Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-11-10

• Why is Oracle fighting so hard for Sun's MySQL?
  [To remove it as a threat for large-scale apps such as cloud and SaaS apps-DBM] "If Oracle doesn't control MySQL, it's a potential threat to them. They need MySQL to secure the perimeter of the low-end of the market," said ITIC analyst Laura DiDio.
• VC Funding Season Ends Next Week
  I’m sure I’ll spark the ire of some VC’s for saying so, but there is certainly such a thing as black-out days in venture capital. It’s worth you knowing this so you don’t waste your time. It’s also very important to understand so that you can properly plan when you raise money.
• Users call new Oracle support portal a 'fiasco'
  A number of Oracle users are infuriated by reported access and performance issues with the vendor's new My Oracle Support portal, which superseded the long-standing Metalink site on Nov. 6.
• SAP Executives Demonstrate Role of Timeless Software as a Critical Growth Enabler in a World of Accelerating Change
  "Over 100 customers have been with SAP for more than three decades," said Sikka. "We haven’t lost a single one of these customers. Everything has changed during this time, but our relationship with the customer has not."
• SAP CTO calls for Java Foundation
  Sikka notes, historically, that in 2007, the JCP executive committee voted on a resolution that the JCP become an "open independent vendor-neutral Standards Organisation where all members participate on a level playing field". That resolution was proposed by Oracle, and seconded by BEA who were acquired by Oracle in 2008, and apparently voted for by all committee members except for Sun which abstained.
• SAP wants an open Java process (pot, meet kettle)
  Irony, thy name is SAP.
• Oracle Unveils PeopleSoft Enterprise CRM 9.1
  Web 2.0 and Customer-Driven Innovations Help Increase User Productivity, Accelerate Business Performance and Lower the Cost of Ownership
• Is the Cloud Going to Kill Conventional SaaS?
  SaaS vendors with their own infrastructure will find it increasingly impossible to compete
• Oracle Unveils Oracle GoldenGate
  # Oracle GoldenGate delivers fast real-time data integration and bulk data transformation, and also provides reliable data quality, instant Business Intelligence (BI), higher Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) performance, and 24x7, continuous data availability for mission-critical systems. # Fully integrating technology from GoldenGate Software into the Oracle Data Integration suite of solutions, Oracle GoldenGate delivers low-impact real-time data integration and replication technology to Oracle Fusion Middleware and provides a comprehensive, heterogeneous data integration platform. # Today, more than 5,000 customers are utilizing Oracle Data Integration technologies, including Oracle Data Integrator Enterprise Edition and Oracle GoldenGate, as a foundation for real-time data warehousing and BI solutions.
• Oracle's Java database continues push into embedded database market
  The embedded database's new replication feature is responsible for distributing data out to multiple nodes in a networked system. This ensures both continued uptime -- in case one or more nodes in the network go down -- as well as improved scalability because all nodes are available to receive and service read requests.
• New RFID technology reduces shipping headaches
  IBM has released a new version of its InfoSphere Traceability Server, which includes Returnable Container Management functionality to enable customers to track the whereabouts of their containers using RFID tags. The new offering has been designed to cut the costs and shipping delays associated with lost or misplaced returnable containers, said IBM. The containers are shipped by manufacturers to suppliers, who fill them and send them back.
• BMW Oracle Racing reveals its secret wing in San Diego
  BMW Oracle Racing revealed its long rumored “new technical development” on Sunday, Novermber 8, 2009, when it wheeled a huge wing out of it tent in San Diego. In the coming weeks the wing will be tested as a replacement for a traditional soft sail now used on BOR 90, the team’s 90-ft trimaran being readied for America’s Cup 33. The construction of the wing took place at Core Builders, the team’s boat-building facility in Anacortes, Washington, with finishing work completed at the team base in San Diego, hidden under a tent.
• Swiss finally offer to race America's Cup at Valencia, Spain
  After wasting 28 months in a fruitless legal battle, Switzerland’s Team Alinghi said today it would race America’s BMW-Oracle for the America’s Cup on Feb. 8 at Valencia, Spain, the same place the Americans offered to race in 2007. However, instead of a monthslong event involving a dozen nations, as the Americans had sought, it will be a best-of-three, one-on-one grudge match between a 115-foot Swiss catamaran and a 113-foot American trimaran that probably will be over in two races.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-11-09

• Oracle's Sun Deal: Oracle May Need to Loosen Its Grip
  Regulators may ask Oracle to release a new version of MySQL that it doesn't control to preserve competition. Sun bought MySQL for $1 billion in 2008. Oracle declined to comment for this article. [That's Safra Catz and Judith Sim flanking Larry in the photo-DBM]
• Is Salesforce.com an Acquisition Target?
  But this is a speculative article, so I’m going to go ahead and handicap the most likely outcomes: An acquisition by Microsoft: 15-1P: Microsoft is too in love with their own CRM and cloud efforts to buy anyone else’s. The company prefers the divide-and-conquer strategy over the acquire-and-integrate one. By Oracle: 10-1: For a while, pundits loved the idea of an Oracle acquisition. However, Oracle is busy building out its On Demand suite and has its sights set on beating Salesforce.com at its own game. Moreover, wouldn’t Oracle be more likely to acquire SAP? By SAP: 9-1: It makes perfect sense, which means it’s not likely to happen. Despite some movement towards SaaS offerings, SAP is still an old-fashioned shrink-warp software company. A major acquisition could radically change their culture, which means they’ll pass. By Google, 5-1: Rumors flew in 2008 that Google would acquire Salesforce.com. It didn’t’ happen. However, Google has made no secret of its desire to unseat Microsoft
• Welcome to the User Assistance Experience
  In this blog, I'll cover all sorts of issues relating to what we call "user assistance" in Oracle Fusion Apps - messages (all sorts, errors, warnings, and more), embedded help, and nonembedded help. I'll focus especially on the design and deployment of user assistance, and how is relates to user experience in general.
• The Empire Strikes Back: Cisco Unveils a Bevy of New Products and Increases Microsoft Competition
  I think the total count is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60. Cisco is also having a press and analyst day this week to update everyone on its vision and how all of these new products fit into it. Despite the fact that I think this should have been at VoiceCon, I do think there are some significant product announcements in here. To me, the product release that could have the most upside for Cisco is the WebEx Mail product. A year or so ago, Cisco quietly bought a small, web based e-mail company called PostPath and we haven't heard much from Cisco about this since then. I'm sure many people have looked at this and thought to themselves that Cisco has zero chance of capturing any of the e-mail market because it's a very mature market. I must admit that I do believe that share shift is extremely difficult in mature markets and despite this, I do think Cisco has a legitimate shot here.
• Microsoft buys Teamprise tool for Java bridge
  The "assets" allow developers using Eclipse or working on multiple operating systems - Mac, Linux and Unix - to build apps with Microsoft's Visual Team Foundation Server.
• SAP BusinessObjects Explorer finally waltzes in Vienna
  In doing so, Explorer finally becomes a useful tool for BI search queries across multiple data sources, not just SAP. That's something most companies need to do.
• The Road From HRM To Business Results Is Littered With Misguided Metrics — Part I
  Putting aside the baseline budget we must spend on HRM just to do the essential record-keeping, compliance and payroll (notice that I consider actually compensation and benefits outlays, as well as benefits administration, completely open for discussion), every other dollar invested, to include every total compensation dollar, should be focused on and justified by how it moves these ratios in a positive direction — and by how much.
• Dashboards Drive Value for the Organization
  "Our managers will get alerts in real time, notifying them that certain agents are either overloaded or underutilized, so we will contact them through the Cognos appliance, telling them to up or down the dial," Noerr says. "When we see volume getting lower, instead of waiting 60 seconds, we will start turning the dial down to 45 seconds, so we continue to dial that down ... if volume picks up, it automatically ups the time to 90 seconds, and so on."
• How Complex Systems Fail
  (Being a Short Treatise on the Nature of Failure; How Failure is Evaluated; How Failure is Attributed to Proximate Cause; and the Resulting New Understanding of Patient Safety)
• Gartner Downgrades SaaS Forecast
  Gartner has downgraded its forecast from the $8 billion it projected earlier this year. The latest forecast, released Monday, also predicts the SaaS market to hit $14 billion in 2013. This is down from Gartner's forecast in May -- based on research conducted in early 2009 -- in which it forecast $16 billion in revenue by 2013.
• RIM Boosts BlackBerry Developer Tools
  Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM) said Monday it is enhancing the platform with new application programming interfaces that will potentially enable richer applications. During its second-annual BlackBerry Developer Conference, the company looked to address some of the perceived weaknesses in its platform for developers. Mobile applications are becoming increasingly important in the smartphone space, primarily due to the success Apple has had with its App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Apple owners have already downloaded more than two billion apps in about a year and a half, and the iPhone is gathering a lot of mindshare and attention within the developer community.
• Open-source Hadoop powers Tennessee smart grid
  Currently there is around 20 TB of archived data, we expect this to grow quickly as a result of the SmartGrid stimulus funding which includes the addition of 850 phasor measurement devices. This may well grow the archive to half a Petabyte within the next few years.
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2: A Closer Look
  In-memory analysis is clearly the big headline in the "R2" release of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, announced last week and expected in the first half of 2010. But the upgrade also promises master data management functionality, stream processing capabilities and improved datacenter administration. Current licensees will be able to sample it all in a Community Technical Preview (CTP) to be released this month. The three big themes behind the upgrades are pervasive insight, IT efficiency and dynamic development. But to dive into the details, here's a synopsis of what to expect in the next version of Microsoft SQL Server.
• Satyam Added 35 Clients Since April
  Our business performance is more or less in line with the business case we had built," C.P. Gurnani told Dow Jones Newswires on the sidelines of the Indian Economic Summit.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-11-08

• The Cranky Product Manager
  [Very funny software insider-DBM] The topic: the Cranky Product Manager is gonna talk about the big dysfunctions that seem endemic to nearly all B2B software vendors: 1. Marketing lies – intentional and unintentional. 2. Ridiculously complicated licensing, option-itis, and near-malignant product proliferation. 3. Wrongly applying the 80/20 rule to product development (example: delivering a product that does only 20% of the main use case, yet expecting 80% of the product’s potential revenue)
• 10 Things The Cranky Product Manager Has Learned About Product Management
  3. On dumbassery: If your VP of Engineering thinks the target customer is just like him (notice the lack of “/her”), you’re doomed. 4. On dumbassery #2: If the VP of Marketing thinks the target customer is just like him/her, you’re doomed. 5. On early-stage start-ups: At most early-stage start-ups, the CEO/founder is the real product manager. The person with the “product manager” title is a demo monkey, a data sheet generator, and comes up with requirements by officially documenting whatever the CEO/Founder brain-farted in the last meeting. Have fun being a glorified admin. Note: this also applies at Apple.
• Infosys Collaborates with Oracle to Launch the Infosys Business Platform for HR
  The Infosys Business Platform for HR is built on Oracle’s industry-leading PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management (HCM) Suite and offers the entire "Hire-to-Retire" processes and operations such as HR Administration, Payroll and Talent Management functions like Recruitment, Performance Management, and Learning Management in a fully hosted and managed environment.
• The seven elements of Cloud computing's value
  So after reading countless blogs, conference proceedings, customer stories and news articles, I sat and stared at a blank piece of paper for a while, thinking about how I could pull all the different perspectives together to show one picture that captures all the different ways in which Cloud computing can potentially deliver value. This is what I ended up drawing and presenting in my talk:
• Defining Cloud Computing for Business Users
  In a nutshell, Cloud Computing can be defined as a set of computing and storage resources providing an application platform as a service. This platform is characterized by a unique set of economic, architectural, and strategic elements of value, which clearly distinguishes it from anything that has been available so far, even though it builds upon the legacy of more than 50 years of distributed computing.
• What And Why Are Human Resource Management?
  The purpose — the expected organizational results — of HRM are to maximize the performance of the organization’s workforce and the leverage from its intellectual capital and personal networks toward achieving the organization’s stated business outcomes. If we could get all of the organization’s work done and results achieved without any workforce, we wouldn’t need HRM. But we can’t, so we do.
• Teradata Transition On Course in Steady Quarter, With Exciting New Offerings Ahead
  But one hopes Teradata rationalizes the bewildering story, the wild mix of OSs, interconnects and disks, into a more coherently told story. Sales forces respond slowly to changes of this magnitude, and the confusion during this transition will not help. To its credit, Teradata has introduced fascinating tools for the assessment of customer needs that will help, and if it executes on this transition as well as it has on the past two, Teradata will remain formidable in the next few years as this cycle matures and garners customer successes.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-11-07

• The Next Big Thing in SaaS and The Cloud: Costs linked to business outcome?
  [Customers don't even pay their *employees* this way...-DBM] “Why not have a CRM vendor charging for their software by the number of leads?” he asked.
• Rittman Mead Consulting » Blog Archive » Inside Oracle’s Analytic Applications for Financial Services
  The Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications, like EPM Suite and the BI Apps, consists of a number of modules, some of which are based on i-flex / Reveleus technology (Oracle Financial Services Funds Transfer Pricing, Profitability Management etc) but with one, Oracle Financial Services Profitability Analytics, based on OBIEE technology with an i-flex derived underlying relational data model.
• Mahindra Satyam restarts hirings, recalls bench
  Mahindra Satyam has lifted its hiring freeze and is set to hire 120 employees in the next one month. And that's not all. It has also called back 1,400 of its 6,000 employees who are on the bench. CNBC-TV18 learns that this hiring comes after new deals being signed this quarter especially in the emerging markets.
• Ingres CEO's Advice about Enterprise Software Makes No Sense
  I hope Fortune gets some of Ingres’ ad money after it let Burkhardt put a free ad on its editorial pages. The two-part article titled “How enterprise software giants separate you from more of your company’s money” makes no sense.
• Nobel laureate says global crisis a chance to change
  Peter Graf of SAP warned meanwhile that if they failed to act on global issues, there was "a danger of companies losing their social license to do business." He called the threat "hugely underestimated as the public gets more and more aware of the crises that we are facing."
• Quick, Patent It!
  Allowing an abstraction of this kind to be protected would take patent law too far.
• Dark Cloud For The Software Industry
  Hardly anybody is pulling for Jakes on this one. But they aren't supporting the federal circuit court, either, fretting that a rule that precludes patents on anything but a machine or a process might stifle innovation.
• Abandoning software patents?
  In software, rather than supporting innovators, patents protect the old against the new. Although large firms now contribute to these projects, many of the developers are still individuals and people who don't directly profit. The terms of distribution for this software are the same now as they always have been. It's a proven formula, and a key clause is that you can't distribute if patent royalties will be required.
• Software cos. eye key patent case in Supreme Court
  [Seriously flawed analysis.This is a worst-case scenario for large patent-holders,not for small companies nor for large companies sued by patent trolls.If you are in the software industry,you should be following the Bilski case-DBM] In a worst-case scenario for the high-tech industry, the ruling could invalidate many existing software patents or at least make them more difficult to defend in lawsuits. And it could make such patents harder to obtain in the future because software is generally patented as a process for doing something rather than as a physical invention.
• In re Bilski - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  In re Bilski, 545 F.3d 943, 88 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385 (Fed. Cir. 2008), is an en banc decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on the patenting of method claims, particularly business methods. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari on June 1, 2009.[1] The case has been set for oral argument on November 9, 2009. The Federal Circuit court affirmed the rejection of the patent claims involving a method of hedging risks in commodities trading. The court also reiterated the machine-or-transformation test as the[2] applicable test for patent-eligible subject matter, and stated that the test in State Street Bank v. Signature Financial Group should no longer be relied upon.
• BRIEF AMICUS CURIAE OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION IN SUPPORT OF NEITHER PARTY
  Patentable subject matter under Section 101 is restricted to inventions that involve a technological contribution and do not preempt a fundamental principle. Returning the focus to these substantive principles of patentability is necessary to restore balance to the patent system’s policy objective of fostering innovation without improperly impacting competition.
• Google's Obsession With Microsoft Burns Hotter
  "Hopefully we won't repeat the mistakes that Microsoft made ten years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened with them," Schmidt told Fox Business. "In our case, we see ourselves as a disruptor, because we're using new technology to solve real consumer problems that, in some cases, people didn't even realize could be solved." [Isn't that what Microsoft said about IBM 25 years ago too?-DBM]
• Google Already Making Microsoft Mistakes It Wants To Avoid
  The number of ways that Google has interested regulators and concerned other businesses is remarkable, and parallels Microsoft in some ways: * When talking about why users should trust them, the explanation essentially is “because we say so” and because they’re interested in your welfare. * Google dominates search almost to the extent that Microsoft dominated desktop and laptop operating systems. * Google is more apt to do something first and ask for permission only after the lawsuits start hitting the fan, as with the book scanning. * Just as Microsoft once did, Google has ignored concerns over antitrust, no matter how much lip service it gives to the concept. If that were not the case, we wouldn’t have seen so much government attention in the U.S. and Europe over the company’s activities.
• 18 truths: The long fail of complexity
  This is one of the most insightful and important papers on failure I have read. Although focused on health care delivery, the lessons are equally applicable to large enterprise software systems.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-11-06

• Oracle Database Vault Increases Security of SAP Application Data
  Oracle Database Vault is now certified for use with SAP applications. With Oracle Database Vault, protective realms around SAP application database objects can be established to prevent privileged database users from accessing sensitive data and to enforce separation of duties among privileged database users. Oracle Database Vault provides the following default realms to protect the SAP application and data within the database: * Application Protection Realms for ABAP™ and the Java stacks: Protects all the sensitive SAP business data against unauthorized access from the privileged database users, and maintains the integrity of the SAP database structures; * Application Administration Realm for BR*Tools: Securely protects the integrity of all Oracle Database objects such as tables and indexes that are used by the BR*Tools and guards against unauthorized changes from other privileged database users; * Application Protection Realm for Admin Roles: protects SAP administrat
• Windows 7 Not so Great as Advertised and Has Compatibility Issues: Is Microsoft in Collusion With Manufacturers like HP?
  However, Windows 7 didn't accept my HP LaserJet 1012 printer or Creative Cam Live! Pro! webcam drivers, nor my Transparent Language WordAce! German dictionary and True Fonts program, all on CD. [Although I'm not a big fan of HuffPo, this is a very good article about how "normal" people experience computers.-DBM]
• BMW ORACLE’S ANZAC Team Take on the Louis Vuitton Trophy Nice
  Of the 21 team members listed, only Larry Ellison, the owner of the team has the letters USA after his name. Of the others, 13 are from New Zealand including Skipper Russell Coutts, 2 Australians, 2 Italians, 1 Japanese and 1 Canadian. Shannon Falcone is listed with country abbreviation ANT.
• HP plans a trillion-sensor global stethoscope
  It means they can detect and respond to flutters as well as shakes. That implies they can be used to better monitor the status of buildings and bridges, fault zones in the earth, mining operations and volcanoes. In fact, any application where detecting microscopically small vibration events or patterns is important. HP says the technology involved nano-sensing research and uses fluidic MEMS technology, co-developed by HP Labs and its Imaging and Printing Group. It claims ultrasensitive, low-power "sensors based on this technology can achieve noise density performance in the sub 100 nano-g per square root Hz range". Such sensors "can be customised with single or multiple axes per chip to meet individual system requirements."
• How Google, Facebook, and Amazon Are Changing the World of Human Resources
  If your employees haven't already demanded the same level of collaboration and productivity in their business applications as they experience in consumer Internet applications, they are sure to make their voices heard soon. Consumer Internet applications are making people's lives easier every day. Shouldn't they also be able to make your employees more productive and efficient?
• SAP TechEd 2009 LIVE
  REPLAY: SAP TechEd Highlights
• Oracle on Database: It’s On. And They’re Not Kidding.
  Here’s just a taste: * Hybrid Columnar Compression * Smart Flash Cache * High performance in memory parallel query (PQ) * Online Application Upgrades * Real time SQL monitoring * Simplified RAC install * RAC One Node – packaging RAC stuff but at lower cost * RAC support for Oracle VM * ASM cluster file system * Secure backup (don’t use Symantec anymore) * TimesTen (PL/SQL support) * Berkeley DB * Enterprise Manager * App Express and SQL Developer 2.0 * Audit Vault support for DB2 and SybaseOracle Apps * Database Vault (for SAP), Transparent Data Encryption for
• A Memo regarding Corporate Social Media policies
  So show us – in financial terms. In other words, if you propose that we invest our time and money – you need to build a business case.
• PL/SQL Support in DB2
  [THIS IS HUGE!-DBM] DB2 9.7—which was released a few months ago—supports the most commonly used PL/SQL syntax. In fact, PL/SQL support in DB2 is just the tip of the iceberg. The following table describes some of the new features in DB2 9.7. Oracle Database Feature DB2 9.7 Support Concurrency control Native support SQL dialect Native support PL/SQL Native support PL/SQL packages Native support Built-in packages Native support JDBC client with extensions Native support SQL*Plus scripts Native support
• PL/SQL Anonymous Blocks (in DB2 9,7)
  All you need to do is set the DB2 compatibility to Oracle: db2set DB2_COMPATIBILITY_VECTOR=ORA db2stop db2start db2 create db test This creates a database with compatibility for PL/SQL and Oracle data types. Of course, I've gotten used to some Oracle compatibility in EnterpriseDB but it's not to this level. However, it is thanks to the people at EnterpriseDB that DB2 has this functionality.
• Using PL/SQL anonymous blocks in DB2 9.7
  IBM DB2® for Linux®, UNIX®, and Windows® 9.7 introduces support for PL/SQL anonymous blocks: a feature that enables PL/SQL application developers to test, troubleshoot, and prototype new procedural code, simulate application runs, and dynamically build complex ad-hoc queries and reports. This article describes the concept of anonymous blocks in DB2 9.7 and illustrates the use of this feature using common database scenarios.
• Run Oracle applications on DB2 9.7 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows
  IBM® DB2® 9.7 for Linux®, UNIX®, and Windows® has out-of-the-box support for Oracle's SQL and PL/SQL dialects. This allows many applications written against Oracle to execute against DB2. In this article, get a high-level overview of what Oracle compatibility means in DB2. Whether you want to switch your custom application to DB2 or extend your DBMS vendor support to DB2, now is your time.
• Infosys offers multi-function human resource solutions
  Built on Oracle's PeopleSoft enterprise human capital management suite, the offering will help companies streamline their HR operations and reduce costs, as it includes hire-to-retire processes and functions such as HR administration, payroll and talent management.
• iPhone & ERP Go Together Like PB & Jelly
  The combination offers a glimpse of enterprise software's future: flexible, intuitive and mobile access to business data.
• YouTube - NetSuite CEO, Zach Nelson, on Bloomberg
  NetSuite (NYSE:N) CEO Zach Nelson talks cloud computing on Bloomberg's "Taking Stock" show hosted by Pimm Fox.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-11-05

• Amdocs Limited Reports Quarterly Revenue of $707 Million, Up Sequentially and Above Guidance
  Free cash flow was $166 million for the quarter, comprised of cash flow from operations of $184 million less approximately $18 million in net capital expenditures and other. Twelve-month backlog, which includes anticipated revenue related to contracts, estimated revenue from managed services contracts, letters of intent, maintenance and estimated on-going support activities, was $2.385 billion at the end of the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009.
• The H-1B Visa Lull Is Only Temporary
  Demand for H-1B visas will rebound as the economy recovers, especially among outsourcing firms that are now the program's heaviest users
• MySQL to DB2 UDB Conversion Guide
  This redbook also provides step-by-step instructions for installing and using the IBM DB2 Migration Toolkit (MTK) to port the database objects and data from MySQL to DB2 UDB. Application programming and conversion considerations are discussed along with the differences in features and functionality of MySQL and DB2 UDB.
• Useful MySQL shell commands
• Billing system testing behind Microsoft's SQL Azure outage this week
  SQL Azure will be feature-complete by November, the Softies have said, and testers will have the option of rolling over existing projects seamlessly to the fully supported production environment and a paid subscription to the SQL Azure Database service. Microsoft officials have said to expect the company to remove the beta tag from Azure by mid-November. Last week, the Softies said that the company will go public with a number of new Windows Azure features on November 17 during the company’s Professional Developers Conference. The Azure CTP will remain open through December 31. Customers won’t be charged for Azure usage in January, but as of February 1, Microsoft will begin charging customers for using Windows Azure.
• The iPhone and Business; Netsuite Banks on a Happy Union
  The Netsuite application delivers up the expected dashboard and information overviews including; * NetSuite Dashboards including KPIs, report snapshots, trend graphs, scorecards, reminders, and recent records. The dashboards are interactive, allowing users to drill down and explore trends with the touch of a finger. * NetSuite Calendar with support for accepting or declining events and marking tasks complete. * Lead, Prospect & Customer records tailored to mobile sales, field service and executive leadership, including access to associated contacts, marketing campaigns, opportunities, quotes, orders, purchase history, financial history, cases, and issues. * Productivity tools that leverage native capabilities of the device, such as click-to-call from any NetSuite record containing a phone number, click-to-email from any NetSuite record containing an e-mail address, and click-to-map (via Google Maps) from any NetSuite record containing a physical address.
• Tata Consultancy Services Scales Up U.S. Software Delivery Center With 300 Associates
  At an event today attended by Ohio's Governor Ted Strickland, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), (BSE: TCS.BO, NSE: TCS.NS), a leading IT services, business solutions and outsourcing firm, announced that it had scaled up its North America Domestic Delivery Center, TCS Seven Hills Park, to 300 associates. Seven Hills Park provides a wide range of IT solutions, consulting, business process outsourcing and engineering services for TCS customers across industries including Banking and Financial Services, Life Science and Healthcare, as well as Manufacturing and Retail.
• Alinghi offers Australia as America's Cup venue
  [Bogus offer-the rules say it must be a northern hemisphere venue-DBM] "This is a venue that should be acceptable to both teams if, as expressed publicly, the true intention of BMW Oracle is to race for the America's Cup on the water," Alinghi said in a statement.
• SAP's 'Invitation' to Oracle
  "As you know, we have significant concerns about Oracle's proposed takeover of Sun. We renew our invitation to meet to attempt to resolve our concerns and other open issues between our companies. Please let us know if and when you would like to meet." The "other open issues," in case you are wondering, include a multibillion-dollar industrial espionage lawsuit pending against SAP in the U.S...SAP declined to explain what Mr. Apotheker could have meant by his offer beyond confirming that he had written it and noting that it is "normal that we are in a continuous dialogue" with Oracle. Normal isn't the word we'd use to describe such behavior. The timing of the letter suggests that Mr. Apotheker either believed, or wanted Oracle to believe, that he could smooth the merger review if he so desired. Nothing came of the offer, and the Commission now seems poised to block the deal. Only the antitrust mandarins in Brussels know for sure if they'd act differently if Mr. Ellison had accepted Mr
• Ex-Informatica chief returns touting next wave of data integration
  Last week, Dhillon assumed CEO duties at data integration startup, SnapLogic Inc. The move was not that surprising. Dhillon was, along with two other Informatica executives, one of the San Mateo, Calif. firm's co-founders, as well as its first investor, seeding it with $2.5 million of his own money back in 2006.
• Google's Schmidt on What Sets Silicon Valley Apart
  What makes Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley workers different, and can that be replicated elsewhere? A: You need a bunch of things. You need a venture-capital industry, you need a culture that will be tolerant of failure and the laws have to allow you to fail and not be criminalized. You have to obviously have a global perspective. It has been remarked many times in Silicon Valley that when you walk through Silicon Valley, the majority of the people do not look like WASP-y Americans. They at least visually appear culturally different and they are often from India, for example. These are all reproducible but they aren't reproducible easily.
• A View of Atherton From Real-Estate Agents
  “Nobody was buying and it was very scary,” she says. But “listings since July and August are getting snapped up,” she adds. Tom Dallas, another real-estate agent who sells homes in Atherton and other nearby towns, says, “Definitely there is a little pickup, not in the extreme high-end homes above $15 million, but there is activity in the $4 million to $10 million range. People are calling and saying, ‘What do you have?’”
• N.Y. AG in 'witch hunt' for Intel, says think tank
  Calling New York's lawsuit a "witch hunt," the group noted in an e-mail statement that "few markets are as vibrant and innovative as the processor market."
• Big Software has duped us for decades – Part II
  Introduce real competition to the software license cartel.[How about a government option to increase competitiveness? :) -DBM]

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-11-04

• Microsoft Loses Don Dodge. This Is A Huge Mistake
  Among the 800 or so employees laid off by Microsoft today: Don Dodge, Microsoft's Director of Business Development for the Emerging Business Team, reporting to VP Dan'l Lewin. Don writes about the change on his personal blog.
• Microsoft laying off 800 more
  With the goal of eliminating 5,000 positions by June 2010, Microsoft began laying off employees this past spring. Spokesman Lou Gellos said Wednesday's cuts bring the total to about 5,800 – more than what was expected.
• Microsoft Cuts Another 800 Jobs
  In total, around 6.3% of the company's approximately 91,000 head count will have been eliminated after the program is completed, up from the 5.5% previously expected.
• Is the vendor solely responsible for WCM project failure?
  "It's easy and tempting to blame the software vendor or system integrator when projects run late, over budget, or do not achieve planned results. Human nature suggests that blaming an external party is always easier than examining our own role in the failure situation. In my experience, however, many projects fail because groups inside the customer organization have different goals and measures of success," Krigsman says.
• Will AEP Replace RDBMS? A Dialogue With Charles Brett
  Specialty engines have taken the place of the monolithic transaction monitor, offering specialized services like rules processing, master data management, application services, etc. “One layer back” in the architecture, the persistence layer is undergoing a similar transformation, evolving engines that support specialized needs. As a result, rather than RDBMS shrinking, we believe that with the addition of AEP, the whole pie will grow.
• Benefits and tradeoffs of on-demand SAP SRM
  On-demand versions of SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) provide almost all the same capabilities as the installed version of SAP SRM, except for the ability to customize and configure the system at a truly granular level.
• Oracle Plans Aggressive Fight With EU Over Sun Takeover
  Oracle is planning an aggressive fight with European regulators if its attempt to take over Sun is slapped with a statement of objections in the coming week, said people close to the company Wednesday. Unsourced news reports that a statement of objections is imminent surfaced earlier Wednesday. The European Commission declined to comment on the reports, but confirmed that if such a step was to be taken it would have to be taken soon, in order to allow enough time for procedures leading up to the Jan. 19 deadline for a ruling.
• NetSuite Announces Third Quarter 2009 Results
  Total revenue for the third quarter of 2009 was $41.7 million. Revenue from the Americas for the third quarter of 2009 was $34.7 million, while revenue from international regions was $7.0 million. On a GAAP basis, net loss for the third quarter of 2009 was $8.0 million, or $(0.13) per share, as compared to a net loss of $6.2 million, or $(0.10) per share, for the third quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income for the third quarter of 2009 was $348,000, or $0.01 per share, as compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $1.7 million, or $(0.03) per share, for the third quarter of 2008.
• Amdocs Q4 profit beats market, sees strong Q1
  Q4 adj. EPS $0.53 vs est. of $0.49 * Q4 rev $707.4 mln * Sees Q1 EPS $0.51-$0.55 vs est of $0.50 * Sees improvement in deal activity in Q4 * Shares up 6 pct after-market (Recasts; Adds conference call details, updates
• NetSuite posts widened quarterly loss
  NetSuite Inc. on Wednesday posted a widened third-quarter loss, as the provider of business software saw general and administrative costs triple compared to the same period last year. San Mateo, Calif.-based NetSuite /quotes/comstock/13*!n/quotes/nls/n (N 14.63, +0.04, +0.27%) said its loss for the period ended in September widened to $8 million, or 13 cents a share, from $6.2 million, or 10 cents a share, in the quarter last year. Revenue rose to $41.7 million from $40.4 million. Excluding special items, Netsuite said earnings for the quarter were 1 cent a share.
• Microsoft preps SQL Server for battle in two enterprise arenas
  Routinely accused of bloating Windows and Office, Microsoft Corp. has acted more like a skinny teenage boy with enterprise apps like SQL Server: desperate to bulk up. King of the middleweight databases, SQL Server has yet to be fully accepted by the big boys, admits Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft's Server & Tools division. "Really large data warehouses and extremely large scale-up apps are the last high-end problems" remaining for SQL Server, Muglia said in a keynote at the Professional Association of SQL Server (PASS) users' conference in Seattle on Monday.
• BMW Oracle blasts Alinghi for court battle
  Dubai: The wheel has turned a full circle with Challenger BMW Oracle Racing now blasting defender Alinghi for continuing the court battles surrounding the hosting of the 33rd America's Cup in February next year.
• What If Larry Leaves Sun At The Altar?
  What happens if Oracle fails? The answer: Not much. And that could be a big problem for Sun. If the deal fell through, it would leave Oracle facing a potentially crippled rival at virtually no cost to Oracle. Antitrust approval is a condition of the transaction, and the merger agreement merely says Oracle must make "reasonable best efforts" to get it approved. The contract doesn't spell out what those reasonable efforts might be. "That's a matter of debate, but doing nothing is not a reasonable step," said Lawrence Hamermesh, a professor of corporate law at Delaware's Widener Law School. Even if Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison fails to lift a finger, the penalty doesn't look too severe. The main deal protection for Sun shareholders is a breakup fee of $260 million, plus up to $45 million in expenses. By way of comparison, that's about how much Oracle earns every 20 days.
• Re-inventing the Wheel
  [Sorry, but I think I seriously dislike Workday's UI :-( -DBM] Here's Workday 9: