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]