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.