Enterprise headlines and excerpts, 2011-01-21

Enterprise news and headlines, first half of January 2011

2011 has gotten off to a very interesting start in the world of enterprise software and solutions. Headlines and summaries follow, but so far we've seen an announcement that Eric Schmidt is stepping down from his role as CEO of Google, that HP is turning over a substantial fraction of its board under the new leadership of Ray Lane and Leo Apotheker, Wipro's co-CEO's have resigned, Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence from Apple, Microsoft has gotten more aggressive in the CRM space, SAP had a very strong Q4, and a number of Microsoft executives have left the company. With SAP's surprisingly strong showing in Q4, and many other signs of improvement in the business climate, 2011 could be a much stronger year for enterprise software and solutions.

• #Oracle patching fewer database flaws as it adds more products
  They have apparently reassigned their priorities and are choosing not to fix all the database vulnerabilities that are reported to them. It appears that they are losing some of the DBMS focus and are getting spread too thin on other stuff."
  
  Oracle did not respond to a request for comment on the reason for releasing six database patches.
• Cool #InfoGraphics: An Illustrated View of #SAP SPS 18 (via @InFullBloomUS)
  It’s mind-boggling that the SAP Enterprise software is so big that the last round of updates had 13,349 notes/changes! I can totally understand the need for Panaya’s simulations and analysis for IT managers trying to manage implementing these updates. Panaya has a fantastic service that can evaluate the impact of each update package (support package stack) for their clients’ unique and different installations of SAP.
• #SAP Support Package Stacks Have Never Looked so Sexy – An Illustrated View of SPS 18
  One of the advantages of running a SaaS solution here at Panaya is that we can run aggregate analysis across hundreds of projects. Think “Google Trends” for SAP Support Package Stacks. We ran our simulation over hundreds of different instances to determine the typical impact areas and other stats. The goal is to help you plan towards your implementations.
• Big Bang At #Google: Larry Page To Replace Eric Schmidt As CEO On April 4
  Eric Schmidt will assume the role of Executive Chairman, focusing externally on deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership–all of which are increasingly important given Google’s global reach. Internally, he will continue to act as an advisor to Larry and Sergey.
• Official #Google Blog: An update from the Chairman
  As Executive Chairman, I will focus wherever I can add the greatest value: externally, on the deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership that are increasingly important given Google’s global reach; and internally as an advisor to Larry and Sergey.
• #Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2010 Results and Management Changes
  Eric has clearly done an outstanding job leading Google for the last decade. The results speak for themselves. There is no other CEO in the world that could have kept such headstrong founders so deeply involved and still run the business so brilliantly. Eric is a tremendous leader and I have learned innumerable lessons from him. His advice and efforts will be invaluable to me as I start in this new role. Google still has such incredible opportunity--we are only at the beginning and I can't wait to get started.
• Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!
  [Tweet by Eric Schmidt of #Google ]
• 4 #HP directors step down after Hurd scandal
  The five incoming members of HP's board are: Shumeet Banerji, CEO of Booz & Company; Gary Reiner, formerly of General Electric (GE, Fortune 500); Patricia Russo, former CEO of Alcatel-Lucent (ALU); Dominique Senequier, CEO of AXA Private Equity; and Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500).
• #HP Shakes Up Board, Adds Meg Whitman as Director
  Insight on the changes to Hewlett Packard's board, with Ray Lane, HP chairman.
• Eric Schmidt's Days at #Google Always Seemed Numbered
  Schmidt wound up playing a critical role in Google's development, including driving the move to the company's odd, but ultimately successful, IPO in 2004 — an experience he wrote about for HBR. He tended to be more cautious than the co-founders (Schmidt, for example, tried to find a compromise with China in Google's row with Beijing over censorship, while Brin, in particular, took a harder line). But he played an active role in growing the business, and in presenting the company's public face — in Washington, at Davos, and beyond.
• #Wipro Computer-Services Chiefs Quit After Sales Miss Estimates
  Wipro Ltd., India’s third-largest software exporter, replaced the co-heads of the company’s main computer-services business after posting sales that missed analysts’ estimates.
  
  T.K. Kurien will take over as the chief executive officer of the information technology business, Wipro’s largest, from next month after Girish Paranjpe, 52, and Suresh Vaswani, 51, resigned as joint CEOs, the company said in a statement today. BillionaireAzim Premji remains chairman and managing director.
• #Microsoft, #HP selling $2M data warehouse appliance
  HP Enterprise Data Warehouse Appliance is available this week starting at nearly $2 million, which does not include the price of Microsoft software, HP and Microsoft said. The big appliance, advertised as 200 times faster and 10 times more scalable than traditional SQL Server deployments, will include at least two racks of servers and storage, built around the HP ProLiant DL980 systems. Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse will be licensed separately.
• Univa forks #Oracle 's #OpenSource #Sun Grid Engine
  Grid Engine is not a priority for Oracle and is dying of neglect. Univa is a company that has an OEM license from Sun, which transferred over to Oracle, for the Grid Engine product, and it makes a living selling and supporting Grid Engine and extensions to the product. Univa wants Grid Engine to be extended and improved in ways that help HPC customers. And so, the company will be working with other Grid Engine community members to put together a new distribution and offer support on that as well as prior Grid Engine versions.
• Univa Acquires #OpenSource #Oracle #Sun Grid Engine Expertise
  Univa, the data center optimization company, today announced that the principal engineers from the Sun/Oracle Grid Engine team, including Grid Engine founder and original project owner Fritz Ferstl, are joining Univa. The company will immediately offer superior engineering support for Grid Engine versions already installed and will publish a Univa version of Grid Engine before the end of Q1 2011. Univa will concentrate on improving Grid Engine for technical computing and HPC use cases in addition to promoting the continuity of the Grid Engine open source community.
  
  “The first step to data center optimization is effective sharing of systems and workload distribution, and now Univa provides the leading resource management system as a primary element in our optimization stack”
  
  As part of this announcement, Mr. Ferstl has been appointed Chief Technology Officer and will direct Univa’s technology strategy as well as lead the company’s growing EMEA business.
• #Salesforce.com unfazed by #Microsoft #CRM
  That's a snapshot of history--not a social app for today's mobile, open world," the company said in a statement.
• CalPERS computer system over budget, late
  A troubled state computer system is not unusual. It’s more like the norm. As early as 1973, three years before Apple sold its first computer kit, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office issued a report on failed state computer systems.
  
  “Many of these efforts have been characterized by cost and schedule overruns, user dissatisfaction and operational problems which have resulted in either major modification or abandonment,” the analyst said nearly four decades ago.
• #Microsoft Dynamics #CRM Poised for #Cloud Battle
  Dynamics CRM online is yet another aggressive foray the Redmond software giant is making into the cloud space. Microsoft is repeatedly hitting home three key factors of its new CRM online service, undoubtedly to distinguish it from competing CRM offerings from Salesforce.com and Oracle. These factors are:
  
  * The delivery of a familiar experience to sales, service, and marketing user via a next-generation native Microsoft Outlook client, browser, and mobile devices.
  * An intelligent experience through real-time dashboards, inline business intelligence, and guided process dialogs.
  * A connected experience through Windows Azure integration, cloud development, and Microsoft SharePoint capabilities through the new Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace; all as ways for customers and partners to configure and tailor Microsoft Dynamics CRM to meet specific business needs.
  
  Microsoft is not being subtle in its attempts to snatch market share away from Salesforce.com and Oracle. Customers o
• #Microsoft launches #cloud -based #CRM software to take on #Salesforce.com and #Oracle
  in a move to glean customers from Saleforce and Oracle's Siebel, Microsoft is offering up to $200 per user for eligible customers who migrate to Dynamic CRM Online until June 30.
• Steve Jobs takes medical leave from #Apple
  At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.
  
  I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for all of Apple’s day to day operations. I have great confidence that Tim and the rest of the executive management team will do a terrific job executing the exciting plans we have in place for 2011.
• #SAP Realigns Global Field Organization
  SAP Veterans Sanjay Poonen @spoonen, José Duarte, Eric Duffaut, and Robert Enslin Lead Realigned Field Unit;
  
  Robert Courteau Appointed President of SAP North America; Franck Cohen Named President of EMEA
• #SAP Revenue Soars, Beating Expectations
  For the full year, SAP achieved its margin targets and beat its own sales guidance. SAP had guided for 2010 software and software-related service revenue to rise by between 9% and 11%, but it rose by 13% from the EUR8.2 billion posted in 2009.
  
  Its operating margin was 30.5%, within expectations of between 30% and 31%, but up from 27.4% in 2009. SAP guides on a non-IFRS basis and at constant currencies.
• #Google Closed 2010 with 66.6% Search Share
  Google 's share was up from 66.2 percent in November. Microsoft grew search share to 12 percent from 11.8 percent, while Yahoo, whose search and search ads have been powered by Bing since August, dropped to 16 percent from 16.4 percent.
• Ballmer makes it to year 11 as #Microsoft CEO
  Increasingly, many, including me, are wondering how many more years he’ll continue in that role.
• Mobile App Growth Challenges IT Managers in 2011: Survey
  An overwhelming majority of the 250 IT managers polled (90 percent), said they will implement new mobile applications this year, with almost a quarter (21 percent) looking to introduce 20 or more applications into their organization. Almost a third (30 percent) of those surveyed said they expect to be supporting anywhere from 5 to 19 different mobile operating systems or platforms by the end of this year; 58 percent pegged the number at one to four and 8 percent said a whopping 20 or more.
• #SAP #Sybase Survey Finds #Mobile Enterprise Apps Poised To Take Off In 2011
  90% IT Managers Surveyed will implement New Mobile Applications in 2011; 21% Look to Introduce 20 or More Mobile Applications into their Organisation
  
  Sybase, Inc., an SAP company (NYSE: SAP) and industry leader in enterprise and mobile software, has released the results of a new survey by Kelton Research highlighting that this year 90 per cent of IT managers surveyed are planning to implement new mobile applications and nearly one in two believe that successfully managing mobile applications will top their priority list. As a result both hosted and on-premise mobility solutions powered by a strong mobile enterprise application platform are valuable options for businesses to seriously consider in 2011.
• IT salaries creeping up in 2011, mood mostly positive
  But senior-level IT executives are expecting the biggest pay raise as we move into 2011 — a 5.3% increase.
  
  Mid-level IT executives, meanwhile, predict a 4.5% pay raise in 2011, and IT managers a 4.1% increase.
  
  Broken out by industry, senior IT executives’ IT salaries in the financial services sector
  increased by 15.2% in 2010 to $152,437 compared to 2009, and these executives expect a 4.4% pay hike in 2011. On the other end of the spectrum, IT salaries for senior IT executives in health care saw their pay drop by 7.3% to an average $142,686 in 2010.
  The government sector was not a good place to be as far as IT salaries for mid-level IT managers. Compared to 2009, their salaries dropped by 7.3% in 2010 to $109,278.
• IT salary survey reveals mixed levels of satisfaction
  Overall, midlevel IT executives saw the largest increase in their 2010 pay compared with 2009, although the average raise was still less than 5%. Nonetheless, the uptick put the average salary for midlevel IT executives at $121,979, while senior IT executives, with an average 1.7% raise, inched upward to $148,380. IT managers saw the smallest salary increase in 2010 -- .3% -- for an average pay of $95,000.
• #ERP Failures and Lawsuits: It’s Not Just For the Tier I ERP Vendors
  Over the years, it seems as if SAP and, to a lesser degree, Oracle take a majority of the hits in the media for high profile failures and lawsuits. Waste Management, Hershey’s, the Shane Company, Overstock – all of these examples are well-known companies that blamed their new ERP systems for their difficulties, and the solutions are all provided by Tier I ERP vendors such as SAP and Oracle in these examples. However, as we published in a blog last year, Tier I ERP vendors aren’t the only ones with failures and lawsuits on their hands. For example, just a few weeks ago, a jury awarded pet food maker Sunshine Mills a $61M award against Ross Systems, a division of CDC Software, which was its Tier II ERP vendor.
• #Oracle Critical Patch Update Pre-Release Announcement - January 2011
  The highest CVSS 2.0 Base Score for vulnerabilities in this Critical Patch Update is 10.0 for Audit Vault of Oracle Audit Vault, JRockit of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Solaris of Oracle Sun Products Suite and WebLogic Server of Oracle Fusion Middleware.
• #Oracle Issuing 66 Patches
  Oracle is planning on Tuesday to release 66 security patches affecting hundreds of products, according to a notice posted on its website.
• Is #Microsoft Azure Suitable for Startups?
  There are still open questions about Azure. It's not ruled out as a platform. It has potential for considerable success. The question is its comparison to other offerings on Amazon or Rakspace. For now, those offerings are more popular and should continue to be so for at least the year ahead.
• Results of the #SAP Community Network (SCN) Satisfaction Survey
  The survey results show that you, our members, feel very positive overall about the value of SCN. They provide insight into who you are, why you go to SCN, where you spend your time, and what you value the most.
• #SAP Announces Record Fourth Quarter 2010 Software Revenue
  # IFRS software revenue: approximately €3.26 billion (2009: €2.61 billion), an increase of around 25% (around 16% at constant currencies).
  # IFRS software and software-related service revenue: approximately €9.78 billion (2009: €8.20 billion), an increase of around 19%. Non-IFRS software and software-related service revenue: approximately €9.85 billion (2009: €8.21 billion), an increase of around 20% (around 13% at constant currencies).
  # The Company’s full-year 2010 Non-IFRS software and software-related service revenue growth rate of around 13% at constant currencies exceeds its previously published outlook range of 9% - 11%.
  # IFRS total revenue: approximately €12.45 billion (2009: €10.67 billion), an increase of around 17%. Non-IFRS total revenue: approximately €12.52 billion (2009: €10.68 billion), an increase of around 17% (around 11% at constant currencies).
  # Non-IFRS operating income: above €3.9 billion. Non-IFRS operating margin: approximately 31.5% (2009: 27.4%), or approxim
• False alarm: #Microsoft -led group is still buying #Novell #patent s ( #Apple #Oracle)
  “This is a purely procedural step necessary to provide time to allow for review of the proposed transaction,” a Microsoft representative said in response to a TechFlash inquiry about the withdrawal of the plan from German regulators. The company provided no further details or comment about the reasons for the step.
• #Microsoft Organized Consortium Withdraws Filing in Germany ( #Oracle #Apple #EMC #Patent)
  Attachmate is voluntarily withdrawing its HSR Act notification form, effective December 31, 2010 and intends to re-file for the same transaction on or about January 3, 2011. The effect of this re-filing will also be to extend the waiting period under the HSR Act to a date 30 days from the date of the re-filing, unless earlier terminated or extended by the DOJ requesting additional information from the parties.
  
  Presumably the withdrawal in Germany is similar.
• Cincinnati Zoo hopes to boost revenue with new software
  The #IBM #Cognos #BI software allows management to obtain detailed information on who came to the zoo, how much they spent while visiting and where they spent it, according to an IBM (NYSE: IBM) press release. IT can then tailor marketing packages to specific audiences.
• Baynote raises $13M to generate more relevant links with an ever-watchful eye ( #SAP)
  “Every user is being silently watched, and we end up creating peer groups across sites,” said Jack Jia, founder and chairman of Baynote. “And then you are basically guided by those like-minded peer groups to get some better links and results.”...On top of the funding, Baynote has snagged former SAP executive vice president Doug Merritt as the company’s new chief executive. The company’s revenue has grown between 70 and 120 percent each year since it was founded in 2005, and grew 75 percent last year. The funding is going to be used for typical growth strategies like developing new tools for web developers and expanding the company’s sales force, Jia said.
• Doug Merritt ( #SAP)
  Before joining Baynote, Doug held multiple executive titles at SAP, most recently as EVP Global On Demand Applications, where he was also a corporate officer and member of the Executive Council for SAP AG. Doug’s other positions at SAP include EVP Premier Customer Network (2009-2010) and EVP Business User Applications (2005-2008).
  
  Previously, Merritt served as executive vice president of the Premier Customer Network for SAP. The Premier Customer Network (PCN) division is responsible for selling to, servicing, and partnering with SAP’s most elite and strategic customers.
  
  Prior to his roles focusing on Go-To-Market execution, Merritt was a senior Product leader for SAP. Merritt was the “founder,” EVP and general manager of the Business User Application category for SAP, in addition to serving as the president of SAP Labs. He was responsible for creating and driving the business user application category, which includes the governance, risk, and compliance suite and analytical applicati
• #Microsoft, #Apple, #Oracle, #EMC Consortium Plan Withdrawn ( #Patent)
  Early in December Microsoft, Apple, EMC and Oracle notified the German regulator that they planned to form CPTN Holdings with a view to purchasing 882 of Novell's patents. But the filing was withdrawn (Rücknahme) on Dec. 30. No reason was given for the withdrawal by German authorities, but it is likely voluntary as authorities would not yet have had time to investigate the proposal.
• #Oracle Lawsuit Not Slowing Support Provider #RiminiStreet Momentum
  Rimini Street's "sales booking backlog" stood at $220 million by the end of the year, and the average contract term grew from nine to 11 years.
  
  Rimini Street also retained more than 95 percent of its clients, and customer satisfaction rates were 99 percent, according to the announcement. It reports having more than 400 customers, including 25 members of the Fortune 500.
  
  Plans remain for the company to deliver previously announced new services, including support for Oracle's E-Business Suite, it adds. Rimini Street is also mulling a potential IPO (initial public offering) in 2012.
  
  Rimini Street pledges that customers will save at least 50 percent on their support bills. However, its customers do not receive all the benefits of vendor-provided support, such as product upgrades. It caters to customers with older, stable systems and little desire for new features.
  
  Each Rimini Street client, in authorizing the company to act on its behalf, "warrants to Rimini Street that it has the righ
• #RiminiStreet Reports Record Fourth Quarter and Record Full-Year 2010 Results
  The Company over-achieved its new client contract sales target in the fourth quarter, completing more than 30 transactions and exiting the quarter at more than 200 percent of plan. For the quarter, the Company delivered a record $47 million dollars in sales bookings. Fourth quarter sales bookings were an 87-percent increase in sequential quarterly bookings, and a 68-percent increase on a year-over-year basis.
  
  Fourth quarter revenue was more than $7 million, a 37-percent increase on a year-over-year basis and a new company quarterly revenue record.
  ...
  Rimini Street has signed nearly 400 total clients, including 25 of the Fortune 500 and 11 of the Global 100. The Company now supports client operations in more than 60 countries, with the capability of supporting clients in nearly 200 countries. The Company has approximately 180 employees in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific regions.
  
  Other notable Rimini Street 2010 achievements include:
  
  * Announced Oracle E-Business S
• #Google founder Larry Page buys 193-foot yacht for $45m second-hand
  Page, who is worth an estimated $15billion, bought the boat from New Zealand brewing heir Sir Douglas Meyer.
• The six useful things you can do with analytic #BI technology
  Ultimately, there are six useful things you can do with analytic technology:
  
  * You can make an immediate decision.
  * You can plan in support of future decisions.
  * You can research, investigate, and analyze in support of future decisions.
  * You can monitor what’s going on, to see when it necessary to decide, plan, or investigate.
  * You can communicate, to help other people and organizations do these same things.
  * You can provide support, in technology or data gathering, for one of the other functions.
• Business requirements and the elegant art of 'no'
  Many organizations expect IT to deliver successful results despite ambiguous and contradictory business goals and requirements. Although rational minds know this inevitably leads failure, we still repeat the same negative patterns. To break this dysfunctional cycle of angst and pain, IT and the lines of business must jointly establish shared expectations on their respective roles and responsibilities.
• Analysts predict #SAP trends for 2011
  Now that 2011 is here, we called some SAP analysts and asked them what they saw coming for SAP and its customers in the coming year From acquisitions to the future of HANA and Business ByDesign, here’s what they had to say about SAP trends, in their words.
• #Intel Announces New #Patent Cross License Agreement with #NVIDIA
  Under the transaction, Intel receives a license to NVIDIA’s patents subject to the terms of the agreement. NVIDIA receives a license to Intel’s patents subject to the terms of the agreement, including that x86 and certain other products are not licensed to NVIDIA under the agreement. Intel and NVIDIA have also exchanged broad releases for all legal claims, including any claims of breach of their previous license agreement. Intel will pay NVIDIA $1.5 billion over the next 5 years
• The process of a #Gartner Magic Quadrant
  Every vendor then gets a fact-check review; they get a copy of the MQ graphic, plus the text we’ve written about them. They’re entitled to a phone call. They beg and plead, the ones who are clients call their account executives and make promises or threats. Vendors are also entitled to escalate into our management chain, and to the Ombudsman. We never change anything unless the vendor can demonstrate something is erroneous or unclear.
  
  MQs also get management and methodologies review — ensuring that the process has been followed, basically, and that we haven’t done anything that we could get sued for. Then, and only then, does it go to editing and publication. Theoretically the process takes four months. It consumes an incredible amount of time and effort.
• Introduction of #Oracle Financial Analytics for #SAP Extends Intelligence to SAP Financial Accounting
  Available today as a part of Oracle BI Applications Release 7.9.7, Oracle Financial Analytics for SAP helps financial and executive teams to improve cash flow and profitability by extending complete financial analysis to SAP systems while dramatically reducing the complexity and costs of integrating information from SAP.
• #Oracle Goes After #SAP with New Business Intelligence App
  "Today's announcement by Oracle highlights both the size of the SAP financials customer base and the opportunity that SAP is already realizing today by delivering packaged analytical applications dedicated to the finance line of business. SAP is the market leader for BI, EPM and analytic applications, as per leading industry analysts including Gartner and Forrester, and has more than twice the share of Oracle in core financial applications. As we've seen over the past three years — where more than 1,500 customers have replaced non-SAP solutions in these application areas with SAP’s own analytic offerings — we're confident customers will continue to choose SAP over Oracle, especially as SAP's proven, market-tested solutions come with best-in-class integration to SAP, with pre-built content and expertise, and are available to customers today."
• Muglia's e-mail to the #Microsoft troops: 'I'm moving on to new opportunities outside of Microsoft'
  We’ve led the industry while facing tough competitors, most notably Linux, VMware, and Oracle. We succeeded by focusing on the simple idea that our customers make smart decisions, so we need to provide the best solution for everything our customers want to do with our products.
• #Microsoft server and tools chief heads for exit
  That will likely mean that Microsoft promotes from within. And you can bet that the server and tools president role will be broken up, with someone leading cloud and someone else heading server and tools.
• #Microsoft Previews Next-Generation #ERP: Advanced model-driven layered architecture for Microsoft Dynamics AX “6” improves developer experience.
  Significant new innovations in Microsoft Dynamics AX “6” include the following:
  •A unique model-driven, layered architecture that accelerates software development, requiring less coding than building from scratch and easing maintenance and upgradability. This allows developers to build high-value functionality quicker and better.
  •Pre-built interoperability with the Microsoft Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010, and other Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010. This allows developers to spend less time on technical integration and compatibility, and increases the breadth of developer resources available to ISVs.
  •A unified ERP solution with pre-built capabilities for five industries and 38 countries, providing a rich foundation that allows ISVs to rapidly expand their solutions to new verticals and geographies.
• Is #Salesforce.com Wrong to Love #Ruby?
  While it is understandable that Salesforce.com wants to expand its reach as a development platform, it should also be clear that there is no quick fix. Salesforce.com won’t be able to quickly expand its reach to support a much wider set of business applications without a much bigger object model to track all kinds of business activity. And Ruby or any other language won’t make that happen.
• Viola Private Equity Invests $7 Million in #Zend Technologies ( #PHP #OpenSource)
  Viola Private Equity and Zend Technologies today announced that Viola made a growth equity investment of $7 million in Zend. Viola's investment adds to the Company's previous internal round raised from its existing investors, including Greylock Partners, Index Ventures, Azure Capital Partners, Intel Capital, SAP Ventures and others, which was announced in May 2010. All together the financing round amounts to $16.5 million.
• Dan'l Lewin emerges as influential advocate for #Microsoft in Silicon Valley
  Fortunately for Microsoft, Lewin's tact has gone a long way to mending a relationship with the region's technology community that turned poisonous in the 1990s. Now Lewin is trying to take that good will a step further through an ambitious program called "BizSpark" that offers free Microsoft products and services to entrepreneurs.
  
  The goal is to cast Microsoft in a role that would have been unthinkable a decade ago: A startup's best friend.
  
  "This is the stuff I anticipated doing when I got here 10 years ago," Lewin said. "I'm a big believer that this company has a lot to offer startups."
• HRM #EnSW Vendor Consolidation Fairy Tales
  There was a ton of consolidation in the HRM software and services market during 2010, and 2011 is off to a roaring start with SumTotal’s acquisition of GeoLearning. There’s a lot more to come, and speculation is already rampant about:
• Research Report: Rethink Your Next Generation Business Intelligence Strategy
  # Application and business process centric. These solutions take an application or business process centered approach based on applications such as ERP and CRM. Optimization for apps data and processes best suits organizations when more than a majority of their business information resides in a few data sources. Sample vendors include Epicor, Lawson, Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle and SAP Business Objects
  # Pure play best of breeds. These solutions provide deep capabilities in a subset of data types, visualization and reporting paradigms, BI approaches and styles, and deployment deployment options. Pure play best of breeds deal well with multiple data sources and support data heterogeneity. These solutions often address the data integration (DI) issues head on. Sample vendors include Actuate, BIRST, Information Builders, MicroStrategy, myDials, PivotLink, Proferi, and QlikTech.
  # Strategic BI platforms. These solutions seek to build a comprehensive approach to supporting data types, v
• #Oracle Enterprise #Cloud Summit
  During this full-day event, cloud experts will share real-world best practices, reference architectures, detailed customer case studies, and more. You’ll learn how to transform IT into a superior service provider with a strategy and roadmap for building, deploying, and managing an enterprise cloud.
  
  Attend the Oracle Enterprise Cloud Summit to learn how to:
  
  * Build a state-of-the-art cloud architecture
  * Leverage your existing IT investments
  * Optimize your IT management processes
• Silicon Valley Crackup: #Oracle & #HP Killing 25-Year Alliance?
  But the link to that page detailing happier days is now as dead as a doornail—and that also seems to be the still-unofficial but nevertheless accurate description for the one-time sprawling and mutually beneficial partnership that HP and Oracle enjoyed for close to three decades.
  
  While neither company would confirm that a formal breakup has occurred, top-level executive changes at the formerly close partners have sparked such tension and harsh words between the two companies that each has begun preparing for a near-term future as head-to-head competitors instead of close collaborators.
• #Apple ’s Jobs takes symbolic salary; COO gets raise
  Apple said in the filing that it opposes the CEO succession proposal, calling it unnecessary and pointing out that it could lend rivals an advantage by publicizing the company’s plans. In addition, it would “micro-manage and constrain the actions of the board,” the company said.
• #Oracle leader wants to bring sailing to the people
  The America’s Cup has long been an elite regatta, but when framed by Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge, it will become a sport for the masses.
• #Microsoft demos future Windows version running on #Intel and #ARM chips (video)
  IIf these ARM-based rivals can succeed in the market with their chips, they could break Intel’s near-monopoly on Windows PCs. And if Microsoft can do it, Apple probably can too.
• #Amazon Web Services adds premium support tiers
  Amazon Web Services on Thursday rolled out two premium support tiers and announced a 50% price cut on existing premium plans, heightening competition with rivals like Rackspace and making a clear overture to enterprises that wish to run their operations in the cloud.
  
  A new Bronze support tier is aimed at software developers, a core constituency of AWS over the past several years. It provides business-day support with 12 hour to one-business day response times, and costs $49 per month.
• #SAP in licensing deal with #patent #TROLL giant
  Intellectual Ventures said Thursday that Walldorf, Germany-based SAP acquired the right to access the firm’s patent portfolio “for defensive use.”
• Hume Steps Down From #SAP Channel Chief Post
  [H[er departure comes as the software company is reorganizing its indirect sales and channel operations.
• #Salesforce.com Acquires Dimdim
  Dimdim has created critical real-time communication technologies such as presence, messaging and screen sharing. With the acquisition, salesforce.com gains Dimdim's real-time communication technologies, along with a team of world-class developers experienced in building cloud-based collaboration services. Salesforce.com will use the acquisition to bring new real-time communication capabilities to the Chatter collaboration platform, mirroring the proven Facebook model of combining collaboration and communication into an integrated service.
• #SAP Wins New Trial Over $139 Million It was Ordered to Pay Versata in 2009
  U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Everingham in Marshall, Texas, said today that testimony during the 2009 trial on damages was incorrect in light of recent unrelated appeals court rulings that limited how damages should be calculated. He set a new trial for April 25.
  
  The damage award was based on the entire market value of SAP products, which SAP said was unfair because it resulted in what it called an excessive award. SAP, in an Oct. 6, 2009, filing, argued that the largest amount supported by the evidence is $2.03 million. Walldorf, Germany-based SAP is the world’s biggest maker of business-management software.
• #Salesforce.com Acquires Dimdim For $31 Million
  Features from Dimdim will be integrated into the next major version of Chatter, Benioff said. That new version will either be announced or rolled out in August at the company's annual customer meeting, he said.
  
  The San Francisco-based company launched Chatter in June, offering features reminiscent of Facebook and Twitter for corporate collaboration. Chatter is Salesforce's first product marketed through a company, rather than just to the sales or customer service departments that are the company's traditional customer targets.
• #Oracle Completes Acquisition of ATG
  Oracle can now provide best-in-class cross-channel CRM, Retail and Commerce that enables unified marketing, merchandising, service and order management, supply chain, and a seamless, personalized customer experience.
  To communicate product strategy for the combined Oracle and ATG products, the company will host a webcast presentation, which will be available beginning at 9:00am PT on January 6, 2011.
• Will Ellison get last laugh?
  If Ellison moved the team to San Jose, he could immediately share a building with the Sharks. San Jose would also offer plenty of sponsorship revenue and an increased TV market that would boost media revenue.
• Larry Ellison Might Buy New Orleans Hornets And Move Them To San Jose
  And the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose television market is the sixth-largest, which would provide a substantial increase in media revenue and make it possible to launch a regional sports network with other sports teams in the area.
• #HP Marketing Chief Michael Mendenhall Said to Be Replaced by #SAP 's Wohl
  Wohl plans to start at HP on Jan. 18 and will relocate to California, one person familiar with the matter said. He will inherit Mendenhall’s public relations responsibilities but not his marketing role, this person said.
  
  While Wohl confirmed he is leaving SAP, he declined to answer questions about his role at HP.
• Hurd on the Street/Please Hurd, Don’t Hammer ‘Em
  In August, Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd resigns following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment brought against him by a former company contractor. A month later, he snags a job at HP rival Oracle, which trots him out during a company earnings call to proclaim his new employer the market leader.
• Ellison Taunts HP CEO a Second Time
  With Oracle’s high-profile trade secrets case against SAP scheduled to begin in a few days, Larry Ellison mercilessly slags former SAP chief and newly appointed HP CEO Léo Apotheker.
• HP CEO to Oracle: Here’s Looking at You, Kid–-Suntory Time!
  Oracle hires process servers to subpoena former SAP Chief Léo Apotheker. But Apotheker, who’s just begun his new gig as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, manages to keep himself far beyond their 100-mile reach by traveling to Japan.
• Consider This a Down Payment on Next Week’s Ass-Whupping…
  In early November, the Oracle-SAP trial kicks off. Oracle is the first to draw blood when SAP agrees to pay it $120 million for attorneys’ fees before arguments even begin.
• Cirque du Larry
  Hewlett-Packard describes Oracle’s efforts to subpoena CEO Léo Apotheker to testify in its trial against archrival SAP as “an effort to harass” him and “interfere with his duties and responsibilities.” SAP calls it a “PR sideshow.” Circus sideshow is probably more apt.
• Oracle Attorney: You May Say that I’m a Dreamer….
  Unable to subpoena HP CEO Léo Apotheker to testify live in its case against SAP, Oracle opts not to show his videotaped deposition and instead leaves the former SAP chief’s role in the case to jurors’ imaginations.
• Okay, Who’s Going to Tell Larry He Lost the Over/Under on the SAP Damages Award?
  Billions or millions. That was the central question in the Oracle vs. SAP case, and in the end, the jury determined its answer to be billions. For the theft of Oracle’s intellectual property by its shuttered TomorrowNow division, SAP is ordered to pay Oracle $1.3 billion.
• Gets Us Closer to the $4 Billion Number Larry Really Wanted…
  In court papers filed in early December, Oracle demands SAP pay it $212 million in interest on top of the $1.3 billion in damages it was awarded in the lawsuit between the two companies.
• Larry Ellison: Behind the Kimono
  The high point of Bloomberg Television’s “Game Changers” feature on Larry Ellison: A photo of Oracle’s Art of War-quoting, shower-rock-bathing samurai CEO in his favorite kimono.
• Some Help Desks Get Little Support
  The typical IT organization spends about $478 per year on help desk operations for every personal computer supported by the organization.
• Constellation’s Research Outlook For 2011
  Organizations held hostage by high and useless software maintenance contracts will lead a massive backlash (@rwang0). Organizations faced with market pressures to create strategic differentiation amidst the burden of legacy systems will need to find a way to pay for innovation. Software maintenance fees will come under attack as user groups and leading organizations will spearhead efforts to renegotiate existing enterprise software vendor contracts. Existing software vendors caught off guard will suffer through a PR disaster that will cost them significant future sales. Third party maintenance vendors will continue to emerge to combat vendor-lock in and maintenance hegemony.
• Ross Systems Lawsuit Another Costly Case of Mismatched #ERP Expectations
  It appears to be a case of mismatched expectations. This is a problem in many software implementations. However, resulting problems can quickly get out of hand and really blow up with ERP since it involves so many critical business processes, a large number of which relate directly to revenue-generating activities.
• According to 2FA: #Oracle Wants to 'Have One's Cake and Eat It Too!'
  "They stole the software, now they don't want to pay for it. They took over 10,000,000, $40 watches and hocked them for $1. Now they want to pay us $1. Taking just $10 million from Oracle is a reward for their bad behavior, frankly. I think taking our intellectual property is a two-edged sword. For Oracle, it means they have access to all our engineering output. The other side of that sword is running an irrational risk by taking our software. That's a risk I certainly would never, ever undertake," said Greg Salyards, 2FA Technology's President and CEO, using Mrs. Safra Catz's and Mr. Larry Ellison's previous quotes.
• 2FA Technology, LLC Plaintiff v. Oracle Corporation...and Passlogix, Inc...Defendants
• Rival Demands $110 Million from #Oracle ( #TROLL)
  A year later, Oracle announced that it had acquired Passlogix, for $42 million - an acquisition that increased Oracle's market capitalization by more than $1 billion, according to the complaint.
• Larry Ellison's 10-Point Plan For World Domination ( #Oracle)
  Applications Business Grew 20%--And new Fusion apps are coming. Oracle's planning a slow rollout of its long-delayed Fusion apps this year, but Ellison was bullish about the prospects those products will have in the context of Oracle's overall strategy: "Next is our commitment to protecting customer's investment in their existing Oracle technology, whether it's PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, or E-Business Suite, and then make this huge investment. I think coming down the runway very quickly next calendar year we're going to be talking a lot about Fusion. We've got this new generation of applications by the way that runs on-premise and in the cloud, in the public cloud—as well as private clouds on-premise—or public clouds. Nobody has this.
• Senator Yee Applauds Selection of San Francisco as Host City of the America´s Cup
  "This is an exciting day for our city," said Yee. "Today´s news demonstrates what is possible when we all work together. The Mayor, the Board of Supervisors, and the San Francisco state and federal legislative delegations worked diligently to see this day come to fruition. Hosting this prestigious event should mean billions of dollars for our region and our state."
• Chrome finishes 2010 with 10 percent share ( #Google #Microsoft #OpenSource #Apple)
  Chrome's gains have come largely at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, whose usage share has been dropping for years, but there's also a ray of hope for Redmond. IE9, which embodies Microsoft's ambition to build a cutting-edge browser once again, is showing signs of real adoption with usage that grew from 0.4 percent in November to 0.5 percent in December, according to new statistics from Net Applications.
• Using #ERP to Increase Sales
  Truly understanding the thought process driving a transaction can inspire IT to develop technology that generates new revenue, says Alan Webber, an analyst at Altimeter Group. Even simple IT capabilities can have big results. “It’s critical for CIOs to understand how customers think.”
• #IBM unleashes #Cognos and then uploads it into the #Cloud
  The main focus of Cognos 10 is the user. IBM has talked long and hard about how it was responding to customer demands for more functionality and, more importantly, a better User Experience (UE). Making any software work the way the user wants is the Holy Grail for any software vendor and maybe IBM has finally seen the light.
• Enterprise apps find a space on consumer devices ( #Apple)
  In a survey of 1,100 of its enterprise customers, mobile connectivity management provider iPass found that 13% already have iPads in use -- mainly brought in by employees -- and 27% expect iPads and similar devices to replace the laptop as their primary computing device.
  
  Another poll of 1,600 IT buyers, by ChangeWave Research, found that 14% of companies plan to buy employees some form of tablet for work. And, at least initially, organizations seem to be eschewing the typical enterprise-targeted devices from Hewlett-Packard and Research in Motion in favor of devices made for the consumer market, notably the iPad.
• #Cassandra vs #MongoDB vs #CouchDB vs #Redis vs #Riak vs #HBase comparison ( #NoSQL #Hadoop #OpenSource)
  But the differences between "NoSQL" databases are much bigger than it ever was between one SQL database and another. This means that it is a bigger responsibility on software architects to choose the appropriate one for a project right at the beginning.
• Battle of #NoSQL Stars: #Amazon SDB vs Mongoid vs #CouchDB vs RavenDB ( #OpenSource)
  This video dives into the target audiences and differences in NoSQL storage, how to implement them and what this NoSQL thing is all about. It discusses how SQL has limits when you get to web-scale and how NoSQL bypasses these limits. It shows an example application deployment using Rails 3 and Mongoid to see how CRUD differs from your MySQL and Postgres installs.
• Software Industry New Year's Resolutions ( #SAP #Oracle #HP #Infor #Salesforce.com)
  One more for SAP: To give customers a clear and complete story on the future of NetWeaver. Recent announcements and presentations have referenced a flurry of versions and flavors of the middleware stack to the point of confusion.
• 2011 tech preview: A tour through tablets, mobile, hardware, software and #cloud
  HP will acquire Citrix, BMC Software and Teradata in 2011.
• #SAP, #Sybase, and the Future of Enterprise Mobility
  Simply put, we want to become the mobile ecosystem’s preferred platform, enabling channel partners, developers, and IT departments to step up and transform the enterprise. As a new member of the SAP family, I look forward to working with you, our customers and partners, to propel us into this bright new era. I encourage you to join us at the SAPPHIRE NOW conference this spring, where we will show off our new apps and the Sybase Unwired Platform software developer kit.
• Buffing Up The Crystal Ball
  The #Oracle E-Business Suite extended support wave will continue to roll through the mostly-unaware set of customers. 11i moved off of Premier Support in 2010. R12.0x moves to Extended Support on February 1, 2012. Still, I don't think 2011 is the year that customers will begin to realize just what has happened to their ERP systems (although Oracle and the user groups have been sounding the trumpet until their faces turned blue). I personally think that happens in 2012 (the fee waiver for 11i Extended Support expires, R12.0x rolls into Extended Support, and the Extended Support warning bell begins to chime for R12.1.x - that's a "triple witching hour").
• Members of San Francisco's 'workingman's sailing club' thrilled about landing America's Cup race
  For the first time in decades, the public will have free, front-row seats for weeks to watch the America's Cup series of races. Unlike nearly every other America's Cup race that has been set in open water with viewing only from a spectator boat and on special cable channels, viewers in San Francisco will be able to line up along city streets, parks and piers from the Golden Gate Bridge to Treasure Island to watch the 72-foot catamarans fly by.
  
  "This will make for the greatest spectacle in international
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  sailing," said Ray Thomas, the Golden Gate Yacht Club's vice commodore.
• AmCup 2013: Oracle kicks Newport's tires to sweeten SF deal
  One Sailing World writer was absolutely correct when he suggested early on that the Newport negotiations were being used as a wedge by Ellison's group to inspire SF to try harder to fulfill BMW Oracle Racing's wishlist.
• Ellison picks San Francisco to host 2013 America's Cup
  The Californian city saw off American rival Newport and an unnamed Italian site to be chosen by Larry Ellison, whose Oracle team won in 2010.
  
  Racing will be in San Francisco Bay and visible to spectators from the Golden Gate Bridge and other landmarks.
• 34th America's Cup is coming to San Francisco Bay
  Budget problems prevented San Francisco from paying an upfront fee to win the bid, so lawmakers offered the organizers rent-free access to waterfront property near the Bay Bridge where they can repair piers and build the needed facilities.

Enterprise headlines and excerpts, 2010-12-31

News from the Enterprise Software and Solutions world from December 2010

• Announcement on America’s Cup Site Expected Soon
  San Francisco has had an inside track because Ellison and his team are based there. It would also generate publicity for Ellison’s company, Oracle, a major employer in the area.
• #SAP to Pay #Oracle Interest on Award
  In Tuesday's ruling, the judge denied Oracle's proposed calculation and outlined a method using an average of historical Treasury yields for calculating the payment.
• #BI for Spreadsheets and #Salesforce.com ( #SAP)
  SAP is trying to remind customers and potential customers of the virtues of keeping compatibility with an enterprise standard, rather than taking up with some cloud computing upstart. SAP also wants to be the cloud BI provider you sign up with the approval of corporate IT, rather than by doing an end-run around them.
• Top #BI Thought Leaders and Influencers to Track in 2011?
  Please list your top thought leaders with any supporting points around the credentials of these individuals, publications or organizations. Focus Editors will choose from the list as part of an upcoming report on top BI influencers.
• 10 Most Important Enterprise IT Products of 2010 ( #IBM #Hadoop #OpenSource)
  Among the upstarts are Convirture, a provider of open source, cross-platform virtualization management tools, Cloudera, a company that created most of the commercial momentum surrounding the open source Hadoop data management framework, and Karmasphere, a provider of a tool that lets business analysts use SQL to query Hadoop.
  
  Among the better known names on the list is IBM, which this year reinvented that most venerable of all platforms, the IBM mainframe, in the form of the zEnterprise. Other familiar names joining IBM on the list this year are Citrix, which did more to advance desktop virtualization than any other with the release of XenDesktop 5; Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), which provided a Data Ingestor mechanism under which storage may finally be truly unified; and Microsoft, which may have finally delivered on the promise of unified communications with the launch of Lync Server 10.
  
  Of course, the most famous product of 2010 is the Apple iPad. Joining the Apple iPad on this lis
• Ex-HP chief Hurd asks to intervene in #HP investor suit
  The report marks the latest step in Hurd's ongoing attempt to keep a document sealed that reportedly contains former HP contractor Jodie Fisher's allegations of sexual harassment against him — the complaint that ultimately led to Hurd's departure. The plaintiff's side of the shareholder suit targeting HP has been seeking to make the eight-page document public.
• #Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is back with another patent suit #TROLL
  In the new complaint, Interval Licensing again alleges that multiple companies violated its patents “for a browser for use in navigating a body of information” and three other patents related to “categorizing, comparing and displaying segments of information.”
• Allen v. World and Dog - First Amended Complaint - Updated #TROLL
  This document is Exhibit A for why software patents are an oozing pimple on the nose of the US legal system. Interval is suing because it can, and it would like to be paid by anyone using the Internet in a normal way, and it can because the US Patent Officestupid software patents right and left, with the idea that they could be vetted in litigation. thought it was good policy to rubber stamp
• #TROLL INTERVAL LICENSING LLC, Plaintiff, v. AOL, INC.; APPLE, INC.; eBAY, INC.; FACEBOOK, INC.; GOOGLE INC.; NETFLIX, INC.; OFFICE DEPOT, INC.; OFFICEMAX INC.; STAPLES, INC.; YAHOO! INC.; AND YOUTUBE, LLC,
  FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT FOR PATENT INFRINGEMENT
  Plaintiff Interval Licensing LLC, files this first amended complaint for patent
  infringement against Defendants AOL, Inc., Apple, Inc., eBay, Inc., Facebook, Inc., Google
  Inc., Netflix, Inc., Office Depot, Inc., OfficeMax Inc., Staples, Inc., Yahoo! Inc., and
  YouTube , LLC. Plaintiff Interval Licensing LLC alleges:
• Revised Paul Allen #TROLL lawsuit continues to show what's wrong with tech patents
  Four months after filing a laughably broad patent lawsuit against a Who's Who of tech companies--and only weeks after a judge tossed out its complaint for being too vague--Paul Allen's Interval Licensing is at it again.
  
  The Seattle corporation, the surviving entity of the defunct Interval Research firm set up by the Microsoft co-founder in the mid 1990s, filed a revised complaint Tuesday against AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube.
• CIOs Who Tweet: How Twitter Can Work for You
  91.7 percent of respondents say they use Twitter to find news that impacts their jobs.
• 2010's boldface tech startups - Heroku ( #Salesforce.com)
  Heroku employs a multi-tenant software architecture, so one instance of software on a server can serve more than one client company. Third party add-ons let developers easily integrate additional features into their deployed apps.
• Why #SAP is heading for the #cloud in 2011
  Once developers are producing applications based on Business ByDesign, SAP intends to launch an application store that will provide a single location where customers can go to buy add-on technology for the on-demand ERP platform.
  
  SAP's Zinow said the app store will be important as it will provide partners who have built applications with the customer reach that SAP brings to the table. He added that the app store is likely to be launched at the CeBIT technology show in March.
  
  And analysts think the app store is an important element in SAP boosting its cloud capability: "Like the SDK, [the app store] is a must-have service for any vendor serious about on-demand. Using it as a base for all on-demand services supports the hybrid on-demand on-premise position SAP needs to maintain," Eager said.
  
  As well as being used for other cloud offerings Eager said the app store has the potential to provide cloud-based extensions to on-premise applications in the future.
  
  In contrast, Bob Tarzey, di
• Ten great software glitches for 2010 #ITfail
  This is Jeff’s top ten list of software glitches for 2010:
  
  # Toys R Us Double Charges Black Friday Shoppers
  # New Hampshire Man Charged 23 Quadrillion Dollars for a pack of smokes
  # McAfee Software Glitch Proves Costly
  # Apple to issue software fix for lingering iPad Wi-Fi problems
  # Weapon Software Glitch Hits Close to Home
  # Toyota Slapped With $32.4 Million Fine for Mishandling Recalls
  # Verizon Wireless to refund $50 million over software glitch
  # Faulty software costs NY $114M
  # Chase Web crash locks out 16.5 million online customers
  # Airborne Laser Test Failure Blamed on Software Error
• 2011 #Cloud Computing Predictions For Vendors And Solution Providers
  Legacy vendors without true Cloud architectures will continue to cloud wash with marketing FUD...Tech vendors will make the shift to Information Brokers.
• 2011 #Cloud Computing Predictions For CIO’s And Business Technology Leaders
  Shift all new custom app development to the cloud. Early adopters already see the benefits of elasticity as they design, build, and test custom app without waiting for the procurement of hardware, installation of software, and the preparation of the environment. In addition, the emerging tool kits continue to take advantage of more business oriented development languages such as Ruby and Python.
• Evolving definitions and technology categories for 2011
  # Traditional BI
  
  * Reporting, dashboards, & light-weight ad-hoc query
  * (Even if you make this more into data exploration, you’re probably not stressing the underlying DBMS much more than traditional BI does)
  * (If integrated into operational apps, your DBMS choice for this may be constrained by your choice of operational apps)
  
  # Near-real-time BI
  
  * E.g., dashboards w/ constant or 1-minute refresh
  * (Actually, this isn’t a great fit for most analytic DBMS yet)
  * (Also, it’s not a big market yet, except in specialized niches such as trading or network control)
  
  # Budgeting & consolidation
  
  * (MOLAP is still strong here)
  * (I took out the word “planning” because it has several meanings)
  
  # Investigative analytics*
  
  * Can be but doesn’t have to be long-running
  * Example technologies include:
  o Heavy ad-hoc query
  o Data mining/machine learning/predictive analytics modeling
  o Simulation
  o Other advanced analy
• Finally! The CRM 2011 Watchlist Part I
  #Salesforce.com #Oracle #SAP #Microsoft
• #SAP has no interest in paying interest to #Oracle
  "If the Court were to choose to award interest ... it should, like so many other courts, follow 28 U.S.C. § 1961 and award interest at a flat rate equal to the weekly average 1-year constant maturity Treasury yield (which is currently .30%), compounded annually."
  
  By this method, Oracle's pre-judgment interest on the $1.3 billion dating back to Jan. 19, 2005 -- the day SAP announced it had bought TomorrowNow --would amount only to about $22.7 million through Dec. 23, according to SAP.
• #SAP seeks to simplify All-in-One with new user experience package
  The new package includes predefined user interfaces, or UIs, for modules like sales, purchasing, accounting, manufacturing and financials. It also offers a way to pull SAP and non-SAP applications into the fold by using a “drag and drop” type feature -- something that users like Dorothy Hazikonstantis, vice president of enterprise applications at Pegasystems, a Cambridge, Mass.-based CRM and business process management software vendor, may find useful.
• Russia embraces free software, a huge blow to #Microsoft ( #Linux #OpenSource)
  Microsoft on Tuesday vowed to provide free software and legal assistance to activist groups in Russia and 11 other countries. This came after mounting pressure from rights groups, which alleged that the Redmond software giant was part of Russia's use of anti-piracy laws to quell dissent. As per reports, authorities have repeatedly seized the computers of activists and journalists critical of the government, in the name of the anti-piracy laws, to search for pirated Microsoft software.
• Russia transitioning to #OpenSource #Linux in 2012
  1. Approve the attached plan for the transition of federal executive bodies and agencies of the federal budget for the use of free software for 2011 - 2015 years.
  
  2. Federal executive agencies to implement activities in accordance with the plan approved by this Order, within the established government of the Russian Federation, limiting the size of their staff and budget allocations provided to them in the federal budget execution authority to the specified area of activity.
• Enterprise IT Spending 2010
  2,800 global CIOs and other IT decision-makers reveals that enterprise technology budgets are trended upward, albeit every so slightly, in 2010 compared with 2009. That said, the vast majority of survey respondents say their budgets remained the same in 2010 as they were in 2009.
• #Oracle Owed Interest by #SAP in Infringement Case, Judge Rules
  Hamilton didn’t specify an amount in her order. Instead, she outlined a method of calculating the prejudgment interest award based on a weekly average yield determined by the U.S. Treasury.
  
  “The court does not find that the rate should be calculated separately for each year back to the date of the hypothetical license negotiation,” Hamilton wrote. She ruled the interest should accrue from the date of a “hypothetical” date of a license negotiation with Siebel Systems Inc.
• Volatile and Decentralized: Day in the Life of a Googler( #Google)
  Here's a short rundown of my typical day at Google:
• A bountiful year for #OpenSource
  #Oracle is certainly not trying to shut the door on open source. Ed Screven, the chief architect, said Oracle would continue to enhance the community version of MySQL, while making clear there would be some "value add" for those who paid for the Enterprise version. Oracle also continues to enhance Java, rolling out JDK 7 and a number of other open source projects.
  
  If anything, Oracle is helping the old Sun open source projects catch up with the dominant revenue model in the business. It is now common to find "community versions" and "enterprise versions" as dueling options on comparison charts. Whereas early open source advocates suggested that open source companies could pay the bills by distributing the same features to both products and getting people to pay for support and training, more and more products are withholding some secret sauce. This doesn't mean the community version suffers, but it is increasingly being used as a gateway drug to get the programmers addicted to the ent
• #Informatica Corporation investor investigation concerning buyout rumor ( #TROLL)
  The investigation by a law firm concerns whether certain directors and officers at Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ:INFA) will breach their fiduciary duties in the event of a takeover. A media report on Dec. 23 said that Informatica Corp (INFA) may be on top of the list of Oracle Corp’s takeover targets.
• Marissa Mayer ( #Google)
  There was one point in the early days when we had hired 16 men in a row into engineering, and Larry said, “You know what? If we get to 20, I’m not going to sign any more offer letters until you start producing an equal ratio of women.” That was the moment when we really started recruiting for technical women, helping to build programs around it, really putting a lot of effort into it. So it’s something that the founders have always been very focused on.
• Geek Girls: Revenge of the Nerdettes
  These girl geeks aren't social misfits; their identities don't hinge on outsider status. They may love all things sci-tech, but first and foremost they are girls—and they've made that part of their appeal.
• Sorry, Mark Hurd, #HP Shareholders Deserve To Know Exactly What You Were Accused Of Doing To Jodie Fisher
  It's eight pages long, and it was crafted by attack-dog attorney Gloria Allred. It is in the possession of a law firm suing HP on behalf of HP shareholders over the Hurd affair.
• #HP spends $1.6M on 3Q lobbying, among top in tech
  Among other heavy hitters, Microsoft Corp. also spent $1.6 million and Oracle Corp. spent $1.4 million in the third quarter.
• Former #HP boss fights to keep Jodie Fisher letter private
  The letter is believed to detail claims that Hurd told Fisher about a meeting he was planning with an executive from Electronic Data Systems (EDS) before HP bought the company for $13.9bn in May 2008. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal the SEC is looking at the EDS claim as well as Hurd's expenses reports and allegations that Hurd destroyed information on a computer. The SEC is not making any comment.
• #HP Lands $400 Million Global Outsourcing Services Pact with BP
  Deal marks HP’s third large outsourcing services contract this month.
• #Microsoft #SQLServer 2008 Administration for #Oracle DBAs
  This practical guide shows you how to:
  Identify the components of the SQL Server platform
  Understand SQL Server architecture
  Install and configure SQL Server software and client components
  Define and manage database objects
  Implement and administer database security
  Monitor, identify, and resolve performance issues
  Design and implement high availability, system backup, and disaster recovery strategies
  Automate SQL Server using built-in scheduling and alerting capabilities
  Import and export data to and from SQL Server and other RDBMS platforms
  Upgrade existing SQL Server installations and migrate Oracle databases to SQL Server
  Download : Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Administration for Oracle DBAs
• #Microsoft Said to Be Unveiling Windows for ARM Chips
  “They’ve got to come back with a product that’s better than ‘me too’ and is equal if not better in features,” Breza said. He has an “outperform” rating on Microsoft’s stock, which he doesn’t own. “A lot of tablets today are inferior to PCs.”
• Year of the Platform
  #Microsoft developers faced an embarrassment of riches as the tools from Redmond kept on coming: Windows Azure Platform, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4, Expression Studio 4 (Blend, SketchFlow, Web and Encoder), Silverlight 4 and the Windows Phone 7 Developer Toolkit.
• #Microsoft Windows Plus ARM Equals Trouble for #Intel
  While the specifics of any Ballmer announcement on Windows for ARM processors are up in the air, one thing is certain: Intel’s cash cow is slowly moving on to greener pastures. Much like Microsoft, Intel is being left out in the cold when it comes to mobile devices. Its chips are the powerhouse in the desktop and server processor markets, with an estimated 86 percent market share, but the future is in mobiles. That future looks still looks relatively bleak for Intel, as its Atom chips still consume too much energy compared to ARM-based processors, and its main operating system for mobile devices is Nokia’s MeeGo platform: an unproven entity that will face Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and other incumbents when it arrives in devices next year.
• #Google Aims Twin Daggers at #Microsoft's Heart
  First came the Nexus S, the new Google-labeled smartphone and the first to run "Gingerbread," Google's latest Android operating system. Then came a plain black laptop called the Cr- 48, the first computer to run the company's Web-based Chrome Operating System.
• Ballmer's CEO ranking plummets, Steve Jobs' climbs ( #Microsoft #Apple #Salesforce.com)
  Forty-five CEOs out of the 500 assessed by the WCI fell even further than Ballmer, including Marc Benioff of customer relationship management (CRM) provider Salesforce.com, who dropped 75 places to No. 105; and John Riccitiello, the CEO of game maker Electronic Arts (down 90 spots to No 261).
• #ADP selects #Microsoft #cloud solution
  The Dealer Services Group of Automatic Data Processing (ADP) has added NvoicePay’s Windows Azure-based payments solution as a participant to its third-party access programme.
  
  The electronic payments solution uses Silverlight to deliver across multiple platforms, including PC, phone and Web. For example, as part of the solution, a suite of Windows Phone 7 applications allow financial controllers to quickly perform functions such as approving pending payments and checking payment status while on the go.
• Q&A: #Microsoft 's Tom Rizzo Gives Partners the Skinny on Office 365
  How's the Office 365 beta going?
  Over 2,000 organizations sign up every day for the beta, it is a limited beta. We don't provision them immediately as we sign them up, it is staged over time. We do offer different editions through the beta, so we have Office 365 for Small Business and we also have Office 365 for Enterprise. When you sign up for the beta you can decide which editions you want; you can try multiple editions. Those organizations can provision multiple users typically 10 or 15 or 20 users to try all the different services inside of the actual beta. We continue to have good momentum on the BPOS side of the house.
• #Java, C, C++: Top Programming Languages for 2011
  Java continues to dominate the developer landscape as the No. 1 programming language in use today. It remains atop the TIOBE Index. According to Simply Hired, since April 2009, Java jobs increased 52 percent. With Oracle now the steward of Java and having shepherded two new Java Specifications Requests mapping out the next two versions of the language and platform—Java 7 and Java –the language is due for enhancements to "move Java forward," Oracle said. The language is used for a variety of things, including enterprise apps, as well as Web and mobile development.
• In Silicon Valley, Some Like IT Hot
  Tempting for #Oracle might be a services company like CSC. Facing stiff competition, and with heavy exposure to the U.S. government as a client, CSC isn't the most attractive option. But that contributes to its inexpensive valuation at around four times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. If Oracle's new operations guru Mark Hurd could boost CSC's 8% operating margin even some way towards the 16% at which he was running H-P's services business, returns on a deal could be substantial.
• #Infor cancels anonymous referral program
  Infor deserves credit for quickly doing the right thing.
• Data Mining Videos ( #DataMining #BigData)
• Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes ( #BigData #DataVisualization)
  In this spectacular section of 'The Joy of Stats' he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes.
• #DataVisualisation: The Joy of Stats ( #BigData #DataMining)
  Presented by Hans Rosling, a Swedish professor of public health, it looks like a romp—implausible only if you’ve never seen the great man in action, either on the internet or, if you’re really lucky, live. I’m really lucky. I’ve seen him in action three times, the first at a one-day conference in Cambridge about five years ago.
• Gapminder World ( #DataVisualization #BigData)
  Wealth & Health of Nations
  
  This graph shows how long people live and how much money they earn.
  Click the play button to see how countries have developed since 1800.
• YouTube - Predictive Analytics World 2010 - The New Data Economy featuring Andreas Weigend ( #BigData)
  Mankind is transformed by the data created by individuals. Information overload has become more serious than ever.
• Journalism in the Age of Data ( #BigData #DataVisualization)
  Journalists are coping with the rising information flood by borrowing data visualization techniques from computer scientists, researchers and artists. Some newsrooms are already beginning to retool their staffs and systems to prepare for a future in which data becomes a medium. But how do we communicate with data, how can traditional narratives be fused with sophisticated, interactive information displays?
• #SAP HANA: Why Wait?
  An updated “real real-time” computing video about SAP HANA (High-Performance Analytic Appliance).
• How Do I: Get Started with Data Mining ( #Microsoft)
  Data mining can help you discover patterns in your data and turn information into knowledge. In this video Scott Golightly will discuss the basics of data mining and show you how to get started with the data mining wizard.
• #Oracle Infogram
  Published primarily for Oracle Priority Support customers, the Oracle Infogram is an unofficial news source that combines the best of the Oracle blogs, both inside and outside the firewall, links to useful Metalink notes, announcements, etc. Comments are welcome. We want this to be a place for dialog as well as news.
• Enterprise Software Is Alive and Well
  Enterprise software will not be replaced by cloud computing or SaaS but by what we currently call business process outsourcing (some analysts will come up with a better name by the time it happens). But I won't be writing end of year blog posts by the time that happens.
• #BMW ends America’s Cup partnership with #Oracle
  "This is by mutual agreement of both partners. Both parties set ambitious goals and achieved the ultimate objective: winning the America's Cup," the company said in a statement.
• San Francisco tweaks America's Cup offer, sees "progress" ( #Oracle)
  The winning syndicate is to decide by Dec. 31 where the next race will be held.
• Rhode Island realizes ’silver lining’ of America’s Cup ( #Oracle)
  "This is not a sailboat race, it's about investing in all of Rhode Island."
• #Oracle 's Latest VirtualBox Handles Heavier Workloads
  Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0, which supports several host operating systems—including Windows, Mac OS X, most flavors of Linux (including Oracle Linux) and Oracle Solaris—now features an easier-to-use interface and improved virtual appliance capabilities, said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of Oracle Linux and Virtualization Engineering.
• #Oracle revs #Sun 's VirtualBox hypervisor
  Oracle has stretched the hypervisor so that 32-bit hosts can support more than 1.5 or 2 GB of memory on guests (the amount depends on the guests and hosts). The hypervior now also has support for Intel's I/O Controller Hub 9 (ICH9) chipsets for machines sporting Pentium, Core 2, and Core 2 Duo chips and Intel's HD Audio for guest operating systems.
  
  Oracle says it has also done a "major rework" of the user interface for the hypervisor, which is now called VirtualBox Manager and which allows for lists of VMs running on a host to be sorted and which allows for virtual machines (including snapshots and their saved states) to be nuked completely off a box. The improved deletion function can also take disk images affiliated with a VM out behind the barn and give then the Old Yeller.
  
  VirtualBox 4.0 continues to build on the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) compatibility that was first added with VirtualBox 2.2 back in April 2008. Tweaks in the new version include performance improvements wh
• #Oracle VM Virtualbox 4.0 released !
  You can find the changelog here and you can download your version of 4.0 here. Have at it.
  
  A bunch of changes, visually a new management console, a new method to install with a base install and the extention pack (for the add-on drivers and extra features), a number of bugfixes, multi-monitor support for Oracle Solaris and Linux, it's a long list.
• #Oracle VirtualBox
  Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See "About VirtualBox" for an introduction.
  
  Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.
  
  VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while Oracle ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.
• The Evolution of #SAP Runs SAP
  Did you know that SAP is one of its own largest customers?
• #SAP Using Humor To Sell SaaS In Latest Business ByDesign Video
  This video attacks the perception many small businesses have of ERP systems being large, unresponsive, complex, difficult to use, and costly. All of this is done with self-deprecating humor, while showing how Business ByDesign can scale to the needs of a small, quickly growing business. It is very well done and worth checking out.
• Global #SaaS market to hit US$9B in 2010
  "Initial concerns about security, response time and service availability have diminished for many organizations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become more widespread."
• #SAP Says U.S. Court Should Deny $211.7 Million Interest on #Oracle Verdict
  “Even if prejudgment interest were not duplicative, the jury’s award, if it stands, more than adequately accomplishes the goals” of copyright protections, according to the filing. The jury award “fully compensates, and, really, overcompensates Oracle,” SAP argued.
• #SAP beefs up legal team after #Oracle lawsuit verdict
  Four attorneys from the San Francisco firm of Durie Tangri LLP have been added to SAP's roster, according to court filings in the past week.
  
  Durie Tangri "focuses on diverse areas of complex civil litigation including intellectual property (patent, trademark and copyright), professional liability, contract and commercial matters and class actions," according to its website.
• #Infor 's bright idea: Court 'influencers' to anonymously refer clients
• #Microsoft answers #Google #MapReduce with 'Dryad' beta
  It's like #Hadoop. Without the open source bit
• #Lawson buys human-resources specialist Enwisen
  Enwisen's SaaS (software as a service) suite, AnswerSource, includes a knowledge basecase management application that provides employees with personalized HR information; a that lets customer service representatives tap into the knowledge base; and an "onboarding/offboarding" software package aimed at helping new hires and those leaving the company.
• #Microsoft and #Cloud - they just don't get it, do they?
  I myself think it is extremely funny what is depicted there: the instruction to download (from the Cloud!) and install Microsoft Silverlight (on your local machine!) in order to be able to see how fantastically great Microsoft is for use with the Cloud...
• #Cloud vs Box
  [Video]
• #SAP in another exec reshuffle
  Three SAP vice presidents and a head of services are leaving the company as part of a major management reshuffle.
• Customers Gripe About #Oracle Service But Unlikely To Switch
  Potential Downside to Oracle Stock
  
  If the Computer Economics report indicates potential high dissatisfaction among customers, this could be concerning for Oracle as the possibility of a few customers switching could weigh on renewal rates. As an example, if license renewal rates lower to 90%, or about 5 percentage points, this translates to around 10% downside to our near $36 Trefis price estimate for Oracle stock.
• The Global Software Market In Transformation: Findings From The Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2010 | #Forrester Blogs
  Companies Start To Invest More Into Innovation In 2011
  ...
  Cloud Computing Is Getting Serious
  ...
  Companies Don’t Care About Pre-Integrated Hardware/Software Solutions (At Least In 2011)
  ...
  Business Intelligence Is The No. 1 Priority Software Application In 2011
  ...
  Companies Are Building Their Own Customer-Facing Mobile Applications
  ...
  The Software Market Shifts To Subscription-Based Licensing
• #SAP releases new version of SAP Business ByDesign
  The three starter packages currently available include:
  
  Customer relationship management (CRM) starter package - The CRM starter package provides customers with best business practices for sales force automation (SFA) and can be implemented in approximately three weeks.
  
  Enterprise resource planning (ERP) starter package - The ERP starter package provides provides customers the financials, accounting and analytics capabilities that can be implemented in approximately six weeks or less.
  
  Professional service provider (PSP) starter package - The PSP starter package is designed to give small businesses and mid-size professional services firms affordable access to the world-class business process management capabilities they need to not only manage their businesses end-to-end, but also to level the playing field against well-capitalised competitors. It can go live in approximately eight weeks.
• Biggest #ERP failures of 2010
  All vendors want their customers to be successful, but they can do more to improve project outcomes, according to Krigsman. One way would be to tie part of a salesperson's compensation to project success. This way, a salesperson won't be able to simply disappear after the ink dries, and moreover, they might be less inclined to upsell a customer on marginally beneficial extras that could make the project unwieldy.
• #Oracle May Be Too Late for the #Cloud Office Party
  Oracle has finally decided there may be something in all that cloud business, after all. The company just launched a new suite of cloud-based productivity tools and an update to the Open Office product it acquired along with Sun. "They're at a definite disadvantage considering competitors have been carving out niches and building their reputations and technologies very well," noted tech blogger Steven Savage.
• #Oracle Announces Oracle #Cloud Office and Oracle Open Office 3.3
  Oracle Open Office 3.3 includes new enterprise connectors to Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle E-Business Suite, other Oracle Applications and Microsoft Sharepoint, to allow for fast, seamless integration into existing enterprise software stacks. In addition, it adds increased stability, compatibility and performance at up to five times lower license cost compared to Microsoft Office.
• Multi-tenancy: Table Stakes For HRM SaaS In 2011
  What are the architectural differentiators among HRM SaaS for the next few years? Great HRM SaaS architectures should already be focused beyond mere multi-tenancy and on:
• #Workday Blog: #Salesforce.com Dreamforce Musings: Why the Real #Cloud has Gained Mome
  There was evidence everywhere that businesses of all sizes have embraced cloud computing. When Marc asked during his keynote how many in the audience were from companies of greater than 1,000 employees, hands shot up across the packed conference hall.
• #SAP to Acquire Disclosure Management Solutions from cundus AG
  Adding to its portfolio of solutions that create instant value for customers worldwide, SAP AG today announced its intent to acquire disclosure management solutions from cundus AG — headquartered in Duisburg, Germany — comprising cundus Financial Statement Factory and cundus informationCollector, including intellectual property, customer contracts and certain employees. As a result of this acquisition, SAP will extend its market-leading portfolio of finance solutions with a collaborative offering that helps enterprises achieve a timely, accurate and more cost-effective financial close process.
• #SAP Gets Deeper Into XBRL With Software Acquisition
  Cundus' software will also be rolled into Business Objects EPM, but it wasn't immediately clear whether it will supersede the UBMatrix product. In addition, SAP plans to sell the Cundus applications separately as part of "a complete end-to-end financial close solution."
• BMW #Oracle continues contact with RIEDC
  No decision for the hosting city has been made by the BMW Oracle organization at this time.
• Local philanthropist bankrolls MVHS library
  Dave Duffield, founder of #PeopleSoft and #Workday and his wife, Cheryl have given the San Ramon school district $281,000 for technology upgrades and new furnishings at the MVHS library. The money will also help pay for staff and give students extra time to use the library.
• #ORACLE REPORTS Q2 GAAP EPS UP 27% TO 37 CENTS; NON-GAAP EPS UP 33% TO 51 CENTS Software New License Sales Up 21%, Total Revenues Up 47%
  “Since joining Oracle I’ve met with and visited many customers that have expressed a
  high level of enthusiasm around our strategy of engineering hardware and software that works
  together,” said Oracle President, Mark Hurd. “That enthusiasm translates into an Exadata
  pipeline that has now grown to nearly $2 billion. That number is a good leading indicator that
  customers are planning to increase their investment in Oracle technology.”
• #Oracle touts strong quarter, Exadata pipeline
  # New software license revenue was up 21 percent to $2 billion.
  # Software license updates and product support revenue was $3.6 billion, up 12 percent.
  # Hardware system revenue was $1.1 billion.
  # Database and middleware revenue was $3.86 billion, up 17 percent from a year ago.
  # Applications revenue was $1.78 billion, up 12 percent. Of that sum, software license updates and product support revenue was $1.2 billion.
  # The company ended the quarter with 105,730 employees.
• #ITfail - Agile: Anatomy of a failed project
  Project success depends on carefully aligning expectations among stakeholder groups. If you don’t accomplish this goal, right from the start, your project will likely fail. Despite the difficulty, regardless of the time involved, this cardinal rule is virtually inviolable. Ignore it at your peril.
• 882 #Novell patents now shared by #Microsoft, #Apple, #EMC, and #Oracle
  The joint acquisition of these patents may be believed to put the four companies in stronger positions either offensively or defensively against current or future patent disputes. It should be noted that lawsuits from Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft all target Google's Android mobile operating system, which may explain why four large companies banded together to acquire the patents. FOSS Patents noted that such consortiums typically involve a group of smaller companies aligned to a larger one.
• Silicon Valley culture ripe for insider trading
  Insider trading charges buffeting the technology industry have laid bare what people who work in Silicon Valley already know: leaks happen, and a morsel of information can turn into treasured commodity.
• #Infor hires a trio of ex- #Oracle execs
  Duncan Angove
  Pam Murphy
  Stephan Scholl
  Enterprise software provider Infor has made three senior executive appointments. Each joins the company from Oracle, following in the footsteps of Infor CEO Charles Phillips.
• Five principles of sexy enterprise software
  To help bring sex back into enterprise, here are five principles to make enterprise software sexy:
• #IBM's 'Watson' Computer to Air on Jeopardy in February
  IBM researchers say question-answer systems like Watson will have real-life impacts on business in a variety of fields, including health care, online self-service desks, and tourism, according to IBM. The computer’s ability to quickly sort through vast amounts of data and return precise answers—and then rank the confidence in those answers—also will be key to IBM’s ongoing Smarter Planet initiative, which is driving to improve the world’s infrastructures—from roads to waterways to electrical grids—by putting more intelligence into the systems.
• #Yahoo preparing to lay off 600 to 700 workers
  Employees could be notified of the job cuts as early as Tuesday, according to a person familiar with Yahoo's plans. The person asked for anonymity because Yahoo hadn't made a formal announcement.
  
  The planned cutbacks represent about 5 percent of Yahoo's work force of 14,100 employees. It will mark Yahoo's fourth mass layoff in the past three years.
  
  The latest two housecleanings have come under the company's current CEO, Carol Bartz, a Silicon Valley veteran hired nearly two years, despite a lack of experience on the Web or in advertising - Yahoo's main source of revenue.
  
  This week's round of reductions is expected to be concentrated in Yahoo's U.S. products group, which already has been undergoing an overhaul since Bartz hired former Microsoft Corp. executive Blake Irving to run the division last spring.
• #RiminiStreet: A small, but threatening fish to #Oracle, #SAP
  Rimini Street isn’t a huge threat to Oracle or SAP yet, but that can change. Oracle charges 21 percent maintenance fees and SAP checks in at 18 percent for standards support. Rimini Street does it for 9 percent.
  
  Given that maintenance fee spread, you see why Wall Street types like to visit Ravin. They’re trying to figure out if and when the Oracle and SAP gravy train ends.
• #Workday Blogs: Not Even Partisan Politics Can Hinder the #SaaS Delivery Model for Payroll
  Yet there is group of payroll administrators who probably aren’t as stressed about these changes as many of their compatriots. They are customers of Workday, a provider of payroll, human resources, and financial solutions delivered on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. That last part is important, because the SaaS model is critical to alleviating the pain these payroll administrators experience in a world of ever-changing tax and payroll rules, at both state and federal levels.
• Payroll errors shortchange Fort Worth police officers ( #Oracle #Peoplesoft #ITfail)
  "It's easy sometimes to say the system's broken, but the system is working in this case," Lamers said. "What we need help with and what we're working with is inputting the data into the system correctly from timekeepers."
• Fort Worth police officers owed thousands as payroll goes online ( #ITfail #ERP)
  "Members, we understand your frustration with the new pay system and believe that it is unacceptable that some officers have failed to receive a check."
• Sexy enterprise software, part two: #SAP and #Workday
  Cloud competitors will claim this diversity represents an SAP weakness, but it also demonstrates the richness of SAP’s solutions, which no pure cloud vendor can match.
• IDC’s 2011 Predictions for the #Cloud
  The term “cloud computing” as a buzzword will be gone by 2012, as these technologies are expected to become ubiquitous.
• #SAP 's Not-So-Secret Weapon: Its Own CIO CIO.com
  "Drink Your Own Champagne," which is both more elegant and also, unintentionally, hints at the high price of SAP software.
• #Salesforce.com Thinks Big - And Forcefully Part II
  [S]alesforce.com is not only all in on the cloud as is evidenced by the sheer number of cloud service releases they unleashed at Dreamforce, but they recognize that their market differentiator is going to be familiarity for users and customization for the companies that are using the services.
• #Gartner Says #SaaS Revenue Within the Enterprise Application Software Market to Total $9.2 Billion in 2010
  Worldwide software as a service (SaaS) revenue within the enterprise application software market is forecast to reach $9.2 billion in 2010, up 15.7 percent from 2009 revenue of $7.9 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. The market is projected for stronger growth in 2011 with worldwide SaaS revenue totaling $10.7 billion, a 16.2 percent increase from 2010 revenue.
• Dealing With Vendor Offers To Cancel Shelfware And Replace With New Licenses
  Clients should consider “Cancel and Replace” options if they truly have a need to make a significant new license spend commitment and can no longer leverage license exchange rights. All others should attempt other techniques that drive down opex.
• 5 Reasons #HP Should Acquire #SAP ( #NotAChance)
  3. SAP cheaper than it has been, thanks to Oracle
  
  If HP were to acquire SAP now, it would be getting a relative bargain thanks to the Oracle lawsuit.
  
  SAP's shares were trading at $48.83 on December 6, a considerable drop from the $54-plus share price it saw in late October before the judgment phase of Oracle's SAP lawsuit began.
  
  While that share price is up a bit off its lows, it still represents about a 12-percent discount over its recent high. And any price HP would pay for SAP would have to include some sort of discount to account for the $1.3 billion judgment against SAP, which might or might not be reduced in the future.
• #HP CEO Leo Apotheker's Top 11 Priorities For The New Year
  Increase software sales
  
  Increasing HP's software sales has been a major theme for Apotheker. The former CEO of ERP software giant SAP has pointed out several times that software makes up a meager three percent of HP's $126 billion in annual sales.
  
  "We need more software both as a category and also across the portfolio so that we can differentiate our individual products and services," said Apotheker. So just what kind of software sales gains is he looking for? "Doubling it wouldn't be too bad," said Apotheker. "Tripling it would be even better!
• #SAP, #Salesforce.com and the Velocity of Change
  While it’s attractive to put this speed differential down to innate differences in need (or for that matter appetite) for change, I discern something subtly different is going on. It seems to me that the conservatism represented by the slow moving wheel is related more to the dearth of robust tools to facilitate change, more than any innate reluctance to change.
• #SAP Goes On-demand
  Can SAP on-demand have an impact? I believe so. The company will start off 2011 with a solid competitive story on multiple fronts – including a strong, multi-front on-demand message for SMEs, SAP’s large enterprise customers, CRM buyers, and partners. How the year will end is all in the execution: SAP has taken the field, now we get to see what they can do once they get the ball.
• The Realignment of the Enterprise Software Market: #Oracle vs. Everyone, #Microsoft in Ascendance, and Watch out for #Infor
  SAP EVP Sanjay Poonen described this effect at the SAP Summit last week – adding that in particular his field sales team is teaming up with IBM and HP to beat Oracle as much as possible. The fact that this is happening perhaps more in the field than in the executive suite is key: field sales people are notoriously pragmatic and tactical, and their apparent propensity to team up with erstwhile rivals to take on Oracle is an indication of the value of this new realignment, all other political realities aside.
• Answering the Questions about #SAP ’s OnDemand Applications
  Confused about SAP’s on-demand application portfolio? Heard about “River” but wondering if its benefits will flow downstream? Curious how Business ByDesign fits into SAP’s large enterprise Line of Business (LOB) offerings? For this edition of Jargon Buster, we’ll ask (and answer) some of the most frequently asked questions about SAP’s LOB SaaS applications.
• Making Sense of the #SAP Influencer Summit 2010
  SAP believes it is uniquely positioned to provide hybrid solutions with its increasingly coherent menu of on-premise and on-demand solutions. SAP Executive Board Member Vishal Sikka, who keynoted on day one, refers to this as the era of AND. Stability AND innovation, on-premise AND on-demand. Meaning: customers shouldn't have to compromise one to get the other.
  
  2.The converging trends of mobility, business intelligence, on-demand and in-memory have changed the middleware game (see my PAC TechEd piece). SAP intends to change outside perceptions from “legacy vendor” to tech leader by rejuvenating its NetWeaver platform, largely thanks to its acquisitions of BusinessObjects and Sybase, combined its own in-memory technology.
• #ERP Provider #SAP to De-Emphasize Customer Size
  At the same time, many of these new Enterprise 2.0 products are bought by line-of-business and other managers who are not necessarily SAP’s core IT and financial management audience. So, Enslin says, SAP will tailor its distribution channels to meet the needs of specific types of customers buying specific products.
  
  And, he says, SAP is also developing new channels. A cloud-based product such as Business ByDesign doesn’t require the deep technical skills of the kind of system integrator that has traditionally sold and deployed on-premises ERP products. So, SAP will align itself with new partners such as local accounting firms that will resell Business ByDesign to small-business CFOs, Enslin says.
  
  Similarly, SAP plans to team with non-traditional partners such as AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos that already sell on-demand services. “There’s a ready-made channel there, and you could see Business ByDesign becoming part of that.”
• #SAP TV Videos - Angelika Dammann - Challenging the Status Quo
  An SAP TV team shadowed the SAP Chief Human Resources Officer during two fully packed business days in Shanghai and Walldorf, Germany.
• Creating the Killer App Starts with Killer UE/UI
  When it comes to form v function, function has been the hands down winner through the decades. Traditionally, most companies haven’t been interested in whether or not users ”like” using a business application. More important is whether the application is better able to support the company’s required business processes.
• The "Killer" Screen: How One Well-Designed Screen Can Sell Your Product
  Highlights of this educational and complimentary webinar include:
  
  * Which screen is the "Killer Screen"? Let us help you identify the screen (or two) that sells your product.
  * What makes for a "Killer Screen"? Tips and tricks for enhancing the design of the "Killer Screen" so that it wows your prospects even more.
  * Does your "Killer Screen" work? Does it capture the imagination of your customers and make them want to see more? We'll show you how you can you test the "Killer Screen" design with prospects and customers to ensure that it's delivering the desired effect.
• YouTube - Rainer Zinow; SVP #SAP Business ByDesign
  Zinow explains the rationale behind current delays in cranking the marketing machine on Business ByDesign
• May the Force Be With You; the #Salesforce.com Dreamforce Festival
  Benioff’s freshness and dynamism makes Oracle look like yesterday’s news. Due to the global seachange unfolding, the world is looking for visionaries — not just shrewd businesspeople. In addition, today’s c-level executive must be the face of the brand. They are the ultimate “community managers.” Also, the major purchaser is no longer just the CIO — but all departments tangentially affected by the software purchase.
• #NetSuite: The quiet momentum
  NetSuite had a small gathering for a few of us in town for those big events. And while that event got little ink, frankly it deserves plenty for momentum at the company. NetSuite has managed to convert 500 Sage customers over the last few months.
• Ellison Team Issues Ultimatum on America's Cup Bid
  America's Cup organizers led by billionairre Larry Ellison set a deadline of Friday for San Francisco to sign a deal to host the next regatta -- and demanded that the city agree to a $128 million alternative that was recently rejected in favor of a cheaper option.
• The #Java Community Process Is Dead ( #OpenSource #Oracle)
  If that little nugget doesn't show that Accuracy and Oracle don't mix, I don't know what will. The JSPA says, in 5.C.III, that a spec lead can't:
  
  "impose any contractual condition or covenant that would limit or restrict the right of any licensee to create or distribute such Independent Implementations"
  
  
  
  and, of course, the FOU restriction does exactly that. And as far as "non-discriminatory", well, Oracle has deemed that OpenJDK (*their* distribution) not have any FOU restrictions on the TCK, but that the ASF's (Harmony) will. And that isn't discrimination?
  
  And so, the JCP is dead... All that remains is a zombie, walking the streets of the Java ecosystem, looking for brains...
• #Oracle Tightens Its #Java Grip, #Apache Slips Through Its Fingers
  "'Oracle and open source' should be an oxymoron ...," said tech analyst Rob Enderle. "Oracle believes anyone who gives something away is an idiot. Now Oracle owns Java and they're going to mine it for money."
• #Oracle to #SAP: You owe us another $212 million
  "We don't believe that Oracle is entitled to any additional compensation beyond the final judgement in this case."
• #Oracle Wants $212M In Interest, On Top Of $1.3B #SAP Verdict
  In this case, prejudgment interest would be calculated back to the time when the copyright infringement began in 2005.
  
  "To fully compensate Oracle for the time value of the lost license fees that it should have received in 2005 and 2006," the filing said, "the Court should award Oracle prejudgment interest on the jury verdict back to the agreed dates of the hypothetical license negotiations, pro-rated for each negotiation."
• #Google says the #Cloud is our future
  Google believes the arrival of Chrome OS heralds nothing less than a brave new world in which Windows and OSX-based machines have little future.
• #Salesforce.com to lobby Canberra over #cloud concerns
  Vendor argues that no Australian law prohibits banks, agencies from hosting data offshore.
• #Google Chrome OS: A Shot At #Microsoft's Bow
  Google’s Cr-48 notebook with Chrome OS is an incredibly sophisticated strategy to build traction and reputation for an operating system that is far from being ready and far from being able to replace any major operating system on the market today. But the implication and the goal is clear: The target is to become the future Windows in breadth and reach. There has never been a greater threat for Microsoft’s core business than today.
• FAQ - #Salesforce.com Database.com
  What functionality is included in Database.com?
  
  A database
  Relational data store
  Support for many data types
  Row-level security: Security model that provides data access rules down to the row level that are enforced with every API call
  Triggers and stored procedures
  Enterprise search services
  
  A Social Data Model
  Pre-built data structures to support following database records, feeds, rich user profiles, status updates and collaboration groups
  Social APIs
  Support common social application functionality like assigning followers to database records or populating feeds for database records or users
  File storage
  Documents, Video, Images
  Integration of file storage into relational data structures
  Identity & Authentication
  Identity/profiles, Authentication, oAuth & SAML support
  Standards-based APIs
  REST & SOAP
  Tools
  Database admnistration console
  Developer tool kits (see details below)
  Automatic Administration
  Auto elastici
• The #Apache Software Foundation Resigns From the JCP Executive Committee ( #OpenSource #Java)
  We'd like to provide some explanation to the community as to why we're taking this significant step.
  
  The recent Java SE 7 vote was the last chance for the JCP EC to demonstrate that the EC has any intent to defend the JCP as an open specification process, and demonstrate that the letter and spirit of the law matter. To sum up the issues at stake in the vote, we believe that while continuing to fail to uphold their responsibilities under the JSPA, Oracle provided the EC with a Java SE 7 specification request and license that are self-contradictory, severely restrict distribution of independent implementations of the spec, and most importantly, prohibit the distribution of independent open source implementations of the spec. Oracle has refused to answer any reasonable and responsible questions from the EC regarding these problems.
  
  In the phrase "fail to uphold their responsibilities under the JSPA", we are referring to Oracle's refusal to provide the ASF's Harmony project with a TCK
• #Oracle Response to #Apache Departure from #Java Community Process
  Now, despite supporting the technical direction, Apache have announced that they are quitting the Executive Committee. Oracle has a responsibility to move Java forward and to maintain the uniformity of the Java standard for the millions of Java developers and the majority of Executive Committee members agree. We encourage Apache to reconsider its position and remain a part of the process to move Java forward. ASF and many open source projects within it are an important part of the overall Java ecosystem.
• #Oracle asks #Apache to reconsider #Java committee departure
  "Give us a reason why the ASF should reconsider other than 'please,'" ASF president Jim Jagielski said in a Twitter post Thursday.
• #Apache quits #Java governance group in protest of #Oracle abuses
  Apache's departure is a serious blow to the JCP's credibility. Apache was a long-standing member of the JCP and has made substantial contributions to advancing the Java ecosystem. It's unclear what this move will mean for the many Java projects hosted by Apache.
• Flame throwing #Apache flees #Oracle 's #Java group
  According to the ASF, though, these EC members have let down the ASF and others implementing independent versions of Java.
  
  "We were looking for the EC to protect the rights of implementers to the degree they are able, as well as preserve the integrity of the JCP licensing structure by ensuring that JCP specifications are able to be freely implemented and distributed," the group said in a statement here.
  
  "By approving Java SE 7, the EC has failed on both counts: the members of the EC refused to stand up for the rights of implementers, and by accepting Oracle's TCK [Test Compatibility Kits] license terms for Java SE 7, they let the integrity of the JCP's licensing structure be broken."
• Everyday Influence: Every Company Is a Media Company: #SAP 2010 Influencer Summit
  On the social side…
  
  In addition to the onsite and virtual program we had a tremendous amount of activity through various social media channels such as twitter, LinkedIn and Sina (Chinese micro-blogging community). The hash tag for the summit was #SAPSummit. Total ‘tweets’ across all microblogging platforms linked to the hashtag were 6,500+ over the 2 ½ day event (and still going) with 8.5m+ impressions (follower’s reach). We also posted a number of important sessions on SAP's YouTube channel for open public access.
• #Oracle Seen Posting Sharp 2Q Profit Gain
  Analysts polled by FactSet Research believe Oracle will report earnings excluding one-time items of 46 cents a share for the period ended in November, and $8.3 billion in revenue.
• #Apache is being forced into a #Java Fork
  I see a Java fork coming. On one side, there will be the “official” open-source Java, OpenJDK, and on the other will be Apache with Harmony. Not long after this, Oracle will sue Apache. After all, Oracle has already sued Google for its use of the Dalvik Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in Android. Oracle will see these as very similar cases. Eventually, the courts will get to decide how “open” an open-source project is when one company gets to call all the important shots.
• #SAP Cloud Platform, App Store Set For 2011
  SAP is years behind Salesforce.com in delivering an on-demand platform and supporting infrastructure. More than 185,000 apps have been built on the CRM vendor's Force.comcloud computing and not just copying others. Business ByDesign stands out from competitors in that it covers a full suite of application functionality rather than just ERP or CRM, executives pointed out. Thus it will support a broader range of on-demand applications, they said. platform, and more than 700,000 instances of those apps have been installed from Salesforce.com's online AppExchange. SAP executives insisted the company is taking its own path to
• #Salesforce.com Embraces Chatter to Obliterate and Remake Itself
  He said it’s this kind or radical thinking that will leave companies like Oracle, SAP and Microsoft behind, because, they’re too tradition-bound. But he said despite the major shift that embracing social means for a company, it can happen rather quickly. “It happens in a nanosecond. It’s when you recognize in a second that everything has changed,” he said.
• NetW2010 - How Social and Mobile Trends Impact the Workplace on GigaOm
  [#Salesforce.com Video]
• #Tibco acquires #CRM vendor Loyalty Lab
  Tibco intends to marry Loyalty Labs' software to its own technology, particularly for CEP (complex event processing), said Ray Wang, CEO and principal analyst of Constellation Research.
• Did #Salesforce.com Just Announce Support for Client/Server Computing?
  Think about it. One of the fastest growing areas for application development is for mobile computing on top of Android, iOS, and, dare I say it, Windows Phone 7. Each of these applications are downloaded to a client device and communicate through an API/protocol to a backend server/filesystem. That, my friends, is by definition client/server computing.
• #SAP - The Solution Configurator for SAP Business Business ByDesign
  CONFIGURE YOUR SOLUTION QUICKLY AND GET AN INSTANT PRICE ESTIMATE
• Answering the Questions about #SAP ’s OnDemand Applications
  However, at SAPPHIRE Now 2010, CTO and Executive Board Member Vishal Sikka explained that new LOB apps would be developed using the Business ByDesign architecture. The first such app, Sales OnDemand, is slated for release in early 2011.
• #Cloud will render BI stack irrelevant: #SAP
  Snabe emphasized that on-premise remains the core of SAP's business and a key development priority. The vendor's strategy is to offer the customer choice of delivery method, be it on-premise, on-demand or on-device.
• #Salesforce.com Database.com and Openness: Why? How? What?
  Database.com was built with three core principles in mind with a clear focus on Openness:
  
  * Any Platform: As an enterprise database in the cloud, it should be accessible to developers on all platforms – cloud or on-premise – through standards-based API’s and protocols.
  * Any Language: Being open to any language is critical to supporting the innovation of the developer community. Development and adoption of new languages is increasing at an amazing rate but data storage represented a universal need.
  * Any Device: With the growth of mobile devices and an increasingly connected internet-of-things, the database must be open to use from any and all of these clients in a clean, consistent and secure manner.
• The America's Cup rip-off
  A shadowy new corporation controlled by Ellison would get control of more than 30 acres of prime waterfront land worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The city could lose $42 million, and possibly as much as $128 million.
• #HP on #Oracle SPARC/Solaris: "Larry Ellison bought a money-losing business"
  "Larry Ellison bought a money-losing business that had steady market share declines for years, and which still ranks at the bottom of the market. Customers aren't fooled by outdated benchmarks, no matter what Oracle says. HP's market share results prove it. Sun customers are running to HP in droves because they recognize we deliver superior technology, performance and pricing."
• Can #Oracle Beat #HP?
  Oracle stepped out and started trash talking HP big time. Essentially, it said that HP’s servers simply couldn’t compete and while IBM’s could, Oracle’s hardware would easily beat both.
• Larry Ellison Hearsay: “We Can’t Be Successful if We Don’t Lie to Customers”
  “I remember him very distinctly telling me one time: Bruce, we can’t be successful unless we lie to customers.” And adds: “All the things that you would read in books of somebody being a leader, he wasn’t. But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything.”
• Bloomberg Game Changers: Larry Ellison - Video
  BLOOMBERG GAME CHANGERS follows Larry Ellison from his early days in Chicago through the founding of the multi-billion-dollar software company to his rise as the highest paid executive of the last decade with a total compensation of $1.84 billion
• Palm Chief Says #HP 's Apotheker 'Jazzed' About #webOS
  As for Apotheker, he might be thrilled with the potential of webOS, but he's got bigger fish to fry at the moment and has already made building HP's software business -- which accounted for 3 percent of the company's $126 billion in revenue during FY2010 -- a top priority.
• #HP Moves to Improve, Protect Its Support Business
  "HP is locking down its existing support practices," said Ray Wang, CEO and principal analyst with Constellation Research, via e-mail. "In the past, they were much more free with the sharing of support IP."
  
  For now, HP's announcement primarily affects hardware support, as only a small fraction of its business comes from software. However, newly appointed CEO Léo Apotheker has expressed a desire to grow the software business substantially.
  
  HP and other hardware vendors have been facing a growing threat from third-party maintainers in the past couple of years, said IDC analyst Matt Healey.
• The 10 Biggest #HP Stories Of 2010
  Here's a look back at the ten biggest HP stories of 2010, including Mark Hurd's resignation, Leo Apotheker becoming the new HP CEO and the end of HP's channel partnership with Cisco.
• #HP 's Apotheker Reaches Out To Nervous Channel Partners
  In a two-minute video clip sent this week to all of HP's Americas channel partners, Apotheker insists that HP's focus on the channel and its commitment to partners won't change one bit. In fact, he's of the opinion that HP won't be able to conquer all of the business growth potential that lies ahead without the expertise of its channel army.
  
  "We remain fully engaged in our channel objectives and fully engaged with you as a core component of our long term business strategy," Apotheker says in the video. "It's more important than ever for us to maintain our momentum because the opportunity before us has never been greater."
• #Salesforce.com making deals, slinging mud
  Benioff, though, is no clone of Ellison. During the lunch he also talked about the company’s proposed campus in San Francisco, on the land next to a new UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, for which he and his wife donated $100 million. He said the big campus will be important in growing the company and its workforce.
  
  “It’s very important for us to have employees for life,” he said. Benioff also went around talking to and giving kudos to many top Salesforce executives during the lunch, in contrast to what he calls Ellison’s “management-by-ridicule” tactics.
• Workplace charging stations for electric vehicles are the latest Silicon Valley perk ( #SAP)
  Graf said SAP owns 17,000 company cars globally and has an economic as well as environmental reason to support electric vehicles. "We are interested in the savings opportunities, because EVs are easier to maintain," he said.
• S.F. America's Cup facilities might move north
  Hosting the 34th Cup is projected to inject more than $1 billion into San Francisco's economy and generate work for almost 9,000 people, but there could be a sizable cost to taxpayers.
  
  The original proposal, with race facilities concentrated along the central waterfront between Piers 28 and 50, will cost the city about $101 million in net direct expenses and lost revenue from granting development rights and free, long-term leases, said the board's budget analyst, Harvey Rose. But that doesn't include $32 million that an America's Cup Organizing Committee has pledged to raise to help defray city costs, or $150 million in private investment from the team's event authority to stabilize aging Piers 30-32 and Pier 50.
• #Salesforce.com unveils Database.com
  Database.com is partly powered by Oracle's flagship database, which has long been used by Salesforce.com. But the service contains dozens of other supporting technologies that constitute Salesforce.com's cloud infrastructure, which now supports some 87,000 customers around the world, said Eric Stahl, senior director of product marketing.
• #Salesforce.com Announces Hosted Service Called Database.com
  Database.com is a stand-alone service available via its SOAP and REST APIs to any language on any platform or device. - not just Force.com developers. Database.com will be generally available in 2011 and, like Force.com, will have a freemium pricing model. This new service brings Salesforce.com into competition with Oracle not just in CRM but in Oracle's oldest turf: databases.
• One Database To Rule The #Cloud: #Salesforce.com Debuts Database.com For The Enterprise
  Developers can write their applications in Java, C#, Ruby, PHP or more and can run their apps anywhere – on Force.com, VMforce, Amazon EC2, Google AppEngine, Microsoft Azure or Heroku.
• #Salesforce.com - #Oracle rivalry heats up with launch of Database.com
  Salesforce’s Database.com, which will be available as a standalone service in 2011, will be free for 3 users and up to 100,000 records and 50,000 transactions per month. Beyond that, it will be priced at $10 per month for each set of 100,000 records beyond the first 100,000 and $10 per month for each set of 150,000 transactions beyond the first 50,000. That’s the price for basic services, which includes database access, file storage and automatic administration.
  
  Database.com Enterprise services will be priced at $10 per user per month and include user identity, authentication and row-level security access controls.
• #SAP Joins the #Google Apps Marketplace
  SAP StreamWork brings together people and information - from the web, your desktop, or business systems - and applies structure to discussions with business tools including pro/con tables, SWOT analyses, and polls to drive fast, meaningful results. Think about how easy it can be to allocate resources, prioritize sales leads, or define new marketing campaigns in a single, well-organized location. With Google Apps integration, the SAP StreamWork environment will be joined with the tools you are already familiar with in the cloud.
  
  SAP StreamWork will work with OpenID so you can use your Google Apps login to access your SAP StreamWork account and navigate to it through the Google universal navigation bar. Additionally, Google Apps will also be accessible directly from SAP StreamWork, providing you with the ability to use Google’s calendaring, email and document creation and management tools as part of your problem-solving process in SAP StreamWork. Direct integration will be available for
• Throwing Enterprise Software Vendors Under the Bus
  At best, these companies feel comfortably stuck with the devil they know well: They've spent far too much money already on their software portfolios, and the alternative (chucking it all) is not feasible or cost-effective right now.
  
  At worst, these companies' software-purchasing behavior demonstrates a fundamental economic disconnect and irrational behavior, in that many of these new software purchases are not in their companies' long-term best interests.
• Jury awards $61M to Sunshine Mills over botched #ERP project #ITfail
  Sunshine claimed that Ross' software disrupted operations across all of its plants, caused wrong products to be shipped to customers, failed to generate invoices for shipped orders and led to numerous other problems.
• How to Negotiate Better Business Software Deals
  IT decision-makers have to do more homework than they once did.
• #Workday 's big picture: Be in position to swipe #Oracle customers in 2012
  Workday has bigger fish to fry—notably Oracle and its PeopleSoft customers. In 2012, PeopleSoft customers will be pondering a move to Oracle’s Fusion middleware and apps. Naomi Bloom, a human capital management consultant, noted that PeopleSoft customers are likely to figure out there won’t be more non-Fusion development coming after 2012. “That’s the plan,” said Nittler. “Use 2011 to get to critical mass in functionality, references, customers and users so we’re there in 2012.”
• “#Cloud is bullsh*t” – #HCL ’s CEO, Vineet Nayar, explains why he said just that
  I have not seen anything from a technology point of view which is not available for the enterprise for usage for me to get very excited and saying, “Hey all of this is going to move to the Cloud.” And that’s the reason I’m not as bullish about the Cloud as somebody else is.
• Woz goes hands-on with technology relics
  CNET brings you several videos of Wozniak talking about his life influences, what he was thinking when he built the original Apple, how he and Steve Jobs came down with mononucleosis while creating a game called Breakout, and several other fascinating tales.
• A Guided Tour of Computing History
  Steve Wozniak shows us around the Computer History Museum's first truly full-blown permanent exhibit: "Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing"
• Vishal @vSikka: We’re running 20 start-ups at #SAP
  Having founded and sold two start ups after his doctorate in computer science from Stanford University , Vishal Sikka , member of the executive board at the world’s biggest business software maker SAP, is a restless entrepreneur. In many ways what he is doing SAP today is a result of his lessons from the failures and challenges in nurturing iBrain and Bodha — the two companies he founded two decades back.
• #Oracle Head Touts Extreme Database Performance of SPARC Supercluster
  SPARC Supercluster can complete 30 million database operations per minute. It showed that the computing machine is threefold faster than the current record. A record held by IBMs DB2 over a P7 cluster.
• Larry Ellison: #Oracle Broke #IBM Database Record
  Oracle used a quadrillion records in the database.
• Beware the Wolf in Cloud's Clothing - Official #NetSuite Blog ( #Microsoft #Sage)
  Applications like Great Plains, or Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains as it is now known, or Sage Line 50 were initially developed in the early 90s as client-server applications and are fundamentally not architected to operate in the cloud or take advantage of the internet in the same way that true Cloud Computing solutions are. The founder of Chef's Toolbox, an Australian company that uses NetSuite OneWorld to run their business across 3 countries, joined Zach Nelson on stage at our Business Cloud event in Sydney recently to tell the story of how they attempted to deploy Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains in the 'cloud', how the performance was terrible and how the functionality it provided was just too limited and inflexible to handle the needs of their business. Not only was the deployment a drain on their time and resources, they weren't able to achieve accurate and timely reporting and rather than helping them run the business it was proving to be a distraction.
• 10 Little-Known Facts about $1.3 Billion Ruling in #SAP - #Oracle Case
  SAP is now entered into the "Guinness Book of World Records." Unfortunately it's for the "Worst Return on a Software Acquisition." SAP paid $10 million for TomorrowNow in 2005, lost close to $100 million on its investment during its existence, and now faces this $1.3 billion verdict.
• #Oracle Announces SPARC Solaris-Based Exalogic Elastic #Cloud System
  Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud T3-1B combines SPARC servers running Oracle Solaris 11 Express with InfiniBand-based I/O fabric, the market-leading Oracle WebLogic Server and other enterprise Java-based Oracle middleware products.
• #Oracle Delivers Complete Refresh of SPARC Enterprise Server Product Line and Unveils SPARC Solaris-based Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud T3-1B
  Announcement of Oracle Solaris 11 Express in November; a fully-supported production release delivering immediate access to mission-critical features, including un-matched levels of reliability and availability with predictive self-healing and advanced software management features that significantly reduce planned and unplanned downtime.
• #Oracle launches SPARC-based Exalogic, updates Solaris
  CEO Larry Ellison said, “For all of the competitors who have been enjoying their sundowns and sunsets, this is the sunrise.”
• #Oracle Challenges #IBM With 'Sparc Supercluster'
  Called the Sparc Supercluster, the system can include dozens of rack-mount servers based on Oracle's recently released 16-core Sparc T3 processor, linked in a cluster with high-performance InfiniBand connections, Oracle's Real Application Clusters software and Sun's FlashFire solid-state storage acceleration technology.
  
  CEO Larry Ellison will launch the system Thursday afternoon during an event at Oracle's Silicon Valley headquarters. Mark Hurd, the former HP boss Ellison hired to help run his systems business, will be on hand to talk up that and other new hardware.
• #Oracle App Users Group Analyzes $1.3B #SAP Judgment
  "The stronger the stance Oracle takes to prevent new entrants from providing alternative service options for these systems, the more trapped the customer may feel. Oracle's competitors in this space are very good at leveraging the pain point to their advantage."
• GSA Victory a Win for #Google Apps and the #Cloud
  The United States General Services Administration (GSA) announced yesterday that it is selecting Google Apps over bids from Microsoft or IBM to deliver e-mail and collaboration tools. Google has faced some challenges winning larger customers, but the GSA contract demonstrates that Google's cloud-based platform poses a credible threat to its rivals.
• #Microsoft badmouths #Google over fed contract win
  "Constraints such as inadequate product support, failure to provide a roadmap, poor interoperability with other line of business applications and limited functionality are all reasons why public sector organizations such the State of Minnesota and New York City have said 'no thanks' to what Google is offering."
• #Google, the GSA and the Competition - Why #Microsoft
  Adding Random Functionality is not Really Adding Functionality
  
  Recently, Google has added additional functionality to its productivity applications in an effort to bolster them. While it's not clear to us how useful business customers will find applications such as Picasa Web Albums, Google Voice and Adwords, some of our customers don't seem to be impressed with the value they receive from Google. Business such as WinWire, Bradshaw and Weil, Phaeton Automotive, Vinci and others have all been consistent in their message: Google cannot meet their requirements.
• #Microsoft 's #Adobe Flash Competitor Not Dead After All
  Today's event was meant to reassure Silverlight Web developers that Microsoft has not abandoned them. Scott Guthrie, who oversees a number of development technologies for Microsoft, announced that Silverlight 5 would be a "major release" include improvements such as:
  
  * Hardware decoding of video streams, which will enable high-definition video on low-powered netbooks
  * A TrickPlay feature will let videos be played at different speeds, with audio pitch correction so sped-up videos won't sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks
  * Better power management to improve battery life during playback of Silverlight video
  * A so-called "10-foot interface" so users can control videos with remote controls, as they do with Microsoft's Media Center on Windows today.
• The biggest fish
  The America's Cup would transform San Francisco's waterfront -- but is it a good deal for the city?
• #SAP Launches HANA for In-memory Analytics
  SAP intends HANA boxes to be attached to its own ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, sucking in and analyzing transactional data in real time. However, HANA's "agnostic" data access functionality means any information source can be used, according to the vendor.
• #SAP 's Hana Speeds the Database Race
  @vSikka, SAP's CTO, recalls that company co-founder Hasso Plattner last year challenged him to "intellectually renew the company." Accomplishing that will include enticing customers to buy new kinds of software as their appetite for the company's bread-and-butter products wanes.
• #SAP Co-CEO: IT Spending Rebounds, Particularly In Software
  "We have these issues [in Europe, of], Ireland, Spain, Greece and maybe Portugal," Snabe said, adding that countries such as Germany and France will help to stabilize the European economy. "Europe will also be coming back, just a little bit slower" than the U.S.
• #Forrester #BI Wave Crammed With Leaders
  Leaders:
  * #IBM #Cognos;
  * Information Builders;
  * #Microsoft;
  * #MicroStrategy;
  * #SAP #BusinessObjects;
  * #Oracle; and
  * SAS.
  
  Strong Performers:
  * Actuate;
  * Panorama Software;
  * QlikTech; and
  * TIBCO Spotfire.
• #SAP HANA to power in-memory data processing
  SAP AG , provider of business software solutions, has announced the availability of SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance (SAP HANA) software and SAP BusinessObjects Strategic Workforce Planning application, new generation of in-memory applications based on SAP HANA during SAP TechEd 2010 here today.
• CIOs hunt for better maintenance deals
  IT leaders may find the spectacle less appealing as they contemplate their own software maintenance bills.
  
  Typically, enterprises can expect to pay annual maintenance fees of about 20 per cent of the cost of the original software licence, according to financial analyst Cowen and Company.
  Indeed, IT chiefs say software maintenance accounts for a growing proportion of their IT spend, according to Duncan Jones, principal analyst in resource and vendor management at Forrester Research.
  
  When put into that sort of context, it is perhaps not unreasonable for business leaders to question the value they get from maintenance contracts, said Steve Jones, an IT professional who runs his own podcast, Voice of the DBA.
• #SAP - #Oracle feud could hurt business, customers say
  Those customers, he said, "should ensure that those third parties will engage fairly with Oracle for support on their behalf. This may mean that customers should pay close attention to the contract with the third party".
  
  If those customers "lapse off Oracle support and then find the third party cannot support them properly later on, then they will have to pay Oracle a lot of back support fees to get support back," he warned.
• #SAP Brings Stone-Age Software Economics to Cloud Computing
  By calculating the related costs of each ERP solution over a 5-year period, NetSuite was anywhere from 40-70 percent less expensive than Business ByDesign. In one real-world example, the customer indicated Business ByDesign was twice the cost of NetSuite and provided just half the functionality required.
• #SAP Brings Stone-Age Software Economics to Cloud Computing - Official #NetSuite Blog
  SAP proudly declares a woeful 5 year TCO of over $500,000 for just 10 users for its little deployed and much delayed SAP Business ByDesign product, on its online TCO calculator. Over $500,000? Really? We can only guess that no-one told them that businesses are choosing cloud ERP to completely transform their ERP cost structure, not perpetuate it.
• With #Oracle - #SAP trial over, third-party maintenance questions remain
  “We didn’t really have a ruling on the overall question of third-party maintenance vendors,” Josh Greenbaum, principal with Enterprise Applications Consulting, said about the recent verdict. “That’s still very much in the air.”
• The State of Software M&A: A New Mindset
  A sell-side candidate today needs to be painstakingly positioned and carefully profiled when presented to a potential acquirer. The prospective buyer — and that means most of the key stakeholders who are initially polled about the opportunity — must immediately get it, and resonate with it. If they don't, it's over before you begin.
  
  The vast majority of buyers today prefer a two or three hour introductory phone call over an in-person meeting. These days, there may be a half-dozen people in the room at the buyer's end, and a few calling in from the road. We find these stakeholders are considerably more prepared today than in the past. It's likely they've had more internal discussions, read more market analyst reports, queried more consultants, and spent more time assessing the market, than at any time in the past. Each will filter the seller's presentation based on this research and his/her corporate function and agenda, seeking to qualify the target as a worthy candidate, hoping it pr
• #RiminiStreet to #Oracle: don't expect us to roll over
  So it would be easy to assume that Oracle's hand against Rimini Street has been strengthened by its win against SAP.
  Why Rimini Street isn't TomorrowNow
  It would be easy, but it would be wrong.
• #RiminiStreet to #Oracle: don't expect us to roll over
  I have yet to see a description of how Rimini Street identifies bugs, creates fixes, tests the fixes, and deploys them to customers. It's hard to imagine that Rimini Street does this with a small staff lacking access to the core product developers and the entirety of the products' source code.
  
  I look forward to hearing how this is done. Everyone should aspire to a more efficient deployment and maintenance of enterprise software, but not if it means IP theft, as SAP confessed to in its case with Oracle.
• Appeal Gives #Microsoft Chance to Contest i4i Award, #Patent Standards
  The decision is an important one not just for Microsoft, which now has a chance to challenge the judgment, but for patent law as well. In considering the company’s appeal, the court will examine the current legal standard for determining the validity of a patent, which presumes a patent is valid because it’s been approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
• The tiny firm #Oracle hates
  #RiminiStreet that offers Oracle's customers a 50% discount on support contracts and claims to have 350 clients, big and small. "Once we take their customers we provide them with everything they need, including our updates, sometimes ahead of Oracle," brags Seth Ravin, Rimini's founder and CEO.
  
  Predictably, Oracle is suing Rimini, which has countersued Oracle. Rimini is still small: 2010 revenues will hit $25 million. (Bookings that because of conservative accounting policies will be recognized in future years total $180 million, Ravin says.) But the market opportunity is massive. That's why Oracle is paying attention.
• #SAP: Pay #Oracle and Get Out of Dodge
  There's a good joke about a guy stealing a $2000 watch, pawning it for $200, and then telling the judge when found guilty for the crime that he should only have to pay $200 in restitution. That was SAP's defense.
• “Privatizing the #Cloud: Study on Enterprise Cloud Adoption” 2010 IOUG Survey Results and Call to Action at Collaborate 2011
  # 29% of organizations reported they already have deployed an internal cloud.
  # 37% indicated some piece of their organization’s workload processing or infrastructure is now available through private cloud services.
  # Private cloud implementation is growing significantly over the next year.
  # With private cloud implementations, respondents highlighted emphasis on “platform as a service” (database and middleware capabilities).
  # Adoption of private cloud services for IT workload processing or infrastructure is outpacing the use of public platform service providers.
  # Security continues to be a concern for public cloud and online application services.
• #SAP’s TomorrowNow Debacle Ends With Jury Award Of $1.3B To #Oracle
  As long as there is not clear ruling, people will now always assume, that third party maintenance is connected to ip theft. At least all sales pitches will now always include questions around ip protection and what happens if Oracle would sue the provider.
• Bloom & Wallace Release 2011
  For 2011 (and probably beyond), I plan to work with, at any one time, a small and select group of “strategic advisory” clients. I will continue to advocate broadly for best practices in our industry, using my blog, Twitter, and a range of public forums to do so, but I will concentrate my 2011 direct client work in relationships where there’s a shared commitment that goes beyond expertise on demand and where my contributions can make a durable difference.
• #CA sues over #IBM #DB2 migration tool
  CA claimed ISI's software "reproduced" portions of confidential source and object codes without permission and deprived CA of license fees.
  
  CA alleged that it had lost revenue from former database customers that had incorrectly stopped paying license fees when they started using the ISI tool.
• #SAP Verdict Reverberates ( #3PM)
  So-called third-party support companies supply maintenance and repairs—though not software upgrades—for a variety of business programs. The verdict Tuesday stemmed from the actions of a now-closed SAP unit called TomorrowNow that supported Oracle products. Oracle has also sued another third-party maintenance company, Rimini Street
  Inc., and the possibility of other legal action in the field has become a hot topic.
  The third-party market is still tiny, accounting for just $100 million of the $20 billion spent on software maintenance overall, estimated Paul Hamerman, an analyst at consulting firm Forrester Research. But the entire support market is growing roughly 8% a year.
• Software is Roadkill ( #Cloud)
  Software may not be inherently evil (it has created wealth for many people that is in proportion to the pain it has provided to many customers). Software and specifically on-premise enterprise software, however, is clearly dead to the VCs that help foster the industry.
• #HP gets Apotheker era off to good start; Earnings, outlook strong
  Apotheker said that “a competitor” has tried to distract HP repeatedly, but was unsuccessful. HP “is as focused as ever on driving the business forward,” said Apotheker.
  
  In reference to the Oracle flap, HP’s new CEO was also asked where he was physically at the moment. Apotheker quipped: “That’s an odd question.” He then noted that he was in HP’s Palo Alto headquarters with a bunch of other people. “Would you like a picture?” he asked.
  
  Apotheker said he has been meeting with employees all around the world—from California to China to Singapore and Europe. “It is clear that HP is winning in the market. We have strong momentum going into next year. Customers have also given me great feedback,” he said.
• Jury Rules #SAP Owes #Oracle $1.3 Billion
  Oracle Co-President Safra Catz said "this is the largest amount ever awarded for software piracy."
  
  SAP said it was disappointed by the decision and would "pursue all available options, including post-trial motions and appeal if necessary."
• #Oracle #SAP Special Verdict Form
  What is the dollar amount that Oracle is entitled to from Defendants to compensate Oracle for its actual damages under its copyright infringement claim, in the form of EITHER a fair market value license for the copyright infringement OR lost profits?
  FAIR MARKET VALUE LICENSE: $1.3 billion
• #Oracle - #SAP Verdict: SAP Owes Oracle $1.3 Billion
  “You have to bet Oracle will be reminding customers they’re choosing between thought leaders and intellectual property thieves–and what that indicate more broadly about how SAP does business.”
• #Gartner Mastermind Interview Series: Marc Benioff ( #Salesforce.com)
• #Oracle applications customers: wedded bliss or battered wives?
  So, is Oracle planning any improvements in its service and support programs? It's possible. Oracle recently brought Charles Rozwat, a respected Oracle executive, back from an extended leave of absence, to head up its worldwide support organization, and he reports directly to co-President Mark Hurd. But I have no idea what changes may be planned. Oracle refused my repeated requests to make Rozwat--or anyone else--available to discuss these matters.
• #Salesforce.com: The Web's Big Upstart
  Benioff now touches, on average, only 20% of a customer's employees, mostly those in sales; he is all but unknown in finance, R&D, IT, human resources, manufacturing, legal and logistics departments. He needs a hefty portion of the other 80% to make it worth a developer's time to commit to the quirks of his code. But how to attract the developers if he's not big enough to get them interested in the first place?
• #NoSQL Market Forecast 2011-2015
  NoSQL market is expected to reach $1.8 Billion by 2015 at a CAGR of 32% between 2011 and 2015. NoSQL market will generate $5.6 Billion revenues over the period 2011 – 2015.
• #NoSQL #Hadoop and #Hive at #Orbitz
  Orbitz uses Hadoop, Hive and machine learning to improve hotel ranking. In addition to the hotel ranking application, Orbitz is starting to use Hadoop for other projects such as: measuring page download performance, raw data log search and cache analysis.
• Emerging database technologies hit #DBMS mainstream, add to choices
  The use of a column-based database is opening up possible new business opportunities for Provisio Inc., according to Sean Harrison, the Nashville, Tenn.-based company’s chief security officer and senior information architect.
• The beginning of the end of #NoSQL
  #BigData is another term we expect to diminish in usage in 2011, since Bigdata is a trademark of a company called SYSTAP.
  
  Witness the fact that the Data Analytics Summit, which I’ll be attending next week, was previously the Big Data Summit. We assume that is also the reason Big Data News has been upgraded to Massive Data News.
• #OpenSource #Hadoop Predicted To Be More Disruptive than #Linux
  “So these data factories are going to emerge as the new drivers of innovation of a massive revolution that will change fundamentally how business models extract value, because data is going to be, is the core asset in a multitude of industries.”
• #IBM Builds on #OpenSource #Hadoop with New Storage Architecture ( #BigData)
  General Parallel File System-Shared Nothing Cluster (GPFS-SNC) architecture was built on the IBM (NYSE: IBM) GPFS and incorporates the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) to provide high availability through advanced clustering technologies, dynamic file system management and advanced data replication techniques.
  
  The cluster "shares nothing," in a distributed computing architecture in which each node is self-sufficient. The GPFS-SNC divides tasks between independent nodes and no one waits on the other.
• Secrets of the #LinkedIn Data Scientists ( #Hadoop)
  The workhorse of their pipeline is Hadoop, with a large cluster running a mixture of Solaris and CentOS. Jay Kreps has put together a great video and slides on LinkedIn's approach to the system, but Peter tells me they're big fans of Pig for creating their jobs, with snippets of Python for some of the messier integration code.
  
  Before he joined LinkedIn, he frequently used SQL for querying and exploring his data, but these days he's almost exclusively using lightweight MapReduce scripts to do that sort of processing. To control the running of Hadoop jobs, they've recently open-sourced their internal batch-processing framework Azkaban which acts as the circus ringmaster for all of the processes people throughout the company need the cluster to run, both one-offs and recurring tasks.
• #Wipro to setup $75M data center in Cleveland, NC
  According to plans, the data center will meet the industry requirements for a tier III facility and LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certification. These certifications mean that the center will be using green technologies, have redundancies against unforeseen system failures and better security.
• Why #ERP Upgrade Fears Affect Software Decisions
  With SaaS, however, upgrades are usually not as burdensome. Releases are typically delivered more frequently than on-premise packages. And "while not exactly a forced march, SaaS customers are not allowed to slip too far behind with upgrades," Jutras adds. "By taking on some of the burden of the upgrade process, SaaS ERP providers do indeed reduce the cost and effort of the upgrade."
• #Progress Software Aims To Simply #SaaS for ISVs
  Progress Arcade, a rich cloud-based portal of services, will simplify testing, demonstrating and deploying applications as cloud-based SaaS offerings for apps using Progress’ OpenEdge database.
• Businesses wasting millions on unused software says #HP
  Companies are wasting about 6 percent of their IT spend on software that's not been used according to a new survey from HP. That figure represented a whopping £16 billion across Europe at a time when companies, more than ever, are looking to cut costs.
  
  Application sprawl is deemed to be a problem by 74 percent of CIOs across Europe - although the UK does better than many of its continental counterparts here, with just 58 percent of CIOs complaining of the phenomenon.
• At the Gates foundation, the goal is 'being a catalyst'
  Our earliest investments in education focused on opening new schools. Our expectation was that once enough new schools were getting great results, people everywhere would start opening schools based on the same principles. Well, our partners opened some very impressive schools, but it didn't have the impact on the entire education system that we thought it would. We haven't abandoned education, because we still believe in the reasons we got involved in the first place. But we have refined our approach, and we will continue to do so.
  
  The foundation's efforts to develop a microbicide spray that women can use to inhibit the spread of HIV might fail, but even if it fails, we can learn from it and build on it. A typical venture capitalist might back 20 ventures. The majority will fail, but you should hit one home run as well.
• FAQs On #Microsoft #SQLServer 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse
  SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse is essentially the SQL Server equivalent to the Windows Server High Performance Computing (HPC) edition. The Parallel Data Warehouse edition will utilize Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) scale-out architecture to support very large data warehouses. It’s decidedly not a low-end offering—Microsoft is licensing it at $57,489 per processor.
• #Microsoft coaches #NoSQL options for #Azure #cloud
  #MongoDB. #Memcached. #MariaDB.
  
  Microsoft is working with NoSQL startups to simplify deployment of their databases on its Azure cloud.
  
  MongoDB-shop 10gen has told The Reg that it's close to announcing tighter integration between MongoDB and Azure. The news is expected next month. 10gen Roger Bodamer told The Reg that MongoDB will be integrated with Azure with changes available to all MongoDB users.
• #Salesforce.com Announces Fiscal Third Quarter Results
  # Initiates FY12 Revenue Guidance at $1.97 – $2.00 Billion
  # Record Quarterly Revenue of $429 Million, up 30% Year-Over-Year
  # Operating Cash Flow of $74M, up 108% Year-Over-Year
  # Deferred Revenue of $695 million, up 27% Year-Over-Year
  # 4,800 Net New Customers in Quarter
  # Total Customers at 87,200 up 28% Year-Over-Year
• #Salesforce.com Shares Jump After Sales Forecast Exceeds Analyst Estimates
  Third-quarter net income rose to $21.1 million, or 15 cents a share, from $20.7 million, or 16 cents, a year earlier. Sales gained 30 percent to $429.1 million, topping the average $410.5 million estimate. Profit excluding some costs was 32 cents, exceeding the projection of 31 cents.
• What Matters Next for #Salesforce.com
  Now Marc Benioff’s big challenge is taking the sales out of Salesforce.com. He wants this to be a bigger, at least $2 billion (in sales) company that touches not just the sales departments within companies across the globe, but every single employee.
  
  He has pointed out in the past that roughly 20% of a typical company’s staff is made up of sales guys and gals. He wants the other 80%.
  
  Today’s earnings call shows signs that he’s succeeding.
• Software maker #Ariba agrees to buy Quadrem
  Ariba, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., will pay $75 million in cash up front for Amsterdam-based Quadrem, along with $50 million in stock and another payment of $25 million, due within 36 months of the acquisition's close. That $25 million may be paid in cash or stock. Ariba also will pay $10 million to modify and terminate aspects of a commercial agreement that Quadrem entered into earlier.
  
  The deal will expand the features offered in Ariba's software, as well as grant it access to the 70,000 suppliers with whom Quadrem does business.
• #Accenture Acquires #Ariba Sourcing Services and Business Process Outsourcing Services Assets
  "The divestment of our sourcing services and BPO services assets is a very positive step in the evolution of Ariba that puts us one step closer to our goal of becoming a network company with on-demand solutions," said Kevin Costello, President, Ariba.
• Next Gen Enterprise: Enterprise headlines and excerpts, 2010-11-17 #EnSW
  [Summary of news from the enterprise software and solutions world for the first half of November 2010 -DBM]
• Users Rate #Oracle Apps Support Unsatisfactory
  The study, Go-Forward Strategies for Oracle Application Customers, shows that 35% are dissatisfied with the quality of Oracle support and 7% are very dissatisfied, as shown in Figure 1. The respondents include users of its E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards, Siebel, and Hyperion applications.
  
  Dissatisfaction with the cost of that support is even more widespread. The study finds 59% are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the cost of Oracle’s support for its business applications.
  
  Despite the dissatisfaction, only 25% of the Oracle customers expect the vendor, with its growing portfolio of applications, middleware, and systems, will have a smaller share of their IT budgets over the next three years. Another 37% indicate such factors as organic growth, purchase of additional Oracle applications, and standardization on Oracle technology will result in Oracle having an even larger share of their IT budgets. The remaining respondents judged Oracle’s share of their IT s
• #Oracle Apps Users Dissatisfied But Continue Spending with Vendor
  Oracle’s next-generation applications, dubbed Fusion Applications, are not on the radar for most customers, with only 10% planning to migrate to Fusion. There is substantial difference in migration plans, depending on the Oracle product currently installed.
• #Oracle Applications customers reveal their future plans
  Dissatisfaction with the cost and benefits of support runs high across the Oracle Applications customer base, with 42% of respondents reporting dissatisfaction with the quality of Oracle support, and 58% reporting dissatisfaction with the cost of Oracle support.
• #Oracle Applications customers reveal their future plans
  Third party maintenance and support is attractive to a substantial fraction of Oracle Applications customers.
  # My thoughts: A far smaller percentage of Oracle Applications customers are considering third party maintenance and support as compared to the fraction who are dissatisfied with support quality and price. It is not clear to me that any third party can really deliver bug fixes, patches, and legislative and regulatory updates. Nonetheless, #EnSW vendors are increasingly dependent on maintenance and support revenue, and thus they are increasingly vulnerable to customers using third parties, or going off maintenance and support entirely.
• Quarterly Financial Tracker: Q3 CY 2010 Enterprise Software Vendors Solidify Performance Turnaround
  The super majority (26 of 27) publicly traded software vendors in the Software Insider Index® delivered turnaround stories for Q3 Cy 2010 year-over-year (YoY) performance. SaaS vendors and middleware vendors led the charge with solid double digit gains against tough comps. Performance of on-premises apps vendors reflected the easy comps from a dismal 2009 downturn. An analysis of the 2010 CY Q2 2010 results show:
• #Cloud impact: A state of the art discussion (podcast)
  Aside from me as moderator, the panel included the following participants:
  
  * Steve Mann, a strategy consultant and formerly an executive with SAP
  * John Taschek, an executive with Salesforce.com who reports directly to CEO Marc Benioff
  * Sadagopan Singam, an executive with Mahindra Satyam, one of the largest Indian IT outsource firms
  * Mitch Lieberman, an analyst / consultant and previously Vice President of Marketing at open source cloud vendor SugarCRM
• #Marketo: #SaaS Provider on a Quest for an #IPO
  Marketo raised $25 million from Institutional Investor Partners (IVP) and existing investors this week. Chief Executive Officer Phil Fernandez says the investment will help position the company for an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
• #Oracle, #SAP Argue Over How Compute Damages In Copyright Case
  Oracle argued the eight-person jury should be instructed to calculate damages based on how much SAP would have been required to pay to license software SAP acknowledges one of its subsidiaries improperly downloaded from Oracle's Web site. By that calculation, Walldorf, Germany-based SAP would pay Oracle roughly $1.7 billion, Oracle said.
  
  SAP argued the jury should calculate damages based on profits that Oracle lost as a result of the copyright infringement. That method results in damages of only about $40 million.
  
  Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton indicated she would let the jury choose which method it deemed appropriate.
• #SAP 's Striking Turnaround Triggered By Customer-Centric Strategy
  " 'As we spend more time with our customers and users, we notice that while competitiveness of products used to be all about features and functions, it is now focused very much on consumability, consistency, and usability,' said Snabe in one of his first interviews since taking the co-CEO job in February.
  
  " 'We had become too bureaucratic, with too many boundary conditions—now, instead of trying to force all of our work through central planning, we are allocating people to strategic issues, which yields iteration and speed of innovation that's significantly different: our developers can now spend more time doing rather than planning.' "
• #Oracle #Java submission hastens #Apache showdown ( #OpenSource)
  Tuesday, the database giant submitted four Java Specification Requests (JSRs) for Java Standard Edition 7 and 8 for approval to the Executive Committee of Java's governing body, Java Community Process (JCP).
• Names You Need to Know in 2011: R Data Analysis #OpenSource Software
  Beyond “just” a language, R is a toolset, a community, and a lot of free software.
• Businessperson of the Year - 18. Marc Benioff ( #Salesforce.com)
  Further evidence of Benioff becoming The Man: This summer he announced that Salesforce would spend $278 million on land in San Francisco's Mission Bay to build a new headquarters.