high of 10 per cent to 20 per cent in China, and intermediate levels in Europe and the US. Gartner expects that spending in these areas will contract the consulting and integration market by 3 to 5 per cent during 2009.
• EnterpriseDB Named to SD Times 100 for Second Consecutive Year
  EnterpriseDB, the leading enterprise open source database company, announced today that it has been named to the SD Times 100 list in the Databases and Data Tools category for the second consecutive year. The SD Times 100, awarded annually, recognizes companies, non-commercial organizations, open source projects, and other influencers for their innovation and leadership. EnterpriseDB is the leading provider of enterprise-class products and services based on PostgreSQL, the world's most advanced open source database. The company's Postgres Plus products are ideally suited for transaction-intensive applications requiring superior performance, massive scalability, and compatibility with proprietary database products. More information about EnterpriseDB is available at http://www.enterprisedb.com/.
• 'Everything' as a service future means transforming IT for efficiency and scale, says HP's Livermore
  Hewlett-Packard opened its Tech Form 2009 conference here Monday evening with a portrait of a future in which everything in IT is delivered -- and perhaps consumed -- as a service. Ann Livermore, Executive Vice President for HP's Technology Solutions Group (TSG), said the recession and technology advances have combined to offer a new era in computing, one where a hybrid of sourcing and delivery means moves all IT assets to the level of a service.
• Elance: Programming, design & writing dominate skills in demand
  Elance said that based on data from more than 100,000 jobs posted on its site over recent months, the June Elance Online Work Index reveals the following hiring hot spots:
• IBM releases new enterprise cloud portfolio
  The basic CloudBurst package includes: * 1 42U rack * 1 BladeCenter Chassis * 1 3650M2 Management Server, 8 cores, 24GB RAM * 1 HS22 CloudBurst Management Blade, 8 cores, 48GB RAM * 3 managed HS22 blades, 8 cores, 48GB RAM * DS3400 FC attached storage * IBM CloudBurst service management pack * IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager v7.1 * IBM Tivoli Monitoring v6.2.1 * IBM Systems Director 6.1.1 with Active Energy Manager; IBM ToolsCenter 1.0; IBM DS Storage Manager for DS4000 v10.36; LSI SMI-S provider for DS3400 * VMware VirtualCenter 2.5 U4; VMware ESXi 3.5 U4 hypervisor
• Antenna Software Quietly Buys Mobile Enterprise Software Company Dexterra
  However, the sale sounded like anything but a positive exit. "A knowledgeable source" said that Dexterra was selling to Antenna for as little as $18 million, according to TechFlash, which added that reportedly "no one is making money off of this deal." Dexterra had raised $21.5 million as recently as October 2008 from investors including New Enterprise Associates, Canaan Partners, Intel (NSDQ: INTC) Capital, Mesirow Financial, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Ventures and Sigma Partners.
• Microsoft to announce Azure business plan next month | Beyond Binary - CNET News
  In an interview on Monday, Corporate Vice President Allison Watson said that the company will get concrete about the financial details and say how partners can help sell Azure at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference which runs July 13-16 in New Orleans. Until now, Microsoft has said merely that it plans to be "competitive with the marketplace" when it comes to pricing Azure.
• IBM and Siemens PLM to Collaborate on Sales, Tech
  The first product designed as a result of an IBM and Siemens PLM alliance inked over a year ago will debut next week. Version 8 of Teamcenter, Siemens’ flagship PLM product suite, is pre-configured to run on IBM’s DB2 database and its WebSphere infrastructure software, which the companies said will ease the deployment and management of multiple integration points and support the entire product lifecycle, from concept creation through development, manufacturing, and aftermarket sales.
• Microsoft Kills Its Oracle Data Provider for ADO.NET
  Microsoft said yesterday it decided discontinue its System.Data.OracleClient because a significant percentage of its MVPs tend to use alternative third-party offerings. Himanshu Vasishth, the company's program manager for the ADO.NET OracleClient, made the announcement in a posting on the ADO.NET team blog. Microsoft will still make System.Data.OracleClient available in .NET Framework 4, but it will be labeled as "deprecated," according to Vasishth. "This will have no impact to existing applications and these applications will continue to work as expected," Vasishth noted.
• Why Oracle Wants Solaris
  My guess is that the "Industry in a Box" vision mentioned by Charles Phillips, Oracle's co-president, will actually become the next wave of cloud computing. In a previous column, I recommended that Google ( GOOG - news - people ) get into the appliance business. My guess is Oracle will follow this path with a vengeance. Solaris will power Oracle's cloud offerings, but through appliances, Oracle will bring the cloud to the data center.
• EnterpriseDB Pushes Performance, Oracle Compatibility with Updated Database
  In Postgres Plus Advanced Server Version 8.3 Release 2, the company has added a feature called "infinite cache." Built on Memcached, the technology is designed to increase performance and scalability for read-mostly applications. With infinite cache, users can increase the amount of data maintained as in-memory cache by distributing the cache across existing inexpensive commodity hardware farms, the company said. ... The company's newest release also includes Asynchronous Pre-Fetch, a high-performance query solution designed to optimize commodity RAID solutions. For security purposes, EnterpriseDB added support for LDAP and PAM (pluggable authentication module) authentication infrastructures, and a new feature called EnterpriseDB*Wrap protects stored procedures for secure distribution of proprietary or sensitive code.
• Oracle securities lawsuit dismissed
  A federal judge allowed an eight-year-old securities lawsuit against Oracle Corp. and its chief executive, Larry Ellison, to be dismissed, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday on its Web site. The suit alleged that Oracle and Ellison misrepresented the company's financial performance during 2001. Judge Susan Illston of the U.S. District Court for Northern California ruled that the charges were without merit and granted a request for summary judgment, according to the Journal.
• Judge dismisses shareholder suit against Oracle
  U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco threw out the claims Tuesday, saying lawyers failed to show that Oracle had deceived shareholders when it said an economic slump caused the company to miss an earnings forecast. Investors alleged that problems with a software product, improper accounting practices and unrealistic sales projections, all known to senior management, were hidden from them. Oracle shares dropped 21% to $16.88 on March 1, 2001, when the company disclosed that it would miss a fiscal third-quarter profit forecast. Shareholders, including a nurses union pension fund, alleged that Ellison improperly sold $900 million in company stock before the announcement. They accused Oracle of hiding problems with the Suite 11i database-management system released in 2000 and misleading investors about the company's financial condition.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-06-15

• Best Places to Work 2009
  No. 95 Red Hat Inc. Raleigh, N.C. [South Atlantic] http://www.redhat.com Why You Want to Work There As a leading contributor to the development of open-source software, this Raleigh, N.C., company encourages its IT workers to contribute to open-source projects --- frequently during working hours. These contributions not only are often directly used within the company's IT systems and processes, but also are contributed for use by other open-source consumers in the community. This drives innovation not only for Red Hat but for others as well. The IT department puts a strong focus on creating a culture and working environment that attracts and retains the best people, emphasizing a team environment and providing flexibility for external time commitments. IT staffers can take time to attend planned and spontaneous events outside of the office, including many family-oriented functions.
• Best Places to Work 2009
  No. 63 CA Inc. Islandia, N.Y. [Middle Atlantic] http://www.ca.com/us/ Why You Want to Work There The IT department is one of the "premier customers" of this Islandia, N.Y., software giant. IT employees implement the company's own software internally before it gets shipped out to external customers, helping to improve the products before they reach the marketplace. IT employees also work with the research and development team to implement the latest CA technology in IT and with the sales group to develop toolkits and act as a customer reference for the company's products.
• Best Places to Work 2009
  No. 19 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, N.C. [South Atlantic] http://www.sas.com Why You Want to Work There Because the IT team at this Cary, N.C.-based software company must cover 24/7 operations in the data center as well as offer around-the-clock global support, flexible work schedules are key to employee happiness. With that in mind, the company allows people to work flexible schedules (7 a.m. to 3 p.m. instead of the usual 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., for example), offers comp time to on-call employees, gives people time off during the day to attend events at their children's schools and lets employees work from home when necessary to deal with things like family emergencies or home repairs. The flexible schedules benefits IT's customers, too, because they ensure that IT workers are available for extended hours. There are other perks, as well. For example, employees can use an on-site fitness center before or after work or even compete in sports during their lunch hours.
• Best Places to Work 2009
  No. 13 Sun Microsystems Inc. Santa Clara, Calif. [Pacific] http://www.sun.com Why You Want to Work There The flexible work location program tops the list of perks at this Santa Clara, Calif.-based computer giant. Through the OpenWork Program, nearly 19,000 employees, or 56% of Sun's global workforce, work in a place other than a designated office -- at home, say, or in a coffee shop near a customer's office. The program takes advantage of the company's own technology to make the workforce mobile. Employees like the flexibility, and the program helps save commuting dollars and reduces Sun's carbon footprint. An internal study found that employees saved more than $1,700 per year on gasoline and wear and tear on their vehicles. Working from home two and a half days a week, employees reduce energy used for work by the equivalent of 5,400 kilowatt-hours per year. The IT team is also focused on green initiatives: By consolidating two data centers into one new facility in California, 202,000
• How badly are your business applications performing?
  # 30% reporting it taking days or weeks to resolve typical performance issues. # 35% reporting 3-5 incidents per month, 33% reporting 1-2 with 8% reporting almost daily issues. # 39% of those reporting monthly issues also reporting unresolved issues. # 80% reporting that performance issues impact the business with 46% expressing concern about deterioration in customer satisfaction.
• Top ten biggest egos in technology
  10. Carol Bartz...9. Jerry Yang...8. Bill Gates...7. Nicholas Negroponte... 6. Marc Benioff ... It's always slightly disturbing going to a Salesforce press conference. Every employee seems to believe with the passionate intensity that Benioff espouses in the future of SaaS. They may well be right, but the cultishness makes me nervous. ... Shaun Nichols: Marc Benioff was a corporate protege of Larry Ellison at Oracle, and boy does it show. From the permanent tan to the stylish suit without a tie and confident swagger, Benioff is like a double-sized clone of Ellison, Larry's 'Mega Me,' if you will. ...5. Mark Zuckerberg...4. Carly Fiorina...3. Steve Ballmer... 2. Larry Ellison ...Ellison has an ego the size of Texas, and he doesn't care who knows it. He's the highest paid tech chief executive in the industry, and you know he justifies it to himself by the repeated assurances that he's simply the best person out there. ...1. Steve Jobs...
• Salesforce Offers Free Edition of Force.com
  Salesforce.com is offering a free version of Force.com, its cloud computing platform for the enterprise that allows clients to build and run Websites and Web-based applications using cloud resources. Salesforce.com has been aggressively focused on expanding its cloud-based capabilities as the enterprise shifts its emphasis away from on-premises infrastructure.
• Adobe Releases Spreadsheet SaaS Application And Adds Premium Version
  The release of Buzzword exposed the dilemma faced by Adobe in this era of SaaS. I strongly recommend the post written by Redmonk's Michael Cote at that time. Later in May of this year, they announced the release of Presentation app in their labs. Today, they have announced the release of Tables, their SaaS equivalent of spreadsheets in the labs. Like the other two apps, Buzzword and Presentations, where Adobe touted the idea of collaboration, they are pushing Tables also with the same message. In fact, their marketing message itself is "shared tables for shared data". The two key features are the ability to add data simultaneously and a fine grained model to interact with the collaborators on the document.
• Project And Portfolio Management Applications Get SaaS-y
  Historically, project and portfolio management applications have been used by big companies to bring order to their IT management and software development processes. But in these days of tight budgets and increased need to control IT spending, SMBs could use some of those same capabilities. And they are getting them, with the growing number of PPM applications being offered today on a Software-as-a-Service basis, making them easier to scale to a midsize company's needs and budget.
• YouTube - Bill Gates and Steve Jobs highlights at D5
  From d5.allthingsd.com May 31, 2007 by John Paczkowski A selection of rip-roaring laughs and jokes from the joint interview between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at the D5 conference.
• FEAR GRIPS GOOGLE
  [Rattled? Doubtful...-DBM] But co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service, The Post has learned.
• Things A Venture Capitalist Will Never Say
  It’s just so darn true. The “competence” slide with the guy scratching his head is my favorite. I’m pretty sure it’s a clown that’s presenting to them.
• Founder Non-Admissions
  Our financial projections are carefully calculated to be exactly 700% too high
• Microsoft CEO Ballmer to push innovation
  I believe we need to make it easier for U.S. companies to hire highly skilled individuals from other countries by reforming the H-1B visa program, and then we need to take a look at changes to the green card program so American companies can retain the talented people who are vital to U.S. competitiveness. We should also encourage foreign students to stay here after they graduate. More than half of this country's doctoral candidates in computer science and computer engineering come from abroad. It doesn't make sense to educate them here but send them home when they've completed their studies.
• SAP, Competitors Strive to Prove the Value of Software Maintenance on Managing Automation
  SUGEN Board Member Mike Stoko, in an interview with Managing Automation, called the KPI benchmarking program a breakthrough and something that SAP implementers can use to explain to their organizations the value of software maintenance and the increased cost of SAP’s Enterprise Support. SAP is hoping Stoko is right. Specifically, the company hopes that the KPI benchmarking program shifts the discussion among its customers from the cost of Enterprise Support to the value it delivers. “When we brought out Enterprise Support, people did get focused on the price increases, and there were a lot of questions raised on that,” said Bill Wohl, vice president, global field communications, at SAP. “We needed to change the discussion from one on price to one on what customers need and what’s the value that customers are getting out of maintenance services.”
• Microsoft Stops Paying For Employees' iPhones
  Microsoft won't pay for its employees' Apple (AAPL) iPhone data service plans anymore, even if they're used significantly for work purposes. Nor will it pay for Research In Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry service, or a new Palm Pre. Instead, it will only reimburse data plans for Microsoft Windows Mobile-powered smartphones.
• Cloud computing and open source face-off
  Along the way, open source has become a key enabler for cloud computing by providing both cheap inputs (as in free) as well as rich capabilities to providers of cloud services. The writing, however, is beginning to appear on the wall: the cloud computing industry will use open source as leverage for a new generation of proprietary platforms-as-a-service, very much like the established Web 2.0 services in the consumer space have used open source platforms to capture and create lock-in around data.
• I.B.M. to Help Businesses Fight Cost and Complexity
  Starting this week, I.B.M. is returning to the same playbook, introducing some initial products and services and a roadmap for its stable of corporate and government customers to comfortably embrace cloud computing. ... Its early cloud entries, to be announced on Monday, follow that model. One set of offerings is focused on streamlining the technology used by corporate software developers and testers, which can consume 30 percent or more of a company’s technology resources. The second set is virtual desktop services, in which personal computer software, either from Microsoft or open-source alternatives, is run on remote servers and piped to simple desktop machines equipped with screens and keyboards. I.B.M. found in tests with clients that such virtual PCs, with little desktop processing or storage, can use 70 percent less power than conventional PCs and reduce technical support costs by up to 40 percent,.
• IBM - Cloud Computing
  IBM can help you move to a dynamic infrastructure, enabling you to deliver cloud services, whether in your own enterprise, or as one of the growing number of cloud service providers. Cloud computing helps improve service delivery by applying engineering discipline and economies of scale in an Internet inspired architecture. Standardizing systems and software components can help reduce operating expenses, and virtualizing the cloud environment to pool the IT resources help reduce the capital expense of hardware, software and facilities. In addition, service management capabilities are critical for dynamically provisioning, managing and securing resources within the cloud. Addressing these challenges in a cloud environment is key to reduce infrastructure costs, while still meeting the dynamic needs of the business.
• Trends: eXo merges with JBoss - a game changer?
  In the past week two open source portal initiatives decided to merge efforts: going forward eXo will now be a part of the Red Hat JBoss Portal. It's a significant announcement but not one that is really going to rock the enterprise portal buyers world. Let's first consider the positive implications: eXo will gain an audience outside of Europe. And the JBoss Portal will have some nice new applications (content management, collaboration etc) to add to what was a fairly sparse framework. As with any merger, the details could become inconvenient for existing licensees.
• Under the Covers of the Force Platform Data Architecture
  If you have ever wondered how Salesforce.com is built under the hood, this is the video to watch. Craid Weissman the Chief Architect at salesforce.com does a great job explaining some very complex concepts on what it really takes to build a true muti-tenant SaaS application. Actually Salesforce.com is much more than SaaS it is a Platform as a Service PaaS. The Video --1 hour in Length The whitepaper PDF The Power Point PPT
• The Force.com Multitenant Architecture: Understanding the Design of Salesforce.com’s Internet Application Development Platform
  To meet the extreme demands of its large user population, Force.com’s foundation is a metadatadriven software architecture that enables multitenant applications. This paper explains the patented technology that makes the Force.com platform fast, scalable, and secure for any type of application.