Enterprise headlines and excerpts, 2011, July and August

July and August Enterprise Software and Solutions news. Headlines and excerpts follow below, but here are some of the highlights of the months of July and August:

Apple became the world’s most valuable company, but Steve Jobs resigned due to health issues. Meanwhile, Google bought Motorola’s cell phone business.

Salesforce.com promoted its message of Cloud, mobile, and social (“the social enterprise”) at its Dreamforce conference in San Francisco – now the largest enterprise software/solutions conference in the world.

The consumerization of IT goes mainstream, with advances like Salesforce.com Chatter and iPad support becoming widespread.

Forbes names Salesforce.com the world’s most innovative company, ahead of Amazon.com (#2), Apple (#5), and Google (#7). SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft trailed behind, but were still in the top 100. The list is made somewhat questionable by the appearance of CA at #98 …

Microsoft delivered another great financial performance for its most recent fiscal year, but the rise of smart phones and tablets lead many people to declare, like Steve Jobs, that the world has entered the “post PC era.” Perhaps this will be more credible than the “post partisan era” declared by the US partisan in chief …

Informatica delivered another stellar quarter. It turns out that people still need to integrate their data, even (especially?) when it moves into the Cloud …

Oracle continued its legal assaults and battles, with victories and setbacks versus Google, HP, and its employees.

HP launched and killed its tablet business, and announced it was spinning off its PC business – but maybe not …

… meanwhile, Mozilla killed its enterprise business with a bizarre and incomprehensible strategy of launching a new version of its browser every three months, ensuring it can never be tested or adopted by any large customer. Google Chrome is the primary beneficiary …

Yahoo! spun off its Hadoop-related efforts into a separate corporate entity called “Horton Works.” Imagine if Sun had done the same with Java!

The head guy said that he inherited a mess from his predecessors, and that any turnaround is a long-term project. Everyone else seems to know that he made it much worse since assuming his office., and that the guy appears to be in WAY over his head, not surprising given his lack of relevant experience and previous results. Am I describing HP’s Leo Apotheker or the US’s Barack Obama? (Hint: “All of the above” is an acceptable answer.)

Microsoft added Java support to Windows Azure, but no one noticed. It seems like Azure could be a good solution for a lot of corporate IT folks – does anyone see any real adoption out there? Even on Dice.com and Monster.com there are very few Azure jobs posted relative to Force.com or Amazon AWS.

Workday continued to grow sales and adoption rapidly, in a run-up to a highly anticipated IPO.

Infor completed its acquisition of Lawson.

SAP extended the contracts of its co-CEOs, but its first female board member quit in a controversial departure. SAP continued its recent string of solid financial results, though there are questions about how SAP will capitalize on its long-announced but not widely-deployed HANA and ByDesign products. SAP appointed Kevin Nix to replace John Wookey running its on-demand business (other than ByDesign), names Jonathan Bechar formally the company’s CMO, and names Sanjay Poonen a corporate officer. SAP had a victory of sorts in its lawsuit with Oracle, when a judge ruled the $1.3B jury award was excessive.

BigData continued to gain momentum as a category, as did mobile and Cloud.

IT jobs had been in recovery recently, but new data shows that job growth has stalled, and pay has declined almost across the board in the US IT category.

• #Salesforce.com Pushes “Social Enterprise” at Dreamforce
  On mobile, Benioff discussed the new generation of mobile hardware and explained why this is leading the market toward HTML5. He announced a new website, touch.salesforce.com, which will allow any device that supports HTML 5 to access any of the Salesforce applications, or applications built on the company’s Force.com platform.
• #Salesforce.com Dreamforce 2011: Live from Marc Benioff Address
  Right around this point, Benioff announced that as of today that everyone could access Database.com, and that it also included a Data Residency option. This meant you could choose what data you keep in Salesforce.com’s data center or store sensitive data in the company’s own data center.He then introduced a slew of Chatter updates, the biggest probably being Chatter Now. It would be able to tell you what employees are doing within the Salesforce.com platform, what they were opening and doing, making it possible to instant message with them and share your computer with those employees. Salesforce.com also added the ability to instantly approve various functions, making Chatter into a workforce flow tool.dreamforce-keynote-eloquaSalesforce.com’s CMO Kraig Swensrud called Chatter “your Facebook feed” for your worklife. With the updates you can pose questions to the workforce without spamming everyone, chat with staff who have the answers you have and share files within you
• #Salesforce.com Dreamforce ’11: Head in the #Cloud, Feet on the Ground
  Dreamforce got off to a roaring start on Wednesday, with Salesforce.com flexing its social muscles and offering a raft of new services, including an on-premises storage option for companies concerned about data security. “Out of all the announcements this was the most subtle — and the most significant,” said Jeffrey M. Kaplan, managing director of THINKstrategies.Salesforce.com kicked off its 9th Dreamforce conference with a slew of new features, services and products, as well as an offering that represents a surprising shift for the cloud-evangelizing company: the ability to store data on premises for security-conscious companies.Although lost somewhat amid the higher sex-appeal social and Chatter-related changes, this latter development is definitely the most interesting for the company, given its history, Nucleus Research Vice President Rebecca Wettemann told CRM Buyer.

  “As governments look to cut their IT costs the cloud is a natural way for them to do that,” she said, “but t

• #Salesforce.com execs speak to the power of HTML5 at Dreamforce
  However, there are certainly valid reasons as to why promoting HTML5. IDC senior analyst Stacy Crook said that many companies are struggling with how to build native and hybrid apps. Problems include trying to figure out where both employees and customers will manage and access these apps given the wide variety of mobile devices available on the market today.Crook argued that HTML5 is a strategic option for companies looking to attract customers on the mobile spectrum as it is both a cross-platform and cross-device solution. It’s cross-platform because it can be supported on virtually any browser, whether it be on iOS or Android. Crook pointed out that even with Android, there are potential roadblocks for standard mobile apps because of various versions of the OS. Thus, HTML5 meets all the requirements as it should be supported on any device.
• #Salesforce.com stumps for social enterprise: A few caveats ahead of utopia
  Noise: Appirio, a cloud services firm, implemented Chatter and had to shut it off because it was too noisy. The company put some restrictions on what could be blasted out to its employees and provided tips on what was appropriate and launched a do-over. In other words, there’s a fine line between productivity and noise. Salesforce.com’s official line is that this noise ratio is natural and companies will tweak as they go along. Another plus for Salesforce.com is Chatter do-overs are relatively easy to come by since the software is a service.
  Social sprawl: Every software vendor has some social hook. Let’s say every IT buyer goes whole hog with the social stuff. Well guess what? Now you have HR social features. CRM social. Business execution social. It’s a social fest. Meanwhile, employees are still using Twitter and Facebook. If social sprawl isn’t an issue today, it will be tomorrow. This emerging issue can go two ways for Salesforce. IT buyers can see Salesforce as the great social e
• #Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff Compares Old Software To Arab Dictators
  Marc Benioff is delivering a real stem-winder of a keynote at the company’s Dreamforce conference today — he’s been on stage for almost two hours with no end in sight — and he’s thrown plenty of red meat out for the audience to chew on.
  …
  [In the Arab revolution] you didn’t see signs saying ‘Thank you Microsoft.’ You didn’t see signs saying ‘thank you IBM.’ … We’ve seen Mubarak fall, Qaddafi fall. Not so long from now we’ll hear about a corporate spring, an enterprise spring. When will the first corporate CEO fall for the same reason — because customers are rising up, they’re not listening to their employees, they’re not paying attention.
  …
  And Oracle:We need to beware of the false cloud. Because the false cloud, ladies and gentlemen, is not efficient! It is not democratic! It is not economical! It is not environmental! It is not the future.
• #Oracle Is Picketing The Huge #Salesforce.com Conference Happening Today ( #LAME)

  http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4e5e5dafecad04595100000f/oracle-picketing-outside-dreamforce.jpg

• Silicon Valley Pioneer Sandra Kurtzig Back In Start-Up Game With Kenandy ( #Salesforce.com)
  Kurtzig and Lane talked for an hour, and Lane was impressed. As a result, Kurtzig this week is officially emerging from retirement with her new company—Kenandy Inc., a manufacturing management software company designed to run in the cloud that’s backed with $10.5 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins, with Salesforce.com Inc. and the Silicon Valley law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati participating. Valuation is not disclosed.
  …
  But Salesforce.com Inc. Chief Executive Marc Benioff, her neighbor in Hawaii, told her to check her bucket list again. She and Benioff were on the beach, talking about how the world has changed since she started ASK, also a company that made manufacturing management software, in the early 1970s.
• #ERP Is Dead — Zuora Chief Says
  Second, and definitely most controversial, Tzuo told his audience that ERP was, if not dead, then dying. His logic makes a lot of sense. Zuora is not about simply building another billing system. It’s a company focused on supporting the Subscription Economy. By Zuora’s definition, the economy is rapidly moving from a twentieth century manufacturing paradigm to one where we all sell services in one form or another.
• Business and the Internet: #ERP RIP? ( #1999)
  “ENTERPRISE resource planning is kind of a wasteland. The back-office market is just horrible. It’s saturated. Everybody has it and the store is closed.” So says Tom Siebel, the chairman and founder of Siebel Systems, the hottest firm in the hot business of selling sales-force automation and customer-relationship management (CRM) software…
  To make things still trickier for the ERP players, their underlying business model is being challenged by a radically different alternative offered by the web. At present, ERP works on the assumption that a fairly small proportion of the workforce (typically less than 10% in large global companies) will need access to an application for a particular department, so the licence fees for each user will be set at a high level. That makes sense when deployment on client/server systems is costly, and staff require extensive training to cope with clunky and obscure systems.
• #Oracle’s Dealings in Africa Investigated
  Oracle’s Dealings in Africa Investigated: Oracle is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Dept. and the SEC for violating federal antibribery laws in its business abroad. One prong of the investigation is looking at Oracle’s sales program in Western and Central African countries, particularly whether Oracle employees or agents made improper payments in order to close sales.
• #Oracle under fire over ethics again: Feds investigating bribery for business in Africa
  Oracle is under investigation by the Feds for bribery in its West Africa business dealings. The region is a tough place to do business and poverty causes corruption just as corruption causes poverty. But the entire sector is vulnerable to the problem and along with Oracle HP and IBM also have become entangled.
• Judge overturns $1.3 billion penalty against #SAP ( #Oracle #TomorrowNow)
  A U.S. federal judge has overturned a $1.3 billion penalty that had been levied against software company SAP AG SAP -0.35% as part of an intellectual property case filed by Oracle Corp. ORCL -0.02% . Judge Phyllis Hamilton said the penalty was “grossly excessive” and “contrary to the weight of the evidence” in the case. Oracle had originally filed the case in the U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif.
• Judge rejects #Oracle $1.3 billion verdict against #SAP
  In a ruling released on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton found that Oracle had proven actual damages of only $272 million. She called for a new trial unless Oracle agreed to accept that amount.
• U.S. will block AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile
  A failure of the deal would put T-Mobile in a difficult position. It is struggling to compete with the larger carriers, and owner Deutsche Telekom has said it’s not willing to invest more in the venture.AT&T has promised T-Mobile $3 billion in cash if the deal doesn’t go through, plus spectrum rights and agreements that could be worth billions more.
• Giant iPad (with touch enabled) at Dreamforce 11 ( #df11 #Salesforce.com)
• #HP: Its Strategy As #IBM ‘Redux’ Can Be A Success
  For Hewlett Packard, a name that stands for stability, quality and innovation, we haven’t seen these steadfast principles upheld in recent history. Corporate infighting, a questionable string of acquisitions, and weak execution have left the company bereft of ties to a pedigree that was once the envy and talk of Silicon Valley. Is that vaunted “HP Way” that championed ethics, stability and good old fashioned “do the right thing” sensibilities just an outmoded if not quixotic quest in an industry where speed, smarts and vision have been used to great effect by current tech darlings such as Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL) and Facebook?
• #IBM Thumps #Oracle and Ties #HP in Servers
  While IBM’s surging server business grew 24.5% in the second quarter and allowed it to claim a share of the top spot with HP in rankings compiled by research firm IDC, HP, Oracle, and Dell failed to keep pace as each was coping with strategic hardware issues that IBM dealt with long ago. That point was underscored recently when an IBM executive who was a central player on the small team that created the IBM PC said the personal computer is going the way of the dodo. (For the full story, please see “Personal Computers Becoming Obsolete, Says IBM PC Architect”.)
• Enterprise Software History, Part 1: Origins of Modern Computing
  From the vacuum tubes of the 1940s and ‘50s to the transistors and integrated circuits of the 1960s, the computing industry was maturing – laying the foundation for what was to come. To date, computing applications had been rooted in business computation and functionality. But with the emergence of more sophisticated operating systems and programming languages – along with more robust processing and storage capacity – a whole new breed of personal computing would soon revolutionize the business landscape.
• #Salesforce.com, Dun & Bradstreet Launch Data.com
  This is only the first in a series of similar partnerships to come, according to Salesforce.com. Other contact-information providers include ZoomInfo, Hoover’s and Spoke.
• Osama bin Laden, the movie
  Bigelow and Boal have said that the estimated $75 million project will be independently financed by Annapurna Pictures, a production company founded in 2011 and run by 25-year-old Megan Ellison, daughter of Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
• Larry Ellison’s Daughter Megan Enters Hollywood Spotlight With Funding Push


  At least six films set for release in the coming months got major backing from Ellison and her company, according to the Times. Those include The Master, a drama about a cult starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, and the untitled film about the Osama bin Laden killing written and produced by Mark Boal and directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

She is also developing a film about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange based on an article by departing New York Times executive editor Bill Keller. And earlier in the year, Ellison bought the rights to the Terminator franchise. The Times said her freewheeling spending has been more akin to the technology start-up world and highlighted that tech and other personalities from outside Hollywood, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, have often faced challenges in the film business.But the paper said she has major plans. “She has this grand vision; she wants to be the one-stop shop for filmmakers,” said Michael Benaroya, a member of a Seattle real estate
• #Oracle – #Google Trial Start May Be Delayed
  If a “second large criminal trial” does not begin as scheduled on Oct. 17, jury selection in the Oracle-Google matter will happen on Oct. 19, with the trial starting as planned on Oct. 31, Judge William Alsup said in the ruling. But if the criminal trial does move forward on schedule, it will require the postponement of Oracle vs. Google, he added.
• Jonathan Becher — Management in Motion – My thoughts on being #SAP CMO
  I look at Marketing with a strong business lens. What’s the quantifiable return on investment? How do we set priorities that support the short-term needs of the company but allow us to invest in the future? Which segments/channels/products can be improved the most by Marketing (as opposed to Sales) investments?
• #SAP Names Jonathan Becher Chief Marketing Officer
  Becher holds a master’s degree in computer science from Duke University and bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Virginia. He will be based out of the SAP office in Palo Alto, California.
• Trends in Manufacturing #ERP and How to Ensure Success – YouTube
  Frank Scavo, Keynote, at the Manufacturing ERP Experience conference, Chicago, August 24, 2011.
• Kleiner Perkins, #Salesforce.com, Put $10.5M In Supply Chain Management Platform Kenandy
  Kenandy basically puts manufacturing management in the cloud. The startup which is led by Sandra Kurtzig (previous founder, CEO and chairman of the Ask Group), horizontally integrates all aspects of supply chain management for manufacturers including, inventory management, engineering, purchasing, and production. The company is also leveraging Salesforce’s cloud app management platform Force.com, allowing companies to manage mobile and social apps.
• Kenandy About
  Kenandy envisioned a better way. And we’ve delivered it—a new kind of application in the cloud. Designed specifically for the realities of today’s distributed manufacturing operations and global supply chain networks.Built 100% natively on the highly evolved Force.com, salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud computing platform, Kenandy leverages the platform’s amazingly flexible social, mobile, and open features, bringing a use-just-what-you-need approach together with social media capabilities to meet today’s challenges of inventory management, engineering, purchasing, production, and resource planning for better manufacturing management.With no software or hardware to own, no horrific future upgrades, the secure, on-demand Kenandy application enables manufacturers to be everything they want to be: lean, agile, collaborative, and innovative.
• #SAP TV Videos – SAP Solutions Portfolio – “The Big Picture” presented by Sanjay Poonen.
  Find out why 60 percent of the world’s electronic transactions use SAP. Sanjay Poonen, President SAP Global Solutions, delivers a captivating snapshot of SAP’s innovative portfolio. From Big Entreprise to SME, across all major industries, SAP has the answers. Mobility, Big Data, and the Cloud, it’s all here.
• Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business – Parker Harris, #Salesforce.com
  Salesforce.com is very focused on what we call the social profile. A profile of a customer and an employee that could be used both within salesforce.com and another system. This summer we’re coming out with some technology that will be phenonnemonal of the first step of bringing you as a customer into a social group to collaborate. You don’t have to be with my company and have to buy licenses and all that. Probably the most disruptive and exciting thing that empowers this is around identity and who you are. We are creating a way for you to have an identity in our cloud that can be used on Facebook or LinkedIn, or another business system. The result – the start of a social wallet.
• Applications First At #Workday
  A vendor that really understands when customers say they are “all about keeping it simple” with enterprise software should be thinking about applications first as they build out new technical capabilities.
• #Seesmic Focuses On The Social Enterprise; Debuts #Android, #iPad Apps For #Salesforce.com CRM #df11
  But of late, Seesmic has been dabbling in the enterprise and launching more business-focused features. Last Fall, Seesmic launched a deep integration with Salesforce’s social network for the enterprise, Chatter. And then earlier this year, Salesforce led a $4 million round in Seesmic.Basically the Seesmic CRM Android and iPad apps bring all the functionality of Salesforce’s CRM to mobile phones. Users can search their Salesforce.com account from the native apps; look up leads, contacts, accounts, related activities and chatter newsfeeds on the go; create and update leads, contacts, tasks, and events; log calls and emails after meetings; and much more. And the apps leverage the mobile OS; allowing users to see maps of their leads respective to their current location; upload photos and more. While pricing hasn’t been announced yet, Seesmic may charge $10 per month per user for the apps.
• #Forrester Names 4 Leading Enterprise Social Platforms ( #IBM #Jive #Telligent #NewsGator)
  Forrester Research named IBM, Jive Software, Telligent, and NewsGator as the leaders in its first ranking of enterprise social software platforms.
• #HP Gives New Department to Bill Wohl, Head of Communications
  Chief Marketing Officer Marty Homlish will head the corporate communications team, while Bill Wohl will be shifted to a “special assignment.” The day-to-day operations of the department will be watched by Lynn Anderson. The company staff has been communicated about the changes in an e-mail.
• #HP, blindsided by the future
  It’s impossible to say today whether HP’s new strategy will amount to “transformation,” as Apotheker promises, or just another creative stab at destruction. But history tells us how to bet.
• #HP’s One-Year Plan
  Let’s say you were given a year to kill Hewlett-Packard. Here’s how you do it:
• Is It Time for #HP to Go Back to the Garage?
  Over the past 12 years, HP employees have endured three CEOs, a pair of ethics scandals, huge acquisitions, repeated board overhauls, and relentless rounds of mega-layoffs. Now the 300,000-person workforce is being asked to adopt yet another identity. Perhaps it’s time to hold a massive team-building exercise at the HP Garage—or a candlelight vigil.
• #HP’s orphan hopes sun will shine tomorrow
  This throws up two possible futures for HP’s large personal systems group, which as a standalone company would have ranked as the seventh-biggest US tech company last year.
• It’s Darkest Before the Dawn ( #HP)
  I predict this one’s going to be studied in business schools for years and the course title will be How HP’s Board and CEO Leo Apotheker turned the world’s largest technology company into a second-rate software firm. No kidding, this company wasn’t in need of a turnaround until Apotheker got his hands on it. And if he has his way, the tech giant will soon be a software company … and number five in the market behind Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and SAP. I’m afraid that HP’s in for a long, dark night.
• #Salesforce.com CEO on Growth, Strategy, Social Media – Video
  Mark Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce.com Inc., talks about the company’s growth and strategy. Benioff also discusses the need for corporations to adopt social media and Salesforce’s deal to provide software for Groupon Inc.’s sales people. He speaks with Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.”
• #Appirio to Accelerate Global Expansion Through New Strategic Investment ( #Salesforce.com)
  The expansion is being funded by a strategic investment from two existing investors — GGV Capital, an expansion stage venture capital firm focused on the U.S. and Asia, and Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company. Expansion will be through a combination of organic and inorganic growth.
• #Apple all-star alumni recall Steve Jobs’ lessons ( #Google #Salesforce.com)
  Companies started by Apple employees tend to share common values, these entrepreneurs said: simplicity, excellence in design, a willingness to reject ideas, and a relentless focus on a small set of goals. It is no accident, they say, that those are also among Jobs’ chief values.
• #Salesforce.com Boosts Profits With Aggressive Accounting, Bernstein Says
  Salesforce.com, he notes, capitalizes sales commissions instead of expensing them as incurred. If the company had expensed those costs, he writes, operating profit would be 42% lower. Moerdler says a sample of 21 software-as-a-service and traditional software companies found that a third capitalized sales commissions. Moerdler notes that FASB is discussing rules that will address the issue of when to recognize commission expenses on subscription contracts, with a final statement due at the end of next year.
• How #Salesforce.com Tames Twitter for Big Business
  Then he took out his iPad, snapped a photo of his handiwork, and, using Salesforce’s own social networking technology, called Chatter, sent it to a group of his executives. Within 10 minutes they were responding with their own ideas. Ahrendts was impressed. “We want to get [Burberry] globally connected after 155 years,” she says.
• #Salesforce.com Posts Strong Growth But Fails To Rein In Expenses
  Rising Expenses Remain a WorryWhile the revenue growth has been encouraging, Salesforce.com’s operating expenses have been increasing at an even faster rate. Its operating expenses as a percentage of revenue have ballooned to more than 80% this quarter compared to around 72% last year. Salesforce.com has been unable to control its sales & marketing expenses, which remains a cause for concern investors.
• Hurd and Ellison Made Over $77 Million at #Oracle
  Just a year ago, Mark V. Hurd resigned from Hewlett-Packard under pressure after an ethical scandal erupted. But in the ensuing year, he made more than $70 million from Oracle, where he is president, the company disclosed on Friday. A filing Oracle submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission showed that Mr. Hurd got a pay package valued at $78.4 million for the company’s latest fiscal year, which ended May 31. He had a salary of $698,106, a bonus of $9.3 million, miscellaneous compensation of just over $16,000 and options worth $68.3 million on the day they were granted. Lawrence J. Ellison, the chief executive, had compensation valued at $77.6 million. He received a salary of $1, a $13.3 million bonus, $1.5 million in miscellaneous compensation, mostly for home security, and stock options worth $62.7 million.
• #Google Denied in Latest Attempt to Bar Controversial E-Mail
  “Defendant also appeared to believe that it need not produce the Lindholm e-mails until Judge Alsup rules on the appeal,” Ryu wrote. “Defendant is mistaken.”
• #HP’s Transition Anything but Seamless
  “I didn’t know there was such a thing as corporate suicide, but now we know that there is,” a former H.P. director, the venture capitalist Tom Perkins, told me this week. “It’s just astonishing.”
• #Salesforce.com Acquires SaaS Encryption Provider Navajo Systems
  There are also reports that Salesforce will announce another acquisition at Dreamforce, of Assistly, which makes an application to add social media tools to customer communications. Assistly lets organizations interact with customers via Twitter, Facebook, email and other media via a single pane. “Salesforce.com doesn’t comment on rumor or speculation,” Garner told eWEEK.
• #Salesforce.com CEO Benioff on Steve Jobs, #Apple Outlook
  Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce.com Inc., discusses Steve Jobs’s influence in his professional life and the future of Apple Inc. after Jobs’s resignation as chief executive officer. Benioff speaks with Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.”
• A tale of two failures: #Microsoft’s Kin and #HP’s TouchPad
  In HP’s case, it’s too early to assess how much damage this wrong turn caused. But the fact that Apotheker and HP’s board feel compelled to exit the PC business—its onetime core—suggests that the ultimate cost will be very high indeed.
• #Microsoft’s Ballmer heading for a stabbing under the statue of Pompey – Me-thinks David Einhorn has a lean and hungry look
  Einhorn is cross that Ballmer doth bestride the narrow world, like a Colossus, and petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves. Upon what meat doth this our Ballmer feed, that he is grown so great? He has been heard to mutter.Ballmer himself is said not to be too concerned other than the fact that he thinks that Einhorn is a little too thin,. “Would he were fatter! But I fear him not, yet if my name were liable to fear, I do not know the man I should avoid so soon as that spare Einhorn. He reads much, he is a great observer and he looks quite through the deeds of men touch him not.”However Einhorn claims that the evil that Ballmer will do will live after him and that Ballmer was ambitious.

  Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital reported holding 14.8 million shares of Microsoft as of June 30, according to the latest regulatory filing. That’s up from 9.1 million shares Greenlight held at the end of the previous reporting period during the ides of M

• #Microsoft to cut its low-end Windows Azure #cloud pricing
  Starting October 1, Microsoft is cutting the price of “extra-small compute” by 20 percent, according to an August 15 post on the Windows Azure Team Blog. Microsoft is doing away with the extra-small designation and using “small-compute hours” for all its cloud offerings (while providing those with extra-small hours with an appropriate small-compute-hour equivalent). The company also is allowing users more flexibility in how they allocate their compute hours.Here’s Microsoft’s chart detailing the changes:
• A Bullish Case for #Microsoft
  Microsoft has been making some sound strategic decisions lately.You can argue it overpaid for Skype, but it got leadership in voice over IP, a real franchise and not just a technology. All voice is going to be VOIP, and Microsoft can now integrate it with all its platforms, and in many different ways.Microsoft’s Nokia deal was laughed at, but it sure paid a lot less to get into smartphone manufacturing than Google (GOOG) did.

  You can argue that Microsoft Windows looks tired next to Apple’s (AAPLO operating system, but with more and more applications going to the browser, is there a real desktop difference?

  You can argue that Microsoft’s Azure cloud violates the first cloud rule (it should be open) but it leads its huge installed base into the next decade’s technology platform. The game is profit, not pleasing the gallery.

• Bill Gates on the Past, Present, and Future of the PC
  “The next 30 years are going to be equally remarkable as the last 30,” Gates said. “We’re really still just at the beginning of what’s possible. “
• Exclusive: Tim Cook e-mails #Apple employees: “Apple is not going to change”
  I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple’s unique principles and values. Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that—it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.I love Apple and I am looking forward to diving into my new role. All of the incredible support from the Board, the executive team and many of you has been inspiring. I am confident our best years lie ahead of us and that together we will continue to make Apple the magical place that it is.
• Customer Alleges Broken Pledges, Lies in #Ross ERP Software Suit ( #ITfail)
  This suit is unfortunately another example of many ERP lawsuits today, and demonstrates the advancement of opportunistic legal strategies by plaintiffs and their attorneys whose sole purpose is to advance novel legal theories in an effort to generate alleged damages which do not approximate any actual harm caused to these claimants.”"We believe this suit is a result of mismatched expectations by the customer and the vendor and not fraud,” she added. “We have thousands of world class customers that continue to use our software successfully as their mission critical applications for their business.”
• Success and the Single Chief Executive
  We found that companies whose CEOs are single invest substantially more than other companies, in particular when it comes to investments subject to the greatest uncertainty, such as acquisitions or research and development. These companies’ stock returns are also substantially more volatile, indicating that they are indeed exposed to greater risk.We tested our findings to make sure that we weren’t just finding greater appetites for risk among younger managers, who are less likely to be married, or at smaller companies, which are more volatile. We found this relationship between marital status and companies’ risk-taking persists even after adjusting for age and company size.
• #Oracle Has Fusion But #PeopleSoft Lives On
  European customers will benefit from the payroll upgrade, which supports management of payments according to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA)…The feature pack delivers PeopleSoft Total Rewards Statement 9.1 as a way to provide a more holistic view of total compensation, including benefits, allocations, incentives, and bonus pay…PeopleSoft Time and Labor 9.1 now includes more than 40 customizable, rules-based templates for reporting standard hours, overtime hours, holiday hours and more. Pay calculations get complicated, particularly when union-specific rules are applied. The templates are aimed at simplifying matters…In a PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management 9.1 upgrade, the software has gained support for the SCORM 2004 Fourth Edition, a standard specification for how online training materials are created and delivered. This spec has been around since 2009, so it appears Oracle’s a bit late to the party. Where other HCM vendors such as SuccessFactors have actually added
• #Informatica #Cloud Soars High Reaching 20 Billion Transactions Per Month
  Informatica Corporatio, the world’s number one independent leader in data integration software, today announced that its award-winning cloud integration service, Informatica Cloud, now surpasses 20 billion cloud data transactions and three million cloud data integration jobs per month, driven by ease of use, rapid implementation time and powerful underlying platform.
• Latest Release of #Oracle Application Express Delivers New and Refined Capabilities
  Overview of Oracle Application Express 4.1 Enhancements and New Features
  Data Upload: developers can now easily add the capability for end-users to load spreadsheet data into existing tables within an application.
  Error Handling: improvements and user-defined exception processing enables developers to easily intercept messages generated by the Oracle Database and replace the message text with user friendly text.
  Mobile Applications: improved support for mobile frameworks including form rendering without HTML tables.
  Tabular Forms: added the ability to reference column values using bind syntax to facilitate validations and processing.
  Calendar: improvements enable developers to incorporate drag and drop functionality and generate calendars with edit pages.
  Dynamic Actions: extended to include support for client side processing of buttons.
  Plug-ins: expanded to incorporate authentication and authorization types.
  Websheets: the look and feel of Websheets has been improved substantially an
• #Salesforce.com To Announce Acquisition Of Crypto Provider Navajo Systems
  One of the key elements to Navajo Systems’ technology, a virtual private cloud encryption gateway that encrypts all data before it goes to the cloud including Salesforce.com, is that the customer controls the encryption keys. “The enterprise should be holding onto the encryption keys so if someone gains access to their information, they don’t also have access to the keys,” West says.
• #Java developers, meet #Salesforce.com #Heroku
  Heroku has been gaining credibility among enterprise developers since becoming part of Salesforce.com in December, and part of courting those developers is providing the languages, tools capabilities that they want. Certainly, though, Java is only part of the journey to woo developers who want to launch their applications in the cloud, as Heroku’s forays into Node.js and Clojure illustrate.
• #Salesforce.com #Heroku for #Java
  Other JVM LanguagesThis announcement is official support for Java the language, but developers familiar with the JVM have already seen that it’s possible to deploy any other JVM-based language, by bootstrapping with pom.xml. The JVM is becoming popular as the runtime VM for both new and existing languages, so Java support on Heroku makes it much easier to bootstrap into running any JVM language on our platform.For example, JRuby is one of the most frequently-requested languages on Heroku. Matthew Rodley has already put a Rails app onto JRuby on Heroku by adding JRuby to pom.xml. Scala, another common request, could be done the same way. We do look forward to being able to offer the same kind of first-class support for JRuby and Scala that we offer for Clojure; but in the meantime, bootstrapping via Java is a reasonable strategy.
• #SAP CEO Talks to Cramer
  [video]
• Fallen #Apple: Steve Jobs resigns
  As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
• #Oracle Exec: #Google’s #Android ‘Sucked The Air’ From Market
  On the other hand, Screven added of Oracle, “We’re very focused on making money.”
• Report: #Oracle Considering Hostile Takeover of #HP
  The Post, a News Corp. holding, did not specify whether or not it used any information gained from hacked voicemail accounts.
• A Simple Explanation for Why #HP Abandoned #Palm and Is Getting Out of the PC Business
  I suppose Apotheker gave the Palm/WebOS guys a chance, and let them get the TouchPad on the market. But apparently their chance was a one-strike-and-you’re-out opportunity to gain traction in the market immediately. But the TouchPad didn’t get any traction immediately, so, boom, that’s it, Apotheker is done with them. Apotheker simply never had any interest in the consumer market or product development. My guess is that he planned on getting HP out of the hardware business all along, and Palm, at best, was an afterthought. If he’d been named HP’s CEO six months earlier, they never would have acquired Palm in the first place.
• #Oracle Updates Oracle’s #PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 with the Release of New Features
  PeopleSoft HCM Global Payroll 9.1 has been updated with functionality to manage payroll payments according to Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) standards. The integration of SEPA directly into PeopleSoft is designed to help organizations to save time and resources for making payments across European borders.
  PeopleSoft Total Rewards Statement 9.1 helps customers to motivate employees with a personalized, comprehensive view of compensation and benefits that aggregates data from multiple sources.
  PeopleSoft Time and Labor 9.1 Templates Made Available enables the technical user to create new template-built rules online. This helps streamline efforts required to customize administrative reports, with pre-built content and more flexible rules.
  PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management 9.1 now supports SCORM 2004 4th Edition, a standard learning specification that governs how online training is created and delivered.
• #HP CEO Says ‘Transformation’ Underway
  Some analysts and investors say that H-P overpaid for Autonomy and have expressed concern that the company won’t have enough cash to make other strategic moves. Mr. Apotheker said that Autonomy will allow H-P to skip a generation of technology and help businesses make sense of their unstructured data, such as videos and voices.Mr. Apotheker joined H-P in November after his predecessor, Mark Hurd, resigned under pressure from its board. Soon after Mr. Hurd’s resignation, H-P executives said it wouldn’t change strategy.But Mr. Apotheker said that many areas needed more investment, such as its business managing data centers and other back-office tasks for large companies. He learned of that group’s funding needs during a series of reviews earlier in the year. H-P’s board began to explore a spinoff soon after.
• Dreamforce ’11 for free – #salesforce.com
  Learn to build a social roadmap
  Explore 1,000+ cloud solutions
  See why salesforce.com is Forbes’ Most Innovative Company
  Transform your business into a Social Enterprise™
• Cramer’s Tech Talk [#HP vs #Salesforce.com]
  [video]
• Has #HP Made Itself a Takeover Target?
  Given a series of incoherent moves and abrupt changes in direction, not to mention a precipitous loss of market value, HP’s [HPQ 24.45 0.85 (+3.6%) ] board of directors probably deserves to be challenged on its decision making, which includes a botched firing of its last CEO, Mark Hurd, the hiring of a new CEO, Leo Apotheker, who 11 months into his tenure has yet to stick to a strategy, and Thursday’s earning miss.
• #Oracle defends copyrightability of APIs — implications go way beyond #Google #Android and #Java
  Obviously the copyrightability of APIs is controversial. I don’t mean to say that Oracle will easily win this. But Oracle has presented strong reasons for which the judge should not dismiss Oracle’s copyright infringement assertions at this stage.
• Miami court deals huge setback to #Motorola Mobility’s defense against #Microsoft #Patent s
  MMI’s patent portfolio isn’t that great. Contrary to popular misbelief, those patents are a pretext for something else rather than the primary reason for the deal. In the reasoning for its downgrade of Google (target price down from $700 to $500, rating from “buy” to “sell”), Standard & Poor’s said that “[S&P's analysts] are not sure [MMI's patent portfolio] will protect Android from IP issues”. But apart from the highly questionable strength of those patents in general, MMI — or “Googlorola”, if you will — now has a huge tactical disadvantage against Microsoft.
• #Oracle to #Google: ‘Damning facts are still facts.’ ( #Android #Java #Patent)
  Google’s real complaint is that these facts, once connected to the legal principles that will apply, obviously and unavoidably lead to certain conclusions. Damning facts are still facts.
• Andreessen Horowitz’ Weiss Says #Cloud Software Replacing #Microsoft, #Oracle
  [video]
• #HP directors defend shift in strategy
  Instead of running HP as a conglomerate with independently managed products and services, Mr Apotheker said, “we have to start running this as an integrated company” with software at the centre. “If HP did not make this move, we would be on the fringe.”
• #HP purchase makes company vulnerable
  The Palo Alto, Calif., company trades at less than one times revenue, and announced late Thursday it was paying 10 times revenue, or more than $10 billion, for British software maker Autonomy.
• #Microsoft: Here’s what caused our cloud outage this week
  “The root cause of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online service has been identified as a site configuration issue. A configuration change was made in all data centers that should prevent this from happening again. This was not a complete outage and separate from any other service issue experienced by customers. ”
• #HP Should #OpenSource WebOS
  After paying almost Two Billion Dollars for Palm and its WebOS, HP announced that it is exiting the mobile phone and tablet business yesterday. After dumping who knows how many more millions of dollars in developing and marketing their still new WebOs tablet. What a colossal waste of time, money and resources.But there is still something that HP could do to salvage some self-respect, value and good karma from this debacle. They could open source WebOS. There might be some hardware makers who would love to have it. Maybe current Android hand set manufacturers worried about Google’s buy of Motorola for instance.
• Marc Andreessen on Why Software Is Eating the World
  Today, the world’s largest bookseller, Amazon, is a software company—its core capability is its amazing software engine for selling virtually everything online, no retail stores necessary. On top of that, while Borders was thrashing in the throes of impending bankruptcy, Amazon rearranged its web site to promote its Kindle digital books over physical books for the first time. Now even the books themselves are software.Today’s largest video service by number of subscribers is a software company: Netflix. How Netflix eviscerated Blockbuster is an old story, but now other traditional entertainment providers are facing the same threat. Comcast, Time Warner and others are responding by transforming themselves into software companies with efforts such as TV Everywhere, which liberates content from the physical cable and connects it to smartphones and tablets.Today’s dominant music companies are software companies, too: Apple’s iTunes, Spotify and Pandora. Traditional record labels increa
• #Salesforce.com $CRM Creating Future of Tech?
  [Jim Cramer CNBC Mad Money interview with Marc Benioff -DBM]
• #Oracle Day 2011 – San Francisco
  Join us for Oracle Technology Day 2011 to discover how the power of simplicity can change your IT from a supporting function to a force that drives business innovation.Don’t miss this unique opportunity to meet with Oracle experts and peers to discuss how you can transform your datacenter and power your cloud with hardware and software, engineered to work together.
• #HP Appoints New Head of Enterprise Services
  HP today announced that it has appointed John Visentin as executive vice president of HP Enterprise Services, effective immediately.Visentin will be responsible for driving growth in HP Enterprise Services, which delivers technology infrastructure, applications and business services. He will become a member of the company’s Executive Council, reporting directly to Léo Apotheker, HP president and chief executive officer.“John is a world-class services executive who will accelerate our efforts in delivering high-value services around cloud, security, mobility, application modernization and industry solutions,” said Apotheker. “I am pleased to have John as a member of the Executive Council.”

  Visentin previously led HP Enterprise Services for the Americas. He replaces Tom Iannotti, who announced his retirement earlier this year.

• #HP to Pay $10.3B for #Autonomy, May Spin Off PCs
  Hewlett-Packard is abandoning the mobile software it acquired in last year’s purchase of smartphone maker Palm Inc. amid disappointing sales of the tablets that run WebOS, Apotheker said in an interview today. Fixing WebOS would have taken capital that could be better used elsewhere, he said.The company is “looking at its options” in the smartphone market, he said.
• Leo Apotheker Has Totally Lost Control Of #HP
  Leo Apotheker has been the CEO of Hewlett-Packard for less than a year, and while it’s too early to call his reign a disaster, the company looks like it’s completely out of control.
• Beware the “Confusing, Headache-inducing” Software I Just Sold You ( #SAP)
  This is what we needs to be banished from enterprise software, forever.
• #Mozilla: #Firefox 6 will be officially ready tomorrow
  [But all your fave addons will not. -DBM]
  General improvements include a slight decrease in startup time, a performance boost for Linux users and a feature that highlights the domain you are actually at in the URL address bar. The new build also features a handy permissions tool that lets people set site-specific permissions for saved passwords, popups and cookies.
• The enterprise opportunity of #BigData: Closing the “clue gap”
  As accumulated information has become a top-line asset in large companies, the ability to tap into it and release value from it is not growing to match in most traditional firms. Yet this information is currently growing exponentially and becoming a challenge in its own right. Enter Big Data, one of the year’s most interesting technology stories. Big Data offers the promise of reaching the value that’s increasingly moving outside the scope of traditional IT approaches to deal with in using innovative new technologies. Smart organizations can apply Big Data methods to solve existing business problems, implement new business models, and drive growth in innovative new ways. That is, if they can find a way to move beyond their parochial ways.
• C3 Leaves Stealth Mode to Shake up Energy Management Software Market
  Based in San Mateo, Calif., the company employees 130 people (80 in San Mateo and 50 in China for development) and sells software that manages energy and emissions for an entire organization. The software optimize activities that “measure, mitigate, and monetize” energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.The sophisticated, software-as-a-service (SaaS) suite has five components: C3 Energy (for energy management), C3 Sustainability (for greenhouse gas inventory), C3 Mitigation (to track energy projects and their return), C3 Incentives (a library of government and utility financial incentives), and C3 Foundation (for energy modeling, key performance indicators, security, etc.)
• Sustainability Software Briefing: #C3, #Cisco, Sensus, 1E
  C3, a fledgling vendor of energy management software, says that its customers and partners now include Adobe, Constellation Energy, Dow Chemical, GE, HP and Siemens.The customer and partner roster also includes Accenture, BearingPoint, CH2M Hill, Deloitte, Equity Office, Masdar City, Orascom Telecom, Pacific Gas & Electric, Pella, SAIC and Wipro.
• #Google #patent tantrum: Pot, kettle, black
  Google also [has] a slew of of its own absurd patents, including patenting changing the “Google Doodle” on its home page on notable days. It has also not been shy to go after Free and Open Source Software projects to protect patents it holds.
• Stodgy no more: Sailors rave about changes in America’s Cup, including fast cats, World Series
  “In yesterday’s only and final race, there were three lead changes, the top boat speed was 24 knots, the course had six legs, and the race took 40 minutes and was within .5 miles of the shore. Everything that had been promised was delivered.”
• IT Skills, Pay Premiums Drop in Value: Foote Report
  Only one category of certifications—database—grew in overall market value (+2.6%) in the latest quarterly benchmark update from Foote Partners, bolstered by gains in three Oracle certifications. For noncertified IT skills, four of eight skills categories showed improvement: management, methodology and process skills (+2.4% in pay premiums), messaging and communications skills (+1.7%), database skills (+0.6%) and SAP & enterprise business applications skills (+0.3%).Declines were more widespread, with IT certifications taking the biggest hit, such as entry-level and training certs (-5.9 percent in pay premiums), Web development (-4.0%), IT security (-2.9%), systems administration and engineering (-2.5%), applications development and programming languages (-2.3%), and networking certifications (-0.2%). Only four of eight categories of noncertified skills recorded losses in market value, though these losses were not as steep as those recorded in the certifications groups.
• 2011 IT Skills & Certification Pay Index (Skills Pay Survey)
  Since 1999, reporting market values and pay adjustments for 502 individual IT and business skills and certifications earned by 26,330 North American IT workers. Data updated every three months.Use the IT Skills and Certifications Pay IndexTM to adjust pay for workers who share the same job title but have distinctly different on-the-job content that affects their market value. Or, use the data to set competitive rates for your consultants based on demand for their skills. If you’re using the services of consulting firms, keep them honest and don’t overpay for consultant talents by knowing what IT skills are worth and how that’s changed over the past 3, 6, 9, and 12 months.Includes historical data analysis of the past two years of ITSCPITM quarterly updates, plus a 285-page Certifications Guide of background information on all certifications surveyed in the survey. FREE with all orders…spectacular, informative IT Skills Demand and Pay Trends and Forecast Reports.
• #Versant Defines Next Generation #BigData #NoSQL for Enterprises at NoSQL Now! Conference
  “These NoSQL 1.0 technologies made progress at the expense of eschewing adequate support for complex data models, near real-time data analytics, and transaction handling. Versant believes that the demand for these capabilities, which are critical for enterprises, will drive the evolution towards NoSQL 2.0 technologies that deliver on the needs for complexity, speed, concurrency, AND scale.”
• #Microsoft Parallel Data Warehouse News and #Hadoop Interoperability Plans
  As a first step, we will soon release a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of two new Hadoop connectors – one for SQL Server and one for PDW. The connectors provide interoperability between SQL Server/PDW and Hadoop environments, enabling customers to transfer data between Hadoop and SQL Server/PDW. With these connectors, customers can more easily integrate Hadoop with their Microsoft Enterprise Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence solutions to gain deeper business insights from both structured and unstructured data.
• #Workday 14: Introducing Embedded Intelligence
  Embedded Intelligence within business processes allows for real-time contextual insight. Workday enables pre-built or custom worklets to be embedded within selected business processes. These worklets provide relevant, real-time business insight in context at the point of decision.
  Financials and Spend Management enhancements deliver advances in process efficiency, managerial insight, compliance, and end user enablement and include: multi-company processing, automated cash receipts, expanding requisition processing to include contract labor, and support for new electronic 1099 filing requirements.
  Workday HCM enhancements allow managers to assess and reward performance on initiatives, projects, and results. Users can rate work, compare multiple workers side-by-side and assess performance versus initiatives with features that make it easier to achieve true alignment of strategic initiatives to day-to-day work.
  Higher Education features support shared services models to improve efficiency
• #Workday 14: Mobility and Embedded Intelligence
  In Workday 14, we’ve put the design power in the hands of our customers. Business processes throughout Workday now include landing areas for custom reports (we call them worklets). Customers can create up to five worklets per each business process step to provide even greater insights for decision making in context. We also tapped into the collective intelligence of the Workday Community to deliver pre-built worklets for all customers to use or modify, if they so choose.
• Most #Android vendors lost their #Linux distribution rights, could face shakedown or shutdown
  as a result, there are thousands of people out there who could legally shake down Android device makers, threatening to obtain Apple-style injunctions unless their demands for a new license grant are met.
• #Google to Buy #Motorola Mobility for $12.5 Billion
  “This is a heck of a premium” said Lee Simpson, an analyst at Jefferies International in London. Motorola Mobility’s patents are “a good counterweight if Apple comes after Google.”Google agreed to pay Motorola Mobility $2.5 billion if the deal falls through, a person familiar with the matter said. Jennifer Erickson, a spokeswoman for Motorola Mobility, declined to comment on the breakup fee.
• #Google’s #Motorola Deal Will Spur Antitrust Regulators to Action
  First of all, the deal will give a lot of fresh meat to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which is already investigating several aspects of Google’s business, including its Android mobile operating system business. As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, investigators from the FTC and from the offices of several state attorneys general have been exploring whether or not Google prevents phone manufacturers who become Android partners from using the smartphone operating systems of other companies.
• Official #Google Blog: Supercharging #Android: Google to Acquire #Motorola Mobility
  Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.
• #OpenSource #Linux snickers at #Microsoft’s victory declaration
  Sure, on the desktop, it’s a Windows world, but guess what Sherlock; the desktop is declining in importance. The mobile, server, Web and cloud worlds are where the twenty-teens’ billionaires will come from, not the desktop. And, guess, who’s already in all those spaces large and in charge? Yes, that’s right, Linux.
• #Microsoft declares victory over #Linux, names #Apple and #Google main rivals
  Linux is no longer a desktop threat. A few years back, it looked like Linux might carve out a niche on low-end, low-priced netbooks. But the iPad took care of that hardware category, and this year Microsoft confidently eliminated Linux from the list of competitors to the Windows operating system. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Even a self-professed “Linux guy” like my ZDNet colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, acknowledges that cold, hard reality. (On the server side, of course, Microsoft continues to acknowledge that Unix and Linux are strong competitors.)
• How #Linux Mastered Wall Street
  In fact, the emerging field of high-frequency trading (HFT) would not be possible without the open-source operating system, he argued. Lameter himself was hired as a consultant by one exchange — he won’t say which one — based on his work in assembling large-scale Linux clusters.The largest exchange, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Euronext, is run on a Linux system that can generate 1,500,000 quotes and process 250,000 orders every second, offering acknowledgments of each transaction within two milliseconds.As late as 2007, Wall Street exchanges were still largely run on Unix, such as HP’s AIX and Sun Microsystems’ Solaris. Over the past few years however, Linux crept into this market, showing up first in ancillary systems and then running a few core exchanges.
• #SAP skills in growing demand as wages rise
  “SAP architects and SAP retail people are very hard to find,” he said. “Everyone in retail is starting an SAP project at the moment, all at the same time, which is making [the hunt for SAP professionals] tough.”
• #Google’s #Motorola Deal Closes a Door, Opens for #Microsoft Windows ( #Android)
  In a sense, Google’s deal dares its OEM partners to sever ties with Android, the most popular mobile operating system, and forge a new relationship with Microsoft. And it’s hard to believe that some won’t.
• #Sybase has same strut with quieter stick ( #SAP)
  It’s been a year since Sybase was acquired by German-based software juggernaut SAP for $5.8 billion, and the most remarkable thing is how little has changed for the Dublin-based software company.
• #VMware Licensing Change Opens Doors for Competing Providers
  When VMware announced last week that it would loosen the radical change in price structure it announced only a month ago, it was doing more than mollifying a few disgruntled customers. It was responding to a revolt among customers, analysts say, even at large companies that rarely considered competing virtualization platforms due to VMware’s lead in the technology.
• #Google Accuses #Oracle of Delay Tactics in #Android Suit
  Google is accusing Oracle of dragging its feet in providing a large volume of documents related to the companies’ lawsuit over alleged Java patent violations in the Android mobile OS, including website pages from Sun.com.
• #Google fights to hide incriminating emails
  Google claims that the mail was a draft, autosaved by its systems, and was about to have the attorney’s name appended to the “to” field…Oracle, rather delightfully, points out that the first line of the mail read “Hi Andy” which it calls “a reference to Andy Rubin, the business executive in charge of Android”. That would make it a business mail, and thus outside privilege.
• #Oracle and #Google keep wrangling over potentially impactful Lindholm draft email
  [T]he Android team basically says “let’s just infringe” whenever an intellectual property issue comes up. If they did this to Oracle, what about the intellectual property of other companies like Apple, Microsoft, eBay and Skyhook?
• #Oracle #Google Joint Letter Re Lindholm
  Oracle is using autosaves of a clearlyprivileged document to create a false impression that these are different documents and that noneof them was, or was meant to be, communicated to a lawyer.
• Judge does not allow #Google to outmaneuver #Oracle with untimely invalidity contentions
  That last sentence is what this was all about: Google’s lawyers played games in order to strengthen their case long after Oracle’s narrowing of its asserted claims. But under the originally agreed-upon schedule, they were supposed to create their shortlist within two weeks of Oracle’s shortlist.The fact that Google’s tactical scheme was thwarted by the judge means that the original schedule cannot be circumvented in a way that would be unfair vis-à-vis Oracle. Nothing more and nothing less.
• With #Google, There Will Be Bad Blood
  While the company is still largely beloved by the public, sentiment seems to have turned against them amongst their peers, and even amongst many of the startups around Silicon Valley. While these tensions have been building for months — and even years, in some cases — we’re seeing this on display more clearly than ever now thanks to the patent issue(s).
• #Oracle: #Java’s worst enemy
  Java SE 7: Rushed out the door, bugs and allFinding a severe bug in Java SE 7 normally would be forgivable, but Oracle’s behavior in the matter has been downright disgraceful.
• #OpenSource #Lucene should just shut up about #Java 7
  Eventually you have to release stuff, because otherwise people won’t test it, and you’ll never know if it works or not. At some point you have to let stuff go to see if it works, and here it didn’t. They’re working on a fix, which is good.
• Don’t Use #Java 7? Are you kidding me?
  You could be affected. At the moment basically only if you have some parts in your software that make big use of the optimization methods which are broken. But for the average use cases this will not affect you.
• #Java 8 Gears up for the #Cloud
  One is multitenancy, or the ability for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to safely run multiple applications. The other is modularity, or a reorganization of the JDK (Java Development Kit) into a set of cleanly defined though interdependent modules.
• On Demand on Target: #SAP’s Peter Lorenz
  It’s important for me that we don’t go for 25 different items in the portfolio. We really need to focus on those areas where we can make a difference. This means going after those areas with the greatest business potential and where we have customers making choices today.
• #Epicor sued over alleged #ERP project failure ( #ITfail)
  “When will customers and vendors learn to manage their expectations more thoroughly?”
• We are still in the business of hardware, software – #Oracle
  We got a lot of gossips that Oracle was no longer interested in hardware, but that is not true because we are still very interested in hardware and this is shown full poof in our research and development (R&D), which covers our hardware line of business. We are investing so much in R&D and this covers hardware.
• Calif. SC rules on #Oracle overtime issue
  The Court said to permit nonresidents to work in California without the protection of the state’s overtime law would completely sacrifice, as to those employees, its important public policy goals of protecting health and safety and preventing the evils associated with overwork.”Not to apply California law would also encourage employers to substitute lower paid temporary employees from other states for California employees, thus threatening California’s legitimate interest in expanding the job market,” it wrote.
• 3 Reasons #\Oracle Looks Even Better Now as the World Burns
  In our view, Oracle is primed to move higher even though the U.S. economy remains weak according to many indicators.With names such as LinkedIn (NASDAQ:LNKD), Zillow (NASDAQ:Z), and Pandora (NASDAQ:P) doing much better than many expected after going public, it’s easy to see that investors don’t mind paying a premium for growth. Today, though, Oracle isn’t the newest kid on the block and in some ways we think it’s been overlooked relative to its growth potential. Where is all this opportunity? For starters, Oracle is a much bigger player in enterprise software. What really makes us rate Oracle a buy is that the firm operates an impressive acquisition growth strategy, is expanding successfully into new industry sectors that offer strong growth potential, and offers a lower growth premium compared with other high-profile names.
• Is #Google Gunning for the Right #Patent s vs. #Apple, #Microsoft, #Oracle?
  How would patents on database technology help Google fend off attacks versus Android?
  [Countersuit against Oracle in the future... -DBM]
• #Oracle Tops List Of Most Hackable Companies [Defcon Hacking Contest Reveals Oracle's Employees Most Willing To Hand Over Sensitive Data]
  “For me it was a scary call because she was so willing to comply,” says contestant Chris Hadgany, who easily coaxed out PC configuration from an Oracle employee after pretending to be a company IT guy. But it’s not only Oracle who was tested during the contest. Other companies include Apple, AT&T, Symantec, Sysco, Verizon, ConAgra Foods, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines.
• Smooth talk a slick hacker tool ( #Oracle #Apple #Symantec)
  “From what we found, we would own every one of these companies.”
• If you want to see more jobs created – change #patent laws, blog by Mark Cuban
  One of the hidden job killers in our economy today is the explosion of patent litigation.
• #OpenSource Business Intelligence Vendor #Pentaho Expands Its #BigData Support
  Pentaho now supports Apache Hadoop, HPCC Systems, EMC Greenplum, HP Vertica, IBM Netezza, MongoDB and more.
• #OpenSource #Pentaho Offers Native Support for More #BigData Platforms Than any Other BI Vendor
  Big Data Platforms supported by Pentaho:Hadoop Distributions- After announcing its initial support for Apache Hadoop and Hive in May 2010, Pentaho has made strides to expand and update its native support to the latest distributions and releases of Hadoop including: Apache Hadoop 0.20.x.x, Cloudera’s Distribution including Apache Hadoop 3.0 (CDH) and EMC Greenplum HD 1.0.NoSQL Sources – The new release of Pentaho BI 4 includes production support for a variety of NoSQL sources that are designed to provide high-performance for Big Data workloads including: HBase, MongoDB, LexisNexis HPCC, elasticsearch, and XML streaming.

  Analytic Databases-Pentaho BI offers unparalleled native OLAP analysis and data integration support for a variety of Big Data optimized analytic databases through native SQL generation for fast analytics or native bulk loader integration for fast data integration. Analytic databases with Pentaho native support include: EMC Greenplum, HP NonStop SQL/MX, HP Vertica, I

• Meet #SAP Line of Business OnDemand’s New Leader: Kevin Nix
  To say that Nix is a Wookey disciple might be bit of a stretch, but they do have a history together (at Siebel, for instance). During his first major interview in his new role, Nix praises his predecessor’s work. The immediate path that Nix and his team of more than a hundred SAPers will follow with Line of Business OnDemand products, he says, will largely be the route that Wookey charted.
• #SAP Announces Availability of 10.0 #BusinessObjects GRC Solutions
  The 10.0 release introduces a common look and feel across all applications in the GRC suite; embeds BI reports and dashboards; and includes a graphical tool to define and depict risks. The new features make the products easier to use and enable people to garner attention to risks from business managers who have limited GRC expertise. By integrating GRC activities into core business processes and applications, executives can manage their businesses proactively and strategically rather than reactively.
• Customer Accuses #Infor of Betrayal in Software Lawsuit
  The company is suing Infor for breach of contract, unjust enrichment, fraud and negligence. It is demanding Infor return fees it paid for related software licenses and services, as well as punitive damages.
• #IBM Adds #ERP Specialist #Infor to its Deep Bench
  The integrated hardware and software solution will help improve the profitability and responsiveness of manufacturers.
• Three IBM i Solution Editions Unveiled by #Infor, #IBM
  The three new offerings are based on Infor’s ERP LX (BPCS), ERP XA (Mapics), and ERP System21.
• #SuccessFactors Names #Cisco Exec To Chief Marketing Post
  Wilson joins SuccessFactors from Cisco, where she served as vice president of marketing for the company’s communications and collaboration portfolio. She was previously a marketing executive at PeopleSoft and also held leadership positions at Sybase and Arthur Andersen.
• #Microsoft’s VanRoekel is new top technology chief
  Steven VanRoekel has been named the nation’s top technology chief, the White House announced Thursday. VanRoekel succeeds Vivek Kundra, the 36-year-old who pioneered the role.
• #Oracle Files Suit Against #TROLL Oasis Research LLC Over Cloud Computing #Patent s
  Oasis Research did not invent the technologies mentioned in this suit, they were acquired from Intellectual Ventures Computing Platform Assets LLC. Oracle alleges in the complaint that the primary business model of Oasis is to obtain licensing revenues based on the inventory of patents they own, arguing that lack of investment in these technologies limits their patentability.
• Audit: #Oracle ERP Project Wracked With Woes ( #ITfail)
  Oracle, at least, seems to have considered the project a relative success.Last year, it named the PLCB one of its Retail Excellence award winners. A page on Oracle’s website features a photo of a Deloitte representative accepting the award on behalf of the PLCB.
• Official #Google Blog: When #patent s attack #Android
  Android’s success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.They’re doing this by banding together to acquire Novell’s old patents (the “CPTN” group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel’s old patents (the “Rockstar” group including Microsoft and Apple), to make sure Google didn’t get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android (which we provide free of charge) than Windows Mobile; and even suing Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung. Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it.
• #RIM to release 5 new touch-screen #BlackBerry smartphones this month
  [I hope BB7 OS is great, because the specs on these phones are not impressive vs iPhone or Android... -DBM]
  Research in Motion announced five new BlackBerry smartphones, the first to run its new BlackBerry 7 mobile OS, on Wednesday in a bid to recapture market share and inject some new excitement into the company’s products.The new smartphones, RIM’s first new handsets in nearly a year, each utilize touch screens and include two new BlackBerry Bold models and three new iterations of the BlackBerry Torch and are set to hit carriers such as AT&T and Sprint this month.
• #Microsoft Internet Explorer IQ story was bogus
  A story which suggested that users of Internet Explorer have a lower IQ than people who chose other browsers appears to have been an elaborate hoax.A number of media organisations, including the BBC, reported on the research, put out by Canadian firm ApTiquant.It later emerged that the company’s website was only recently set up and staff images were copied from a legitimate business in Paris.

  It is unclear who was behind the stunt.

  The story was reported by many high profile organisations including CNN, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and Forbes.

  Questions about the authenticity of the story were raised by readers of the BBC website who established that the company which put out the research – ApTiquant – appeared to have only set up its website in the past month.

• #Microsoft Internet Explorer Study Was Indeed A Hoax
  How the hoax started and propagated.
• #SAP TV Videos – SAP Runs SAP: SAP HANA’s impact on SAP Controlling
  Mark Deinert, Chief Controlling Officer SAP Group shares his views on the benefits of SAP HANA for SAP Controlling.
• SAP TV Videos – SAP Runs SAP: #SAP HANA’s impact on Global Sales
  Rob Enslin, President SAP Global Sales shares his views on the benefits of SAP HANA for Global Sales at SAP.
• IDC Predicts Wave of New Media, Mobility and SaaS Will Drive Strong Growth in the Enterprise Applications Software Market in Asia/Pacific
  Apart from the traditional global vendors like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, even specialized vendors like Salesforce.com, and local vendors like Kingdee registered strong YoY growth.
• New York Teams Up With #IBM to Reboot a High School
  But P-Tech—a joint venture with the school district and the City University of New York—is its biggest gamble. The school opens in September with 130 ninth graders, about 80% from low-income homes, and will add a grade each year for five years.It’s not the first time a business has partnered with the city to open a school. In the early 1990s, Goldman, Sachs & Co. joined with the city to open Metropolitan Corporate Academy. Initially, the company invested $500,000 for tutors, advisers and a program officer to coordinate internships. But as that support tapered off and test scores sagged, the school board voted earlier this year to close the school.IBM is more involved in the creation and academics of P-Tech, spending $500,000 to help develop the school’s website, provide software support at the school, and pay for a project manager to help create the curriculum and coordinate mentoring and internships.
• Overseas job assignments get a haircut
  Some corporations are taking a new approach to the overseas assignment and have begun to send employees abroad to work on short-term projects as a means to test how they work, and adapt, outside their comfort zones.
• Emerging Market Multinationals
  #IBM’s most startling transformation is how it became a global enterprise in terms of people, organization and revenue.IBM still employs 105,000 workers in America, and this number is growing. But it also has more than 300,000 foreign nationals on the payroll. Big Blue has spread decision-making authority across the globe: Global procurement is based in China while data processing and accounting is in India, Brazil and the Philippines.My, how the world has changed…
• #IBM WebSphere 8.0 Ships, Includes Web 2.0 & Mobile Feature Pack
  The newest version has full support for Java Enterprise Edition​ (Java EE​) 6.0, making it only the third application fully certified with the full profile. A larger number of vendors support the Java EE 6.0, but only a small number are officially certified as compliant.In addition to certification on the latest enterprise edition of Java, IBM also made a significant effort toward enhancing the operational management of the environment. WAS V8.0 is the first release of IBM application server to leverage the company’s installation manager. The installation manager is a single platform for installing and uninstalling products and fix packs, which should make it easier to install, uninstall and manage the software across different hardware environments. WAS V8.0 also includes an Application Migration Tool that was actually released during the WAS V7.0 service period, which analyzes application source code to identify potential migration problems before final deployment.
• Giants of Enterprise Suffer From Stormannsgalskap
  Schumpeter argues that most successful men like Rupert Murdoch are psychologically unstable. The magazine quotes Richard Tedlow of Harvard Business School, who says that “’giants of enterprise’ suffer from what Norwegians call stormannsgalskap, the madness of great men”
• #IBM’s Unsexy Secret To Profits: Middleware
  It turns out that middleware, including WebSphere, Information Management, Lotus, Tivoli, and Rational products, accounts for 64% of software revenue, with the remainder coming from non-branded categories including operating system software. IBM does not break out product-by-product profitability, but it’s easy to guess that branded products have higher margins than operating systems.WebSphere was particularly strong in the second quarter, growing 55% year over year. But it just might surprise you all that’s included in that category. Beyond the application server, the WebSphere portfolio includes everything in IBM’s business process management and Smarter Commerce categories. That means 2010 acquisitions including Cast Iron, Coremetrics, Sterling Commerce, and Unica all contributed to that 55% second-quarter increase. And let’s not forget the 2009 and early 2010 acquisitions of ILog and Lombardi, respectively, that also now figure in WebSphere sales.In news on the core product, IB
• #OpenSource #Mozilla to Enterprise: We Never Meant to Make You Cry
  [Too little, much too late. -DBM]
  Firefox’s expedited release schedule has ruffled the feathers of enterprise users, and the situation came to a head a month ago when a Mozilla evangelist publicly stated that the enterprise isn’t a focus for Firefox. Perhaps having some second thoughts on that position, Mozilla’s revived its Enterprise User Working Groups in an effort to help business users keep up with a faster-moving Firefox.
• Software License Audits: How to Avoid #SAP, Rent-A-Center Brouhaha
  “Obviously as we move to more cloud-based and Web-based enterprise applications from vendors, they’re going to automatically keep track of what your employees are using. Then the whole license compliance problem goes away.”
• #‪SAP’s McDermott Sees Growth From Hana Technology‬‏ – YouTube
  William McDermott, co-chief executive officer of SAP AG, talks about the company’s real-time analytics technology Hana, competition and strategy. SAP reported post-tax profit of 588 million euros ($845 million) compared with 491 million ($705 million) euros a year earlier. McDermott speaks with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock.” (Source: Bloomberg)
• Ellison’s #NetSuite still not making money
  “While SAP is trying to compete with NetSuite by moving down-market,” said Nelson, “having seen a number of SAP customers in Q2, it is clear to me that their existing installed base is very, very vulnerable.”
• #SAP Q2 2011 Earnings Call Transcript
  Then secondly on the Sybase numbers, I appreciate it’s not like-for-like with last year’s, but it seems to be about flat quarter-on-quarter. How does that square with the positive momentum in the mobile piece?
• Cool Infographics – What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?
  [Cost of living is double in Silicon Valley as compared to Philadelphia and Dallas, and is 23% higher than in NYC -DBM]
• #SAP gaining market share from rivals
  “The bottom line is this is a company with two new CEOs who have been making management changes … and you’re starting to see a lot of that change starting to take effect,” Donald Feinberg, vice-president at Gartner, said “Now they’re going to have to deliver on it”.
• You Want CEO Succession Planning? Go for It.
  Just ask the shareholders of Apple (NAS: AAPL) and Oracle (NAS: ORCL) . The vision for these companies is tightly integrated with the founders. And although corporate boards often say succession planning is always top of mind, investors tend to receive an opaque view of whether any planning is actually in the works.
• #SAP’s McDermott Sees Growth From Hana Technology ( #BigData)
  [HANA is now "High Performance Application Network Appliance that basically enables you to manage Big Data" according to Bill McDermott -DBM
• IT giants 'ripping off Whitehall', say MPs ( #ITfail)
  "The lack of IT skills in government and over-reliance on contracting out is a fundamental problem which has been described as a 'recipe for rip-offs'."IT procurement has too often resulted in late, over-budget IT systems that are not fit for purpose.
• Forrester Will Lower Its Tech Market Forecast By One-To-Two Percentage Points, Depending On Federal Debt Ceiling Outcome
  Our forecast did recognize three threats to economic growth, and thus three risks to our forecast: 1) a failure to reach a sensible resolution to raise the US debt ceiling and start on a path to lower budget deficits; 2) a failure of European governments to reach a sensible resolution to the Greek debt crisis that lowered the Greek debt burden and reduced the risk of a broader debt crisis that included Italy and Spain; and 3) overreaction by China and India to rising inflation that reduced their growth.
• Old #Google Emails About #Java Brought Into Suit by #Oracle
  "And you [Google] are going to be on the losing end of this document with Andy Rubin on the stand. … If willful infringement is found, there are profound implications for a permanent injunction. So you better think about that.”
• #Oracle Announces Availability of #Java SE 7
  Oracle today announced the availability of Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 (Java SE 7), the first release of the Java platform under Oracle stewardship.
  The Java SE 7 release is the result of industry-wide development involving open review, weekly builds and extensive collaboration between Oracle engineers and members of the worldwide Java ecosystem via the OpenJDK Community and the Java Community Process (JCP).
  Java SE 7 delivers:
  Language changes to help increase developer productivity and simplify common programming tasks by reducing the amount of code needed, clarifying syntax and making code easier to read. (JSR 334: Project Coin)
  Improved support for dynamic languages (including: Ruby, Python and JavaScript), resulting in substantial performance increases on the JVM. (JSR 292: InvokeDynamic)
  A new multicore-ready API that enables developers to more easily decompose problems into tasks that can then be executed in parallel across arbitrary numbers of processor cores. (JSR 166: F
• #Oracle Buys InQuira
  InQuira is a privately held company with headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area with over 85 blue-chip customers.
  Companies need the ability to provide a high-value, differentiated customer experience online and in the contact center.
  InQuira’s solutions improve customer service and satisfaction by helping customers find more relevant answers to questions online or from a service agent guided by a scalable knowledge management platform.
  The combination of Oracle and InQuira is expected to deliver the most comprehensive cross channel customer support offering.
  The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
• #Oracle to #HP: Core of Lawsuit ‘Complete Fiction’
  “The central allegation in HP’s employment lawsuit against Adrian Jones has turned out to be complete fiction,” Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger said Thursday. “If they did it knowingly then HP and their lawyers should be sanctioned. If they did it mistakenly then they simply owe Mr. Jones an apology.”HP said Thursday that Jones did possess trade secrets after he left HP, contrary to a sworn declaration, and that only after the court issued a temporary restraining order requested by HP did Jones return to HP “certain confidential information.”
• #SAP, Rent-a-Center in Battle Over Millions in Fees
  SAP made a “flawed reading” of the license agreement, and its demands for more money are invalid due to a two-year statute-of-limitations clause in the original contract, according to Rent-a-Center.
• #SAP’s HANA — A Billion Euro Pipeline By Next Year
  The long-term goal is for SAP to be seen as a provider of insight – cheap and fast, in near real time.
• #NetSuite’s Q2 blows out all metrics
  Top line revenue reached $57.8 million, a 23% increase on the previous year
  Calculated billings, which represents billings plus or minus the change in deferred revenue was up 30% year over year
  Average deal size rose to $40,000
  Big deal global pipeline is up 85%.
  Operating cash flow jumped $8.4 million leaving the company with $121 million in cash
  Deferred revenue rose to $89.4 million
  21% of recorded business came from international deals. The company saw some strength returning in Europe.
  The company brought on 328 additional customers, the highest number in more than two years
  Channel contribution grew 50% versus the same quarter last year.
  The revenue outlook is raised from $228-230 million to $233-235 million.
  The company recorded the largest, multi-million dollar, multi-year deal that saw NetSuite expanding its footprint from tier two subsidiares up to the US HQ of a 45,000 person services business. The plan is to implement ERP and industry specific functionality.
• #Oracle executive seeks dismissal of #HP suit based on false evidence
  HP recently dropped its request for an order barring Jones from working at Oracle. But HP declined to say if it would drop the suit, which also accuses Jones of falsifying expenses and arranging a pay hike for a female subordinate with whom he allegedly had a personal relationship.
• #Microsoft: Tax review will affect financial statements
  The Internal Revenue Service has looked at Microsoft’s use of transfer pricing, among other things, or methods of booking prices and sales between subsidiaries — often leading to opportunities to report earnings in lower-tax jurisdictions.Companies routinely and legally book profits overseas to enjoy lower tax rates and avoid stumping up a hefty 35 per cent levy on profits in the United States.But with the United States shouldering a high jobless rate and big budget deficit, there have been increasing calls in Washington for a simplified tax code with a lower corporate tax rate and fewer loopholes. There has also been pressure from major companies on US President Barack Obama’s administration to let profits parked offshore be brought home at very low tax rates, to boost investment and jobs.
• #Microsoft: #Cloud need only be open surface, not #OpenSource
  He coined these terms — open surface and open core — to describe a continued commingling — or a blurring — of open source and closed source software that lies at the core of the enterprise and the cloud.
• #SAP Says “Slow” #BusinessObjects Adoption “Not Accurate”
  Steve Lucas, SAP’s global GM of Business Analytics and Technology, says that the results are “definitely not accurate” and “really odd.”“It’s one data point of many, and one data point is not a trend,” Lucas says. “For me, customer success and customer adoption are priorities one and two, and they are in front of revenue and growth.”
• #SAP Co-CEO McDermott Talks up HANA, Mobility and SaaS
  IDG News Service: You launched the HANA (high performance analytic appliance) at last year’s Sapphire conference, and it became generally available in June. What’s the largest HANA installation as of today? How many customers are in production?I can only give you the names of customers that are letting us quote them. They include T-Mobile, Medtronic and Colgate. We have 67 names that are somewhat referenceable. All of them are pretty significant installs. We’ve had the first HANA customer to order a second machine. About 35 customers are in production one way or another. HANA has the fastest-growing [sales] pipeline in the history of SAP.IDGNS: Is HANA winning deals over products like Oracle’s Exadata head-to-head? Oracle is planning to release an in-memory add-on for Exadata. How will you respond?

  HANA is in its own category. It’s not even fair to compare it to Exadata. [In terms of the in-memory add-on], they are entitled to their innovation cycle, but there’s nothing to respond

• #Amdocs Limited Reports Quarterly Revenue Of $801 Million, Up 6.4% YoY
  After 14 years, Bruce Anderson will retire as Chairman of the Board of Directors at the end of the current fiscal year, but has agreed to stand for reelection for one additional term as a Director to facilitate the transition in leadership. Robert Minicucci, a current Director also with a14-year tenure on the Board, has been appointed to succeed Mr. Anderson in the role of Chairman, effective October 1, 2011.
  Third fiscal quarter revenue of $801 million, compared to the $790-$805 million guidance range. Foreign currency movements positively impacted revenue by approximately $5 million sequentially relative to the second fiscal quarter of 2011
  Third fiscal quarter non-GAAP operating income of $132 million; non-GAAP operating margin of 16.4%; GAAP operating income of $106 million
  Third fiscal quarter diluted non-GAAP EPS of $0.61, compared to the $0.57-$0.63 guidance range, excluding amortization of purchased intangible assets and other acquisition related costs and equity-based compensa
• #Salesforce.com Leads Group Urging U.S. to Take Lead in #Cloud
  The group, led by Salesforce.com and VCE, sent a report today to the Commerce Department and U.S. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra that recommended ways to accelerate government and commercial adoption of cloud technologies, shared pools of computing resources including software and data- storage.
• TechAmerica Foundation Unveils U.S. #Cloud Computing Roadmap
  The 14 recommendations focus on four vitally important areas to cloud computing:Trust – individuals and organizations must be confident that the cloud can meet their needs including security, privacy and availability.
  Transnational Data Flows – the cloud is not defined by national borders; businesses and data flow across international borders and the United States must lead by example in dealing with these challenges, ensuring the full realization of the cloud capabilities.
  Transparency- cloud providers will earn confidence from corporate America and government agencies by providing users meaningful ways to evaluate cloud implementations and for vendors to share relevant and reliable information about their capabilities to build trust in the system.
  Transformation – for full adoption of the cloud, there must be a change in how the federal government acquires technology; an investment in improving technology infrastructure including expediting broadband deployment and
• TechAmerica Foundation : Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the #Cloud (CLOUD²)
  CLOUD² will be broken into public sector deployment and commercial policy considerations. Technology visionaries Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of salesforce.com and VCE Chairman and CEO Michael D. Capellas serve as co-chairmen of the commission of experts. CSC President of North American Public Sector Jim Sheaffer will serve as vice chairman, and Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Technology Policy and Strategy Dan Reed, who also leads the company’s eXtreme Computing Group (XCG), will also serve as vice chairman.Also joining co-chairmen Benioff and Capellas representing academia will be John Mallery of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Michael R. Nelson, visiting professor of Internet studies in Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture and Technology Program.
• Summary Report of the Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the #Cloud (Cloud2)
  [Summary Report -DBM]
• #SAP gaining market share from rivals ( #Oracle)
  “The bottom line is this is a company with two new CEOs who have been making management changes … and you’re starting to see a lot of that change starting to take effect,” Donald Feinberg, vice-president at Gartner, said “Now they’re going to have to deliver on it”.
• #SAP snatches market share from #Oracle, shares jump
  “SAP is regaining market share more quickly than we had expected. For the first time in seven quarters, SAP’s organic license growth has outpaced that of Oracle, we estimate,” said Rajeev Bahl at Matrix Research.The German company late on Tuesday raised its outlook and said license revenues jumped 35 percent in the second quarter.”We believe SAP saw increases in both the volume of deals and the number of large deals,” said Stacy Pollard analyst at JP Morgan.
• #SAP Revenue Rises, Pushing Back Against #Oracle
  Since then, SAP has seen its revenues increase, despite some accounting-sheet headwinds thanks to its $5.8 billion acquisition of Sybase in May 2010, a move widely seen as a way to expand SAP’s mobile offerings and stay competitive via new revenue streams. That also marked SAP’s largest purchase since its $6.7 billion takeover of business intelligence software producer BusinessObjects in 2008.
• Ex- #Oracle guy blames Hurd and Winsome Fiorina for #HP company woes – Apotheker has inherited a mess
  Lane said that Hurd did not invest in the company and burned the furniture to please Wall Street.
• The Ellison Kids: Billionaire Producers Making Their Mark on Hollywood
  The two children of #Oracle co-founder and billionaire Larry Ellison are funding major projects throughout the movie industry. They even occasionally throw their weight behind projects together such as with “True Grit.”
• #Oracle completes roll out of group personal pension plan
  Oracle has completed the roll out of its group personal pension (GPP) plan after launching the benefit to the remainder of its UK-based staff.The last group of employees to be to be introduced to the GPP, which replaced 31 pension schemes when it was introduced last year, used to work for Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle.
• #HP chairman sees turnaround as long-term project
  After two disappointing quarters marked by slashed sales expectations, some on Wall Street had begun to question whether Chief Executive Leo Apotheker’s strategy of embracing cloud computing and mobile software would bear fruit.
• #Cloud and #BigData drive #Informatica’s future
  The second element of our strategy is what we refer to as Informatica Inside. We’ve had significant wins, including partnerships with NetSuite, where they’re promoting it as part of their two-tier ERP strategy. We’ve had a significant win Dun & Bradstreet D&B360 where they’re becoming data as a service provider by embedding Informatica Inside. We have a couple of dozen partners that are using Informatica in order to deliver data as a service or their own Cloud offering. So the second strategy is a partner strategy.
• Larry Ellison’s Progeny Throughout the Tech Industry ( #Oracle)
  Much of what we recognize in the software market today – hard-nosed determination, aggressive sales and marketing, personal rivalries – can be tied back to Larry Ellison’s personality and the experience many executives got at Oracle. Over the past four decades, Ellison’s personality and influence at Oracle has undoubtedly had an impact. To help visualize how Ellison spread his genes through the software industry, we put together an infographic of his descendants, so to speak. It’s like a game of Six Degrees of Larry Ellison.North of Ellison – in blue – is a diagram of executives that work at companies still in existence. Below, in gray, are executives and their companies that have since been acquired. We’ve also circled a few individuals in red to indicate “unique” relationships. Let’s get a discussion going in the comments section about other executives influenced by Ellison and where they work today.
• #SAP Reports 35% Growth in Software Revenue at Constant Currencies and 20% Growth in Non-IFRS Software and Software-Related Service Revenue at Constant Currencies for the Second Quarter
  Second quarter 2011 non-IFRS operating profit excludes a deferred support revenue write-down from acquisitions of €8 million, acquisition-related charges of €111 million, expenses from discontinued activities of €10 million, share-based compensation expenses of €32 million and restructuring expenses of €1 million (2010: €0 million, €65 million, €2 million, €12 million and €1 million). Second quarter 2011 non-IFRS profit after tax and non-IFRS basic earnings per share exclude a deferred support revenue write-down from acquisitions of €5 million, acquisition-related charges of €75 million, expenses from discontinued activities of €10 million, share-based compensation expenses of €24 million and restructuring expenses of €1 million (2010: €0 million, €49 million, €12 million, €9 million and €1 million ) net of tax.
• Slow Product Ramp-ups Challenge #Oracle and #SAP
  Both companies, though, are still working to deliver these things they’ve been promising to corporate users and that’s creating some challenges for both vendors, says Jon Reed, an independent enterprise software analyst and principal at JonERP.com.So what are the key remaining issues that are on the minds of potential customers?
• Who Does #Patent – Trading Firm Intellectual Ventures Work For, Anyway? #TROLL
  This is according to Intellectual Ventures’ own cofounder Peter Detkin — who ironically coined the term “patent troll” back in the 1990s when he was working for Intel.
• #Microsoft and #SUSE extend Microsoft’s controversial Novell #Linux pact
  Microsoft is buying $100 million in additional SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates and the pair are going to continue to collaborate on interopability solutions through January 1, 2016. The SUSE certificates are designed to insure Microsoft customers who are implementing Linux that they won’t be caught in any Microsoft-Linux patent crossfire.
• #Microsoft and #SUSE Renew Successful Interoperability Agreement: Strong customer response leads to four-year, $100 million extension
  “This is so important since both vendors are also resolving intellectual property concerns, which drives greater choice and flexibility for their customers.”
• Is #Microsoft #Linux’s New BFF?
  “Just say ‘gee thanks’ and move on.”
• #Ingres Corporation Appoints Steve Shine as CEO and President ( #OpenSource)
  Prior to joining Ingres Steve was Senior Vice President and General Manager for Sybase EMEA where he was responsible for all aspects of the $200 million business and charted significant growth in the business intelligence market, helping Sybase establish itself as a category leader in that space. Steve has also held senior management positions including President of the worldwide $240 million enterprise resource planning solutions portfolio at GEAC Computer Corporation where he joined from Andersen Consulting.
• #SAP must do more to show value of products and services, says user group
  The survey showed that only 7% of SAP customers are using SAP BusinessObjects, which means most are using other business intelligence (BI) products that are not optimised for and integrated with their core SAP systems, he said [Or, alternatively, they are using SAP BW -DBM]…
  Bowling is particularly concerned about the low number of SAP users setting up Customer CoEs, with the survey revealing that only 14% of respondents taking part in the certification programme…
  The survey results highlight support as another important area where SAP customers need more information and support, with only 11% on the reintroduced Standard Support programme. “SAP users have until September to decide whether to remain on Enterprise Support or switch to Standard Support,” said Bowling.
• Norwegian Armed Forces Selects #Accenture to Implement its #SAP Enterprise Resource Planning Solution
  The Norwegian Armed Forces has awarded Accenture a three-and-a-half-year, $70 million contract to implement an SAP(R) solution to better support core processes in logistics.Under the terms of the contract, Accenture will design and configure a solution based on the SAP for Defense & Security solution portfolio to enable the client to expand and improve its solutions and processes in force generation and structure maintenance, procurement and supply chain management, heavy equipment maintenance and investment management. The project also will implement both a mobile and deployed solution to support the Norwegian Armed Forces operations for mobile units and certain maritime and NATO missions.
• #Oracle Provides Early Access to #OpenSource #MySQL 5.6 New Features
  InnoDB Full-Text Search: allows users the ability to build full text indices and search for text-based content stored in InnoDB tables, and supports fast and accurate search on document content.
  InnoDB Buffer Pool Pre-loading Options: provide new manual and automated options that allow the InnoDB buffer pool to preload and significantly shorten the warm-up times after server re-start.
  Larger InnoDB Redo Log Files: increase the maximum size of InnoDB redo log files from 4 GB to 2 TB, helping improve the performance of applications with write-heavy workloads or long running transactions.
  Binlog Group Commit: delivers improved performance of MySQL replication, with Group Commit applying updates to the binary log in parallel and then committing them as a group to the binlog on disk.
  Binlog API: enables MySQL users to seamlessly integrate MySQL with both new and legacy applications and data stores. It allows developers to reduce the complexity of integration by standardizing their SQL data
• #Oracle Gives Sneak Peek at #OpenSource #MySQL 5.6 Features
  “OLTP [online transaction processing] performance and concurrency are among Oracle’s core competencies. I’d be optimistic about those enhancements,” said analyst Curt Monash of Monash Research.In addition, “MySQL isn’t used in a vacuum,” often serving as part of a pipeline that includes technologies such as the Hadoop framework for large-scale data processing, analytic databases and general-purpose databases like Oracle, he said. “There are a lot of replication and data integration use cases that still need to be better supported,” Monash said.However, “Oracle hasn’t advanced its text search integration rapidly since the 1990s. I’d be pessimistic on that front,” Monash added.
• #Wipro Introduces New Tool For Upgrading #Oracle Applications
  [Sounds like #Panaya to me... -DBM]
  The upgrade hassles being addressed by Wipro Easy-Upgrade are unique to Oracle software because it is more apt to be customized by the customer than software from companies such as Microsoft, VMware or IBM Rational, said Langbert Walker, general manager and global head of Oracle applications at Wipro, in an email interview from the company’s headquarters in Bangalore, India.”These customizations are not supported during an Oracle E-Business suite upgrade process by the ‘patches’ given by the product vendor. In most cases, customers would not have adequate documentation to even understand the level of customization that has been done to the E-Business suite. Lack of information on the customizations and the inability to measure the level of impacts the upgrade will have on the customizations are possibly the top concerns that customers using E-Business Suite face in the context of the upgrade,” Walker wrote.
• New #Oracle CRM on Demand Focuses on Mobile Sales
  A new smartphone Relevant Products/Services app gives sales reps anywhere, anytime access to CRM data Relevant Products/Services.Oracle also pushed out a new Microsoft Outlook user interface that gives sales reps access to all CRM information in a familiar application Relevant Products/Services. The interface lets users access the data online or off-line. The goal of this feature is to make it easier for sales reps to update data and keep it consistent so they can focus on selling instead of manual updates.
• The real (potential) impact of #SAP HANA
  Florian: What will be the impact of new high speed SSDs, or other nonvolatile memories (HP IBM) on Hana’s future?…
  Dennis: HANA should outperform traditional databases no matter how fast such permanent storage can get.
• Former #Microsoft division president Bob Muglia joins #Juniper
  Muglia will lead a newly formed group at Juniper, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., called the Software Solutions division. Juniper makes networking equipment.
• #Informatica, Customer in Legal Fray Over License Audit
  Moreover, at one point in 2007 Informatica inspected HCA ITS’ infrastructure and confirmed its interpretation that multiple repository services were allowed within a single central repository, according to the complaint.Informatica denies those claims.HCA ITS does admit that in one instance, it “exceeded the scope of its license by using an additional source target,” but that Informatica refused to provide an invoice for an additional source license so HCA ITS could make a payment. That sum would be “minimal” compared to Informatica’s $6.3 million demand, it adds.

  While Informatica terminated HCA ITS’ license in February, it continues to use the software without authorization, Informatica said in a filing the companies made jointly last week on a proposed case schedule.

• Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In #Cloud Computing — Zach Nelson, #NetSuite
  It is obvious from what NetSuite’s customers have accomplished that you can actually run more complex processes in the cloud than you could with on-premise software. And the fact that you can do so faster, better, and cheaper is tremendously disruptive.
• #Informatica’s CEO Discusses Q2 2011 Results – Earnings Call Transcript
  Each of these 3 trends represents a tremendous growth opportunity for Informatica. First, cloud computing represents the next wave of data fragmentation. Beyond on-premise applications, data is selectively fragmented and outsourced to cloud service providers. Second, social computing represents the next-generation of data-centric applications and unprecedented volumes of interaction data, beyond business management using traditional transaction applications like ERP and CRM, social media enables holistic brand management, including proactive customer engagement and consumer sentiment analysis. And finally, mobile computing represents the next surge in data access devices. Beyond accessing data from a personal computer, users are increasingly accessing and replicating data on a variety of mobile devices. To support these secular technology mega-trends, we continue to execute on our long-term technology roadmap for sustained growth. To reiterate, by empowering the data-centric enterprise
• #Apple pays half the $4.5B price tag on Nortel #patent s
  While Apple already had a better patent position than Google, it may have been interested in a major ownership position in the Nortel patents in hopes of shoring up its defenses.
• #Google Plays Trump Card, Locks Sights on #TROLL InterDigital
  Google is in trouble, and acquiring InterDigital is the right move, the only move they can make to get themselves out of it. Android’s open source model has allowed it to spread like wildfire, but it has also left Google with a sickly thin portfolio of patents with which to defend their creation.
• New payroll joke on Queensland Health staff ( #ITfail)
  “There are going to be some very unhappy campers next week when the payslips come out and there is nothing we can do,” the email sent this week from payroll client service officer Kylie Shelley warned.”Our wonderful CorpTech has done another ‘system fix’ and that has created all these other problems!!!!”
• Queensland Health Payroll Disaster – Fightback ( #ITfail)
  [Facebook page -DBM]
• Queensland Health Payroll Disaster – Fightback ( #ITfail)
  The Forensic Accountant’s unofficial opinion after doing a proper review of the documents was that 80% of the QH overpayment documents didnt tally up completely, and the remaining 20% only did if you accepted that the figures in them were correct. Their professional opinion of the “audit” documents, as far as audits go (this person has been doing auditing and forensic accounting for a very long time, and has done very, very well for himself out of this kind of work), was:”It’s crap”.
• Judge tosses #Oracle’s $6.1 billion damage estimate in claim against #Google
  Alsup said in a written opinion that Oracle’s expert, Boston University professor Iain Cockburn, “overreached in many ways” by using a broad estimate of Android’s value, rather than the portion of Android that may be tied to the patents in question, to produce an estimate of what Google potentially owes in the case.Oracle produced the report
  “evidently with the goal of seeing how much it could get away with,” Alsup added.But the judge, who rebuked both sides for a variety of missteps during an hourlong court hearing Thursday, also jabbed at Google in his 16-page decision. Both companies declined to comment Friday.

  In a finding that could increase the amount of potential damages — if Google is ultimately held liable — Alsup flatly rejected Google’s argument that its advertising revenue should not be considered part of the value of the software that’s at issue.

  While Google lets device-makers use Android at little cost, the judge noted that Google makes money from advertising rel

• Judge criticizes #Google and #Oracle at hearing
  “You’re both asking for the moon and you should be more reasonable,” U.S. District Judge William Alsup said in a testy hearing on Thursday.
• #Google Says It Rejected $100 Million #Android #Java Deal From #Sun ( #Oracle)
  Alsup cited a document to a Google executive from Google’s Android project leader that said, “‘We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java.”“Don’t you think a good lawyer will convince a jury that it’s a license for patents?” Alsup said.While Oracle’s damages may be in the millions or billions of dollars, Alsup said it was “crazy” for Oracle to equate its damages to the entire market value of Android.
• #Google Says It Rejected #Sun’s $100 Million #Java #Android Deal
  U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu ruled that Oracle may depose Page for two hours “soley on topics relevant to the willfulness of defendant’s alleged patent infringement, and the value of Android” to Google, according to the order.
• #Oracle Ordered to Lower #Android #Java Damages Claim Against #Google
  The expert, Boston University professor Iain Cockburn, is allowed to revise his estimate and resubmit it, but the judge warned Oracle that it won’t get another chance after that.”Please be forewarned: the next bite will be for keeps. If the next and final report fails to measure up in any substantial and unseverable way, including ways this order did not have time to reach, then it may be excluded altogether without leave to try yet again,” the judge said.
• Judge orders overhaul of #Oracle’s damages report but maintains Halloween trial date ( #Google #Android #Java)
  Even though Google achieved a lot with its Daubert motion, it lost the strategic battle over the inclusion of Android-related advertising revenues. Perhaps even more importantly, Google faces the problem that the judge appears increasingly suspicious (if not already convinced) of Google having committed willful infringement because of a problematic atttitude toward other companies’ intellectual property rights.
  …
  In connection with the theories Google presented, the judge refers to one (even in a headline) as “Google’s Soviet-style negotiation”, defined as “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable”. In that context, the judge suspects the following attitude:”Google may have simply been brazen, preferring to roll the dice on possible litigation rather than to pay a fair price.”That kind of statement reflects extremely unfavorably on Google. It’s exactly the kind of basis on which the judge might consider an injunction a highly appropriate remedy, and a tripling of the ba
• #Oracle gets to depose #Google CEO Larry Page for two hours on willful #patent infringement, value of #Android
  Given the importance of Android to Google’s business, it is highly likely that Mr. Page participated in decision-making regarding the licensing negotiations. Therefore, Plaintiff also has satisfied the court that Mr. Page likely ‘has unique first-hand, non-repetitive knowledge of facts at issue in the case’ and that Plaintiff ‘has exhausted other less intrusive discovery methods’ to obtain the information it seeks in its proposed deposition.
• Top general says Defense Department IT in ‘Stone Age’ ( #ITfail)
  Congressional investigators found that only 16% of IT projects are completed on time and on budget, and 31% are canceled before completion. The remaining 53% are late and over budget with the typical cost growth exceeding the original budget by more than 89%, the report said.
• Update on patents in #Oracle – #Google
  Those burdens are compounded by Oracle’s continued pursuit of unreasonably burdensome discovery tactics, such as:(1) Just days ago Oracle first made available for inspection approximately 150boxes of litigation materials from the Sun v. Microsoft litigation (relevant to Oracle’s damages claims), even though Oracle now acknowledges that it knew this category of documents existed months ago;(2) Just days ago Oracle first disclosed the existence of enormous source code“workspaces” which may contain the critical source code that Oracle has long claimed to be missing from Oracle’s files and that will likely establish an on-sale bar;(3) Oracle recently demanded that Google produce on July 29 any documents it has ever produced in more than two dozen other litigations that have involved Android in some way, regardless of whether the documents bear any relevance to the narrow accused aspects of the Android platform; and(4) Oracle has stonewalled throughout discovery in an effort to delay produ
• #Google blinks in #Oracle #patent case, indicates willingness to pay
  But there’s a fundamental difference between negotiating in private and letting the court (as well as the public) know — more than three months before the scheduled trial (!) — that one isn’t so sure of one’s defenses anymore. This stands in clear contradiction to Google’s past positions and declarations, and it looks increasingly like an admission all by itself. Discovery is almost complete, and it probably didn’t go too well for Google.
• #Oracle Buys Ksplice for #Linux ‘zero Downtime’ Tech
  The “zero downtime” capabilities provided by Ksplice will bolster Oracle’s Unbreakable Enterprise Linux kernel and become a standard feature in its Linux Premier Support offering. Customers will be able to avoid the “costly and disruptive” system reboots that occur with monthly Linux kernel security updates, Oracle said.
• #Oracle Buys #Ksplice
  Oracle believes it will be the only enterprise Linux provider that can offer zero downtime updates, and expects to make the Ksplice technology a standard feature of Oracle Linux Premier Support.
• #Oracle Announces Oracle Unified Directory 11g
  Highlights of Oracle Unified Directory 11g include: — Next Generation: builds on the success and wide adoption of Oracle’s existing directory services solutions with five years of continuous and innovative development to address the increasing demands on modern directory servers; — High Volume Writes: utilizes social and location-based services to increase the frequency of changes to identity data, as well as expanding the contents to include more details, including location, images, and relationships; — Elastic Scalability and Extreme Performance: provides a global index and data distribution capabilities to deliver unmatched elastic horizontal scalability and offers high-scale authentication performance to serve an unparalleled billions of users, subscribers and devices; — On-premise and Cloud Computing Capabilities: controls the synchronization and virtualization of the data to make data available to cloud-based applications and systems while protecting data privacy and data jur
• #Microsoft posts record revenue in spite of flat Windows market
  This growth was attributed to Windows Server, System Center, and SQL Server.Online services revenue grew by 17 percent year on year to $662 million for the quarter. Full year revenue was $2.56 billion, up 15 percent. The growth came on the back of a 20 percent increase in advertising revenue, primarily driven by search. The division continues to make losses, however, and in spite of the revenue growth, the losses also grew, up 9 percent to $2.55 billion. Profitability for Online Services remains elusive.The only division to post a drop in revenue was the Windows and Windows Live division. Revenue for the quarter was $4.74 billion, down 1 percent, and for the year was $19.02 billion, down 2 percent. These figures are impacted by having revenue for Windows 7 booked prior to its launch, with Microsoft estimating that absent those revenue deferrals, full year revenue experienced growth of 2-4 percent, in line with the growth of the PC market. Windows 7 continues to sell well, with more
• Don’t look now, but #Microsoft is starting to morph into a three-headed cash cow
  Windows, Business (Office) and Server and Tools units all feeding the Redmondian beast.
• #Microsoft Reports Record Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Results
  Server and Tools revenue increased reflecting growth in both product sales and Enterprise Services. Product revenue increased $1.4 billion or 11%, driven primarily by growth in Windows Server, SQL Server, Enterprise CAL Suites, and Windows Embedded, reflecting continued adoption of Windows platform applications. Enterprise Services revenue grew $337 million or 11%, due to growth in both Premier product support and consulting services.Server and Tools operating income increased due to revenue growth, offset in part by higher operating expenses. Cost of revenue increased $366 million or 13%, primarily reflecting a $323 million increase in expenses from providing Enterprise Services. Sales and marketing expenses increased $264 million or 6% reflecting increased fees paid to third party enterprise software advisors and increased corporate marketing activities.
• #Microsoft Reports Record Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Results [PPTX]
  [Note the Dynamics performance of +19% vs same quarter 2010, and +10% TTM YoY -DBM]
• Vendors admonished for “questionable” licensing tactics ( #Oracle #SAP #Microsoft #IBM)
  Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and IBM all came under fire as the analyst examined vendor management professionals’ and CIOs’ attitudes to 15 “questionable” licensing policies.
• How vendors think about licenses: marginal price
  After all, understanding how your vendor is thinking might help you to better negotiate the best possible outcome for you and your enterprise.
• Marc Benioff, Mister Disrupter ( #Salesforce.com)
  “With that,” says Benioff, “the culture of our company changed.”
• The World’s Most Innovative Companies ( #Salesforce.com #Amazon #Apple #Google #SAP #Oracle)
  Rank Company 5-Year
  Avg. Sales
  Growth (%)5-Year Avg.
  Net Income
  Growth (%)Enterprise
  Value ($bil)

  Innovation
  Premium*

  1 Salesforce.com 39.5 78.7 20.7 75.1
  2 Amazon.com 32.0 37.6 92.7 58.9
  5 Apple 35.1 60.7 303.4 48.2
  7 Google 35.0 37.1 138.1 44.9
  34 NetApp 17.3 12.0 15.8 31.6
  36 Citrix Systems 14.7 7.5 14.7 30.4
  42 Juniper Networks 14.5 -0.1 14.7 29.6
  63 SAP 7.9 3.9 69.1 22.1
  77 Oracle 17.9 17.8 147.1 19.3
  86 Microsoft 9.7 8.3 186.0 18.0
  87 Automatic Data Processing 8.5 11.0 24.5 18.0
  98 CA 2.8 49.3 9.5 16.1

• How vendors think about licenses: marginal price
  And it totally makes sense to share the risk with the customer, taking less money overall in exchange for a contractual commitment now by the customer.
• Coming to Terms with the Consumerization of IT
  Technologies available to consumers at low cost or even for free are increasingly pushing aside enterprise applications. They’re not just more familiar and more attractive to use, they’re often more reliable. Software-as-a-Service and Cloud vendors mostly deliver 99.9% uptime. In an upcoming Constellation Research survey of IT departments, preliminary results show internal reliability ranging from 97% to 99.1%.
• #Oracle battles Montclair State over failed IT project ( #ITfail)
  Own your own implementation. Regardless of your system integrator or software vendor, you are ultimately responsible for success and failure on your projects! The best consultants may well save you in the end — but don’t count on it.
• Official #Google Blog: More wood behind fewer arrows
  We’ve decided to wind down Google Labs
• #Google gets serious: Winds down Google Labs
  More focus appears to mean that play time is over.
• #Google’s ’20 Percent Time’ Will Survive The Death of Google Labs
  Google tells me that the company has no changes to announce with regards to the 20 Percent Time program; killing Labs doesn’t mean the discontinuation of the one day a week Googlers get to spend on “projects that aren’t necessarily in [their] job descriptions.” “We’ll continue to devote a subset of our time to newer and experiment projects,” Google representative Jason Friedenfelds tells me.
• #Microsoft Azure Does #BigData As A Service
  Daytona uses a runtime version of Google’s open-license MapReduce programming model for processing large data sets. The Daytona tools deploy MapReduce to Windows Azure virtual machines, which subdivide the information into even smaller chunks for processing. The data is then recombined for output.
• #Amazon Embraces ‘License Mobility’ for #Microsoft App Servers ( #Cloud)
  That means that organizations with Microsoft volume licensing and SA agreements in place have a little more flexibility on how to use Microsoft application server products that were originally licensed for on-premises use. In many cases, organizations can transfer those licenses into a hosting company’s public cloud, including leveraging AWS’ infrastructure-as-a-service offerings to run applications as services, without incurring additional licensing costs.
• Thousands of Softies, minding their Ps, Qs and tweets, converge in Denver ( #Microsoft)
  This year, a number of self-appointed twitter police at the company are reminding regularly those attending MGX to watch their tweets. So far, they’ve complied and the MGX mentions have been nothing to tweet home about.
• #VMware’s second quarter strong, sees upside ahead
  VMware reported second quarter earnings of $220 million, or 51 cents a share, on revenue of $921 million, up 37 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 55 cents a share.Wall Street was looking for earnings of 47 cents a share on revenue of $873 million.
• #Cassandra SF2011: Progress and Futures ( #NoSQL #BigData #OpenSource)
  Major accomplishments for the project in the last year include better support for multi-data center deployments, optimized read performance, included integrated caching and improved client APIs including a SQL-like language CQL. The feature freeze for Cassandra 1.0 is expected in October 2011, emphasizing polish – efficient database repair, storage compression, optimized performance and an expanded CQL language.
• OpenStack turns 1. What’s next? ( #OpenSource #Cloud)
  OpenStack, the open-source, cloud-computing software project founded by Rackspace and NASA, celebrates its first birthday tomorrow. It has been a busy year for the project, which appears to have grown much faster than even its founders expected it would. A year in, OpenStack is still picking up steam and looks not only like an open source alternative to Amazon Web Services and VMware vCloud in the public Infrastructure as a Service space, but also a democratizing force in the private-cloud software space.
• #OpenSource Git and GitHub top in popularity stakes
  Among developers using Linux as their OS Github has increased in popularity for hosting by over 10% with BitBucket losing a similar percentage. This means that GitHub is now preferred by two thirds of Linux and 85% of Mac developers. Source control preferences show it is again Linux developers who have changed their preferences with over 10% now favoring Git at the expense of Mercurial.The charts below show that there are distinct differences in preferences between those who develop on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.With regard to hosting sites, CodePlex is all but ignored by those working with Linux and Mac OS but it is equally popular as GitHub among Windows developers – in fact with its 38% share it is is now 0.1% ahead of GitHub.
• #TROLL Patents Are Very Valuable, Tech Giants Discover: Nathan Myhrvold
  The practice amounts to an intellectual property version of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
• Sharp Rise in #ERP Users Mulling Support Alternatives
  Some 57 percent of 244 respondents to a survey conducted in the second quarter indicated interest in third-party support, compared to 42 percent in a study conducted last year and less than 20 percent in one completed in 2009, said Constellation Research CEO Ray Wang during a webcast sponsored and hosted by Rimini Street, which offers support for Oracle and SAP applications.
• How #SAP Business ByDesign fits into the #SaaS #ERP landscape
  “It could potentially become a competitive product against something like SAP Business All-in-One, but it is currently playing more in the space of SAP Business One,” Hestermann said.
• #Oracle Releases Another New Version of #OpenSource VirtualBox VDI
  VirtualBox, a surprisingly full-featured package which has recorded more than 46 million downloads in the last three years since it first was developed by Sun Microsystems, enables desktop or laptop computers to run multiple guest operating systems simultaneously.A good reason for its popularity is that it is a free download; VirtualBox is a cornerstone of Oracle’s enterprise virtual desktop package.
• #Apple smashes Street views, shares soar
  Apple sold 20.34 million iPhones during the quarter versus an expected 17 million to 18 million, which analysts say helped it vault past Nokia and Samsung Electronics to become the world’s biggest smartphone maker.That “figure may indeed make them the largest smartphone maker by volume, which is somewhat ironic in a quarter that many thought would be about the Mac,” said CCS Insight analyst John Jackson. “That they accomplished this without a new model speaks volumes about both their strength and the relative challenges facing competitors.”
• #Apple Shares Jump After Record IPhone, IPad Sales Let Profit Top Estimates
  “Apple is a juggernaut and they prove it every quarter,” said Mike Binger, an Apple investor at Thrivent Asset Management in Appleton, Wisconsin, which has about $70 billion under management.
• #Apple’s #China boom continues with 6x revenue growth to $3.8B
  Greater China revenue for the first three quarters of fiscal 2011 stood at $8.8 billion, up from $3 billion for all of fiscal 2010. The region’s breakout performance contributed to strong growth for the Asia/Pacific area, which saw sales nearly quadruple year over year.
• Some #Apple Directors Ponder CEO Succession
  On Tuesday, Mr. Jobs didn’t participate in a conference call to discuss Apple’s latest quarterly results, which showed the company’s profit doubled and revenue surged 82%.
• Schmidt: #Apple Reponds with Lawsuits
  Eric Schmidt said Apple’s present patent infringement case against HTC was inspired by “jealousy” and crafted to permanently unplug the power supply of its current rival, Google’s Android.
• Say Goodbye to #IBM’s American Success Story
  During its next 100 years, IBM will be a story of global success.
• #IBM Sells $2 Billion of 1.95%, 5-Year Bonds as Company Credit Risk Plunges
  [Why is IBM a higher interest rate than the US [aka Greece 2 ] -DBM]
  The world’s biggest computer-services provider issued $2 billion of 1.95 percent notes that yield 65 basis points more than similar-maturity Treasuries, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. IBM last raised five-year debt in December with $1 billion of 2 percent notes that paid a 55 basis-point spread, Bloomberg data show.
• HomeTrust bets its future growth on #SAP banking software
  As a result, HomeTrust has shifted from a rudimentary spreadsheet approach to analytics to now having a data governance framework in place that features data owners across the business.Reid said analytics are being applied in several areas, including for customer relationship management where more data is now available for intelligence on how to better market to certain customers. “There are a lot more tools on that side of it that we can utilize,” said Reid. Financial analytics, too, he said, is another area where analytics will help HomeTrust understand and keep up with how the business is changing.
• Despite #Microsoft gains, #VMware still dominates virtualization market
  Fully 58% of companies using virtualization call VMware their primary hypervisor, while 20.2% put Citrix at the top of the list and 18.6% count Hyper-V first.Yet when counting all virtualization use, 84% of virtualizing companies use VMware, 61% use Hyper-V, 55.4% use Citrix’s XenServer and 12% use other hypervisors. Only 3% use an “other” hypervisor as their main one.
• How #Google #Android Could Generate #Microsoft’s Next Billion Dollars
  “After landing several key licensing agreements and with a big Samsung agreement reportedly in the works, Android is well on its way to becoming one of Microsoft’s fastest growing money makers,” stock analysis firm Trefis wrote in a recent note to clients.Since Microsoft has rights to several patents related to technology used in Android, it has been able to turn Android into a huge revenue-generating business by entering into patent licensing agreements with other companies that produce Android devices.
• Hey! My friend’s account was hacked! ( #Microsoft)
  The first lets you report a friend’s account as compromised – a feature unique to Hotmail – and the second prevents you from using common passwords that make your account easy to hack.
• 9.2% Unemployment? Blame #Microsoft
  But we do need programmers. And experienced customer service people. We need engineers, scientists, high end equipment operators, nurses, lab technicians and (very soon) capable construction workers too. In other words: people with skills. As a business owner it’s a no-brainer to me that if I can profit from your skills I may very well be persuaded to hire you. What expertise can you bring to me that a machine can’t do for much less? I have to meet that challenge with my own customers. That’s the challenge that we all face.
• FORRESTER RESEARCH HAS THE HIGHEST GROSS MARGIN IN THE IT CONSULTING & OTHER SERVICES INDUSTRY
  Forrester Research (NASDAQ:FORR – Snapshot Report) has gross margin of 61.2%, a sales growth of 11.1%, and trailing 12 months sales of $257.3 million.Gartner (NYSE:IT – Snapshot Report) has gross margin of 59.5%, a sales growth of 11.4%, and trailing 12 months sales of $1.3 billion.
• Embrace The Empowered Era Or Step Aside
  Many employees are no longer relying on IT to provision, manage, and run their technology because they feel IT is too slow and puts unnecessary restrictions on their use of technology.
• InGovern recommends voting against reappointment of independent directors at #Wipro and IDFC
  Wipro, the soap-to-software company has called its AGM on 19th July at Bengaluru. InGovern has recommended to institutional investors to vote for 11 out of the 12 resolutions proposed by Wipro. The advisory firm said in a statement that institutional investors should vote against the reappointment of BC Prabhakar as independent director. “He (Mr Prabhakar) has been on (Wipro) Board for a period of more than 14 years which is in violation of clause 49, annexure ID (1) of the listing agreement that specifies a maximum tenure of nine years. Though the guideline in Clause 49 is non-mandatory, in our opinion, serving as an independent director on the Board of the company beyond nine years is likely to affect their independence,” the firm said.
• U.S. Visa Rejections Hit TCS
  India’s outsourcing companies, which send thousands of employees abroad to work at client locations, in the U.S. are accused of taking away local jobs at a time when unemployment in high. The U.S. last year imposed a large fee on visas for skilled workers like software professionals, a move that is weighing on the profitability of Indian outsourcers.The U.S. is also investigating a case of alleged abuse of a temporary-visa program by Infosys Ltd. The Indian company had said it was cooperating with the investigation, which focused on whether it sent staff to work in the U.S. on temporary visas.”Visa rejections have gone up definitely, and what that means is we need to do lot more planning,” Mr. Chandrasekaran told reporters. “What we’re doing is to spend more time in planning project execution…that’s the main impact for us.”
• #IBM Sales Beat Estimates as Companies Spend
  Revenue last quarter rose 12 percent to $26.7 billion, the Armonk, New York-based company said today. That topped $25.4 billion, the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. IBM raised its full-year earnings forecast to at least $13.25 a share, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $13.21.Software sales rose 17 percent, underscoring continuing progress in Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano’s efforts to focus on that business as well as services. The two divisions accounted for 83 percent of IBM’s sales last year, up from 65 percent a decade earlier. Meanwhile, hardware shrunk to 8 percent from 24 percent.
• #IBM Reports 2011 Second-Quarter Results
  Revenues from the Software segment were $6.2 billion, an increase of 17 percent (10 percent, adjusting for currency). Software pre-tax income of $2.3 billion was up 12 percent year over year.Revenues from IBM’s key middleware products, which include WebSphere, Information Management, Tivoli, Lotus and Rational products, were $3.9 billion, an increase of 21 percent (14 percent, adjusting for currency) versus the second quarter of 2010. Operating systems revenues of $630 million increased 16 percent (9 percent, adjusting for currency) compared with the prior-year quarter.Revenues from the WebSphere family of software products increased 55 percent year over year. Information Management software revenues increased 18 percent. Revenues from Tivoli software increased 9 percent. Revenues from Lotus software increased 12 percent, and Rational software increased 4 percent.
• #Microsoft Research Releases Another Hadoop Alternative for Azure ( #BigData)
  [Daytona, LINQ to HPC (aka Dryad), Windows Azure Table Storage, Probase, Trinity, Project Barcelona, ... -DBM]
• Project Daytona – #Microsoft Research ( #BigData)
  The project code-named Daytona is built on Windows Azure and employs the available Windows Azure compute and data services to offer a scalable and high-performance system for data analytics. To deploy and use Project Daytona, you need to follow these simple steps:Develop your data analytics algorithm(s). Project Daytona enables a data analytics or machine learning algorithm to be authored as a set of Map and Reduce tasks, without in-depth knowledge of distributed computing or software development on Windows Azure. To get you up and running quickly, the release package includes sample data analysis algorithms to provide you with examples for building a data analysis library, as well as a developer guide with step-by-step instructions for authoring new algorithms, and source code for a sample client application for integrating your existing applications with Project Daytona on Windows Azure.
  Upload your data and library of data analytics routines into Windows Azure. Windows Azu
• Announcing #Microsoft LINQ to HPC Beta 2 ( #BigData)
  Key features of LINQ to HPC include:LINQ to HPC enables a new class of data intensive applications by providing a sophisticated distributed runtime and associated programming model for analyzing large volumes of unstructured data using commodity clusters. LINQ to HPC is offered as an integral feature of Windows HPC Server, providing a unified scale-out platform that can run both compute and data intensive HPC applications.LINQ to HPC is based on LINQ, a powerful, language integrated query model, offering a higher level of abstraction that makes it easy to develop distributed, scale-out data intensive applications. It integrates with Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET framework for a superior development experience and increased developer productivity.

  For deeper insights, LINQ to HPC can integrate with SQL Server 2008, SQL Azure and the rich portfolio of Business Intelligence offerings from Microsoft such as SQL Server Reporting Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, Po

• #Oracle Fusion Applications move toward widespread release
  “Oracle Fusion Applications is generally available, and anyone who wants to buy Fusion can buy it right now; Oracle has just kind of had a soft launch,” he said. Hamerman added that there are several deployment options — including hosted, Software as a Service (SaaS) and on-premises — as well as migrations from other platforms.
• The State of #SAP HANA – Four SAP Mentors Share Their Views
  When we come down into a level of detail, things get a bit messier as you say, Vitality. But at the 30,000 foot level, the vision makes sense, and it has generated a lot of buzz from the CIOs I talk to – they see it as a disruptive technology for the future.
• Will #IBM Survive Another 100 Years?
  IBM has still not succeeded in institutionalizing listening to its clients and customers as the central thrust of its culture.
• Visa rejections soaring, says TCS
  Other than increasing local hiring in the US, it also plans to increase applications under the H-visa category in its bid to counter the rise in visa rejection.
• #Hadoop & Startups: Where #OpenSource Meets Business #BigData
  A MOVEMENT, NOT JUST A TECHNOLOGYDespite Hadoop’s utility, the predictable backlash has claimed it is overhyped, pointing to shortcomings like ease of use, ability to process realtime data, limitations of map-reduce for social graph data, etc. But this is like criticizing LAMP for PHP’s ugliness before Ruby on Rails took the stage, or MySQL’s scalability issues before Memcached sidestepped them.
• #MicroStrategy OEMs #Informatica Technology to Bring Industry Leading Data Integration Platform to MicroStrategy #Cloud
  Informatica was selected by MicroStrategy after a rigorous technical evaluation. Informatica Cloud, the award-winning software-as-a-service (SaaS) data integration solution, is currently in use by 1,300 organizations of all sizes, from SMBs to large enterprises. The new MicroStrategy Cloud integration service, powered by Informatica, offers simplicity for business users as well as broad connectivity and flexibility for IT organizations. The simple browser-based interface empowers business users to access, load, synchronize, replicate, and transform data from both on-premise systems and cloud-based data sources such as Salesforce.com and NetSuite. The broad connectivity enables access to data managed by the MicroStrategy Cloud database options, including IBM Netezza and ParAccel.
• HOW TO: Turn Fans Into Brand Ambassadors ( #Oracle #SAP)
  Oracle has a program called Oracle ACE that spotlights various IT pros as Oracle experts. SAP’s equivalent is the SAP Mentor Initiative, which recognizes SAP experts and gives them a forum (an SAP site plus a YouTube channel.)
• Enterprise apps market in the Asia Pacific to reach US$8.7 billion by 2015
  Specialised vendors like Salesforce.com, and local vendors like Kingdee registered strong year-on-year growth in addition to the traditional global vendors like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft.
• #SAP Labs India brings innovative ways to break monotony and raises retention levels
  Shetty says behind this initiative is the thought that “a creative mind, which needs to write a code, should be exposed to a lot of ideas, especially from the non-technical stream”. Such interactions stimulate and expand your mind, says he, adding that after the chat with Albinia, whose work Leela’s Book draws on The Mahabharata, one of his colleagues came up with the idea of creating a “family tree software application”. “You return cleansed,” he says. Such sessions are held during work hours for one full hour.
• #Google’s #Java Jam ( #Oracle #Android)
  Oracle’s lawsuit against Google is “a test case really for whether or not Oracle will be able to monetize Java in the mobile space,” according to IDC’s Al Hilwa.
• #Oracle wants #Google CEO Larry Page to testify on #Android acquisition and #Java licensing talks
  The four witnesses Oracle wants to depose areLarry Page, co-founder of Google who recently became its CEO (replacing Eric Schmidt);Dipchand Nishar, a fomer Google employee on whose LinkedIn profile Oracle spotted that he claims to have “[s]tarted and managed Google’s mobile initiatives worldwide (2005-2007)”;

  Bob Lee, “former Google employee who was a Senior Software Engineer at Google who led the core library development for Android”; and

  Tim Lindholm, “an Android software engineer who was previously employed by Sun Microsystems”, where he “contributed to certain Java technology at issue in this lawsuit”, and later “participated in the negotiations that took place between Sun and Google for a Java license”.

• #Oracle asks to depose #Google’s Larry Page over #Java #Android suit
  “Mr. Page also participated in negotiations that took place between Sun and Google regarding a Java license for Android and in subsequent communications with Oracle’s CEO, Larry Ellison (whose deposition Google has requested). Oracle believes that Mr. Page’s testimony will likely be relevant with respect to a number of other key issues in this case as well, including the value of the infringement to Google.”
• Notice regarding addiitonal questions for July 21 hearing ( #Google #Java #Android #Oracle)
  In reading the Daubert briefing, it appears possible that early on Google recognized that it would infringe patents protecting at least part of Java, entered into negotiations with Sun to obtain a license for use in Android, then abandoned the negotiations as too expensive, and pushed home with Android without any license at all. How accurate is this scenario? Does Google acknowledge that Android infringes at least some of the claims if valid? If so, how should this affect the damages analysis? How should this affect the questions of willfulness and equitable relief?
• #Oracle calls #Google chief into #Android #Java dispute
  Google has also requested that Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison answer questions under oath in a deposition.
• Former #Microsoft #cloud chief resurfaces at #EMC
  Srivasta left Microsoft in March, 2011, after a 13-year career at the company, with his most recent job being head of the combined Server and Cloud division.
• #Microsoft rolls out One Big Windows strategy
  The company is likely preparing a common operating system “core” that will allow developers to build applications across multiple devices.
• #Microsoft contributes a lot of #OpenSource changes to #Linux kernel 3.0
  The 343 changes made by Microsoft developer K. Y. Srinivasan put him at the top of a list, created by LWN.net, of developers who made the most changes in the current development cycle for Linux 3.0. Along with a number of other “change sets”, Microsoft provided a total of 361 changes, putting it in seventh place on the list of companies and groups that contributed code to the Linux kernel. By comparison, independent developers provided 1,085 change sets to Linux 3.0, while Red Hat provided 1,000 and Intel 839.
• Software AG’s weak Q2 rattles investors, shares plummet
  Software AG (SOWG.DE) shares plummeted to a four-month low on Thursday after the company’s quarterly results proved weaker than expected due to lower license sales and delayed projects.The company said late the previous day that deals it expected to close in June had been delayed and that it had identified “operating weaknesses” in Europe, sending its stock down some 16 percent to its lowest since March.
• Top 10 Enhancements in #Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
  Microsoft Office add-ins to use Microsoft Word and Excel to build templates and documents that combine structured and unstructured information from Dynamics AX.
  New Help system allowing you to customize topics, enabling others in the organization to create Help documentation, promptly applying and distributing updates and using Search and Help viewer to find help on your network or the web.
  RoleTailored user interface including FactBoxes, Fast Tabs, and Preview Panes that let you view data from multiple sources without leaving the current form.
  Time zone improvements including editing time zones, supporting multiple time zones, and synchronizing time zone preferences
  Unified procurement strategy across employees, purchasing agents, and vendors
  Auto-generated SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) reports and basic reports creation using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Charting Control
  Global operations support through development of a report in one language and the reporting framework produ
• #Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012
  Attend the virtual launch event to:Hear from Microsoft executives
  See product demos
  Listen to customers and partners
  Watch product tours, based on your business, industry, or role
  Collaborate with your peers through feeds and community forums
  Chat with product experts and sales associatesRegister now and add this event to your Microsoft Outlook calendar.
• #Google App Engine #Java Status
  During this period, affected applications experienced higher than normal latencies. This issue is resolved, but we are currently conducting an investigation and will follow up with more details shortly.
• #Google App Engine suffers availability problems
  #Microsoft very graciously reached out to us tonight and offered to help us move to Azure
• Business Intelligence on the TCO Diet: Slashing the Cost of Insight with Analytical Fitness
  * Segment and measure the cost of each stage of the BI lifecycle
  * Establish a process to gather and incorporate end-user BI needs
  * Continue to build self-service BI capability among business users
• Human Capital Management Enterprise Applications Market Report 2010-2015, Profiles Of Top 10 Vendors
  Another way to look at the changing competitive landscape is that over the past few years the top three HCM
  vendors(SAP, Oracle and Kronos) have only edged up slightly in their combined shares from 35% in 2006 to 39% in
  2010.
  However the other seven vendors that followed them have doubled their combined shares during the period from
  11% in 2006 to 22% in 2010.
• #SAP joins the OpenJDK ( #Java)
  SAP has signed the Oracle Contributor Agreement (OCA). This means that with immediate effect the SAP JVM developers can officially join the discussions on the various OpenJDK mailing lists and contribute patches and enhancements to the project. SAP is a long time Sun and now Oracle Java source licensee who has ported the original Sun (now Oracle) JDK to all the 14 SAP supported platforms (including the Oracle supported Linux/Windows/Solaris platforms plus Win/IA64, AS400/PPC64, HPUX/PARISC, HPUX/IA64, Linux/IA64, Linux/PPC64, Linux/S390, AIX/PPC64).
• ITC judge finds HTC in infringement of two #Apple patents ( #Google #Android)
  They are very likely to be infringed by code that is at the core of Android.
• #Microsoft vs. everybody else: The quotable Kevin Turner ( #Google #Salesforce.com #Oracle #Siebel)
  “There are no happy Siebel customers in the world, you all know that. And we can go win every single one of those. But now we’ve got this humongous pacifier to stick in the mouth of Marc Benioff called Dynamics CRM Online. Which is a really, really beautiful thing for us, for both partners and Microsoft.”…“It’s so exciting to be able to talk about Office 365. I can only describe what Office 365 is in sort of two words. You could say technically it’s three words. But Office 365, ladies and gentlemen, is nothing but a Google butt-kicker, that’s all it is.”“This is a company (Google) that has a mission statement that they have to remind themselves not to do evil, right?”
• #Microsoft v. #Amazon, #Google, #Salesforce.com on selling #cloud services
  “You look at Salesforce.com is very much a direct sales force. They take leads primarily off the Internet, they run them through their telesales and they call them directly,” Roskill said.Salesforce.com declined to comment on Roskill’s thoughts.Amazon Web Services competes with Microsoft Azure platform and attracted many startups that have seen growth, such as social game company Zynga. Roskill saids Amazon.com is struggling with building a developer community.

  “Amazon is coming from a heritage of being a bookseller and growing up to being a large retailer,” he said.” They are neophytes in terms of developer community, although they have hired some good people in the last few years.”

• Dummies for #Salesforce.com and butt-kicks for #Google ( #Oracle)
  As for Oracle, well now Turner was shooting fish in a barrel as pictures of CEO Larry Ellison, CFO Safra Catz and President Mark Hurd flashed up on screen behind him:
  “To really talk to a customer about whether they should bet on Oracle let’s just take a look at the cast of characters and you make the call…I don’t even know what to say! ”Turner told the partner audience that there is a great opportunity to make inroad into the installed Oracle customer base even with the imminent release of the first of the next generation Oracle Fusion applications:
  “This Fusion product that they have, that they’re beginning to make some traction around and some noise around, is a huge opportunity for us,. Their lack of focus on customer service, taking care of customers and doing the right thing by customers is catching up with them. It’s been very lucrative to them financially, but you and I both know how many happy Oracle customers are you talking to? It’s about like Siebel. So the reali
• #Ruby creator’s #Heroku move boosts #Salesforce.com developer ambitions
  “I decided to join Heroku because they are committed to openness and developing Ruby further. I want to make the Ruby development experience even richer, more natural and more productive than ever for all Ruby developers. ”
• #OpenSource #Jaspersoft Closes New Financing ( #RedHat #SAP)
  New strategic investor Quest Software joins SAP Ventures and Red Hat to accelerate the company’s product development and global expansion
• #IBM throws its source code and support behind #OpenSource #Apache #Oracle #OpenOffice
  IBM will be donating more than 3-million lines of Symphony source code to the Apache OpenOffice project. IBM will also be adding developers to work with the OpenOffice community to assess how Symphony should be integrated into OpenOffice. It seems IBM will also continue their own in-house Symphony development because they’re talking about making future changes to Symphony available to OpenOffice.
• #IBM’s New ‘Entry-Level’ Mainframe Targets Midsize IT Shops
  IBM announces a new $75,000 mainframe aimed at midsize organizations. Big Blue also announced Linux x86 blade support for its zEnterprise Systems, with Windows support coming later in the year.
• My Story | TiE Silicon Valley
  Featuring Raju Reddy Part 1
• Larry Page – Google+ ( #Google)
  But our emerging high usage products can generate huge new businesses for Google in the long run, just like search
  And we have tons of experience monetizing successful products over time
• #Google Shares Jump After Blowout Earnings Report
  “Nice quarter from the guys, but you still have a situation of declining margins.”
• Are companies addicted to #Hadoop? ( #BigData #OpenSource)
  Many see a market that is over a billion dollars for Hadoop products, but it’s nowhere near that right now.
• #OpenSource Lucene Core and Solr updated to 3.3
  Lucene Core, formerly Lucene Java, is a Java-based indexing and search tool that also offers spellchecking, hit highlighting and advanced analysis/tokenization capabilities.Solr is an enterprise search server with a number of APIs and search features including faceted and distributed search, along with admin and search interfaces. PyLucene is a Python port of the Lucene Core project.
• #ParAccel Announces #Amazon as Investor in Latest Funding Round
  “Powerful database solutions help customers with their most complex analytics work involving large data sets,” said Jeff Blackburn, senior vice president of business development for Amazon. “ParAccel has an industry-leading solution and is rethinking databases for the cloud – we’re excited to back such a strong team.”
• Seven #Java projects that changed the world ( #Oracle #OpenSource)
  JUnit…
  Eclipse…
  Spring…
  Solr…
  Hudson and Jenkins…
  Hadoop…
  Android…
• #Microsoft sets official kill date for Windows XP
  Exactly 999 days from now, Microsoft will officially end support for the operating system, dragging many of us kicking and screaming over to Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 whether we like it or not.
• #Ruby creator Matsumoto joins #Salesforce.com Heroku
  Heroku might have expanded its embrace to include Node.js and Clojure, but its heart is still with Ruby. To wit, Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto is joining the company as its chief architect for Ruby.
• Who leads the #Java parade? ( #Oracle #Google #OpenSource)
  Oracle’s problem has been simple: while they’ve made occasional overtures and peace offerings to the Java community, they’ve also been, well, abusive. One need look no further than the departure of the Apache Software Foundation and Doug Lea from the JCP when it became clear that Oracle viewed the community process merely as a means to rubber-stamp their decisions. (Doug still contributes to OpenJDK, though through a stand-alone process that is then integrated into releases.) It is certainly true that Oracle is a very large company that has never had to worry much about community relations. I doubt Oracle developers expect much say in the future of the Oracle database platform. It’s possible that this is just a cross-cultural faux-pas; I don’t think it’s Oracle’s intention to kick sand into their developers’ faces. I suspect it never occurred to Oracle’s highest levels of management that the community would care.
• Judge grills #Google over whether it knew #Android was infringing #Oracle’s #Java #patent s
  This does not bode well for Google, as it adds the element of willful intent to the case, which means Google could face substantially heavier damages if found liable for patent infringement. Indeed, Oracle has asked for triple damages because of Google’s alleged knowledge of infringement.
• #Oracle Announces Comprehensive User Engagement Platform
  A comprehensive solution to engage users inside and outside the enterprise, Oracle WebCenter delivers four main components:
  Oracle WebCenter sites – Web experience management that helps improve customer loyalty by allowing business users to quickly create, deploy, target and measure multi-channel online marketing; deliver relevant, optimized and content-rich contextual web experiences and extend brand engagement and web presence to mobile and social channels
  Oracle WebCenter portal – portal and composite applications that incorporate technology previously available as Oracle WebCenter Suite and Oracle WebCenter services, to deliver intuitive, personalized and contextual user experiences for enterprise applications through a prebuilt library of components for enhancing existing enterprise applications or creating new composite applications
  Oracle WebCenter content – unified content management that ensures seamless access to the right information in the appropriate business context by he
• #Oracle introduces CRM On Demand Release 19
  The CRM On Demand Release 19 offers new cloud extensibility and mobile choices, including the personalized ability for customers and partners to access critical CRM information from iPad tablet, iPhone to Blackberry to Microsoft Outlook.Oracle claims the application eliminates update burden and helps sales representatives to focus on selling, rather than manual updates.A latest Microsoft Outlook user interface allows access to all information in a familiar application, online or offline.
• The Youngest Enterprise (?) Irregular (!) Blogger
  For now he focuses on #iPad, #Android, tablet stuff for kids.
• David Litchfield on securing the data castle
  What is really depressing, for me, is we do all this really cool research into exotic vulnerabilities, developing new attack techniques and finding new classes of vulnerabilities. But at the end of the day, this stuff is irrelevant when eight times out of ten people are leaving default user names and passwords in place. Of what importance, really, is all of this research and attention on exotic vulnerabilities when the basics aren’t even being given attention.
• America’s Cup preparations under way for the bay
  The series of late summer races is expected to bring $1.4 billion to San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area and give sailing buffs from around the world a new appreciation for Northern California. But the city estimates the event also will generate tons of trash and a flood of visitors who could clog highways, BART and other public transit.”The exciting thing about the America’s Cup is that it is really going to showcase the bay and bring a lot of people to the water,” said Will Travis, head of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, a state agency that oversees the water and shoreline. “But that’s the challenging thing; it is going to bring a lot of people to the water.”
• Korean IT Firms Come Under Foreign Attack Over Patents
  Korean companies have plenty of patents for manufacturing technology, but very few for software. If they lose the lawsuits against U.S. players, they will have to pay hefty royalties to Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and other companies.
• Can patent licensing fees derail the Android express?
  But with Android’s patent strength increasingly under fire and companies lining up for their share of licensing fees, is the platform headed off the tracks?
• What if patent fees for #Google #Android cost as much as licensing Windows Phone?
  Microsoft will be happy, because either way it will win the fight for the smartphone market – because Google isn’t taking anything away in the corporate server market
• #Oracle Win Would Strain #Android Growth
  Oracle likely won’t settle for a lump payment but instead will want a cut of each phone sold. That added cost changes the economics for handset makers such that many will take a second look at their commitments to the Android platform.
• #SAP to argue for new trial in #Oracle lawsuit
  It wants the court to reduce the damages to no more than $408 million.Oracle has countered that the trial was fair and the verdict proper, and that SAP’s motions “do little more than ask the Court to reverse legal rulings it has made and substitute SAP’s interpretation of the evidence for the jury’s decision.”
• There’s a Problem With the Procurement Technology World if #SAP is the Most Innovative
  Start-ups and established best of breed vendors alike have all but abandoned true innovation in this sector. You can see it across the map in the behavior of the non-ERP incumbents. Ariba conducts n-tier analysis that would make BCG pricing experts proud about how much they can bleed suppliers in exchange for transactional connectivity/network access without causing permanent scarring, rather than building innovative technology or acquiring inspiring early-stage concepts. Emptoris goes down the PeopleSoft path of customer intimacy, cross- and up-selling an expanding (through acquisition) solution set in a conservative roll-up scenario. BravoSolution specializes in the core areas of making sourcing and analysis better without modular expansion to push customers in entirely new spend directions. And Zycus continues to treat UNSPSC as the last words from G-D when it comes to classifying spend. The list goes on. And every vendor of any size in the sector is guilty, except, perhaps, the ser
• #HP vs. #Oracle over Itanium: A look at your options
  Making a move would require that the replacement offer either a high level of compatibility or excellent migration tools and services. This requires workable replacements for the following things:Scripting language
  Functions
  Triggers
  Stored procedures
  Libraries of standard packages
  Either the ability to support user-developed packages or a way to convert them transparently
• #OpenSource #Ingres Signs Global Partner Agreement With #MicroStrategy
  As part of the newly established partnership agreement, the two companies are collaborating to launch Performance(2) (Performance Squared), an initiative which offers high performing and affordable analytics that enable organizations to divert investment from expensive back-end data infrastructure to front-line business users. MicroStrategy with VectorWise allows companies to deploy more BI to more people by shifting data storage to the cloud, reducing costs and offering insights to business users on any mobile device. VectorWise’s record breaking price performance will enable joint clients to implement this infrastructure at significantly less cost than existing options.
• #RedHat Empowers Developers to Reach New Heights of Productivity with #OpenSource JBoss Application Server 7
  JBoss Application Server 7 builds upon the previous version with better performance, lower memory usage, distributed management and Java EE6 Web Profile certification. New capabilities include:– Java Enterprise Edition (EE) 6 Web Profile Certified, a lighter-weight but standard and portable subset of Java EE refined for the development and deployment of rich, interactive web applications– Java Context and Dependency Injection (CDI), a standard and unified framework supporting typesafe Dependency Injection and a well-defined lifecycle for Contexts, designed to ease writing, testing and maintenance of code through simplifying and streamlining it

  – Arquillian testing, which improves support for test-driven development to provide remote and embedded component testing without the unnecessary complexity of a full enterprise Java container

  – Built on top of a lightweight, highly optimized Modular Service Container and new Domain Model, which allow JBoss Application Server 7 to scale

• #OpenSource #NoSQL #MongoDB is the New #MySQL
  It would be foolish to predict the same success that MySQL enjoyed for MongoDB, because the underlying market context has changed. But it is clear that – whether it is intentional on 10gen’s part or no – MongoDB is, according to a variety of metrics, the new MySQL.What does this mean for MongoDB competitors? It certainly does not preclude success; PostgreSQL, after all, remains a vibrant and important project in spite of MySQL’s massive growth. It does mean, however, that projects competing directly with Mongo would do well to study the market conditions that produced MySQL, because they’re about to play themselves out once more.All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.
• #Cisco Said to Plan Cutting Up to 10,000 Jobs to Buoy Profit
  The voluntary retirement packages included one year’s pay and medical benefits, and were offered to about 5,800 employees, two people said.
• #Facebook trapped in #MySQL ‘fate worse than death’
  But Stonebraker — an entrepreneur as much as a computer scientist — has an answer for the shortcoming of both “old SQL” and NoSQL. It’s called NewSQL (a term coined by 451 Group analyst Matthew Aslett) or scalable SQL, as I’ve referred to it in the past. Pushed by companies such as Xeround, Clustrix, NimbusDB, GenieDB and Stonebraker’s own VoltDB, NewSQL products maintain ACID properties while eliminating most of the other functions that slow legacy SQL performance. VoltDB, an online-transaction processing (OLTP) database, utilizes a number of methods to improve speed, including by running entirely in-memory instead of on disk.It would be easy to accuse Stonebraker of tooting his own horn, but NewSQL vendors have been garnering lots of attention, investment and customers over the past year. There’s no guarantee they’re the solution for Facebook’s MySQL woes — the complexity of Facebook’s architecture and the company’s penchant for open source being among the reasons — but perhaps New
• Communication issues delay #Oracle harassment case
  However, some evidence deemed key to the proceedings, including correspondence between the company and Richardson during her employment, could not be found by the company.
• #Google Acquired 11 Companies in 2011, #Microsoft Made Biggest Transaction
  Google earned that “most active” title by acquiring 11 companies. This brings the total number of online and mobile companies acquired over the last two-and-a-half years to 39. The acquired companies in 2011 were SageTV, AdMeld Inc., PostRank Inc., Sparkbuy Inc., TalkBin, PushLife Inc., BeatThatQuote.com Ltd., Next New Networks, Inc., FFlick, SayNow, and eBook Technologies Inc.Meanwhile, Microsoft’s $9.08 billion acquisition of Skype from Silver Lake Partners represents the single largest transaction. This one acquisition represented more than 20 percent of all acquisition spend for the industry in the first half of 2011.
• #Apple, #Microsoft, #RIM #Patent Consortium Trying to Kill #Google #Android
  “Why, in this light, should ANY horizontal collaboration among them (joined by three others with strong portfolios of their own as well) be allowed with regard to the Nortel portfolio, particularly in the absence of any transparent safeguards against anticompetitive effects from it?” noted the AAI.”Three close competitors’ shared control over 6,000 patents surely at a minimum creates significant risk of spillover collusion, tacit or otherwise.”
• Steve Ballmer: Imagine Cup 2011 ( #Microsoft)
  We have the second generation of our phones coming out this Christmas, and people are starting to do things they had never imagined before. I love the applications that I saw for the Windows Phone from the people in this room, and the way you’re pushing that device, and using that device. It was really exciting for me.
• 5 Ways to Recover Unused #SAP Software Licenses
  You’ve found unused SAP licenses. Now what?Chances are you’ll find at least a few SAP licenses that are going unused. It’s unlikely SAP will give you your money back but they are often willing to negotiate a trade, exchanging the unused licenses for another product that you need or want to try.
• #Oracle HR in the #Cloud: Bringing Clarity to #SaaS Myths and Manifestos
  Oracle’s new Fusion HCM suite is an example of a SaaS offering that provides both multi-tenant as well as single-tenant options that can be deployed over public, private, or hybrid clouds, depending on an organization’s needs. Niche SaaS vendors only offer one option – a multi-tenant SaaS solutions over public clouds. For HR organizations who demand a higher level of privacy and performance, niche SaaS offerings may not be enough.
  [FWIW, Joni Mitchell did not sing that song about clouds ... she sang about love ... -DBM]
• Qld won’t chase [small] QH payroll overpayments ( #SAP #ITfail)
  [Large overpayments are going to be chased -DBM]
  Those overpaid by up to $200 (about 22,000 workers), will have their debts wiped, at a total cost of $1.6 million.
• Salesman with many masters ( #Salesforce.com)
  Amid the feel-good enthusiasm, it’s hard not to get swept along.
• #HP Changes Executive Responsible for WebOS Development
  HP has appointed Stephen DeWitt as senior vice president and general manager of its webOS global business unit, whereas Jon Rubinstein, will assume a product innovation role within the personal systems group (PSG) at HP.
• Don’t call it the next tech bubble – yet
  “My company’s so successful now I can buy any candy I want!”
• #Oracle wants seal busted on #HP’s Itanium suit
  HP has been waiting, in vain, for Intel to say there is something out there beyond the Kittson Itaniums. (Intel has hinted at this unofficially to customers, but has not said so publicly).
• #Java JDK 7: Release Candidate
  If no new show­stop­per is­sues are re­ported, and if JSR 336 and the com­po­nent JSRs pass their Final Ap­proval Bal­lots in the JCP, then this will be the GA build for re­lease later this month per the sched­ule posted back in Jan­u­ary.
• #Oracle Ships #Java 7 RC
  Java 7 radically expands the amount of functionality it offers for non-Java languages, which should improve performance for programs written in these languages, Rose explained. Non-Java languages can now make method calls with the JVM. A new instruction, called invokedynamic, allows programmers to import the logic of their non-Java compilers.
• #Oracle: “We’re ‘finally’ shipping #Java 7″
  Key new features will include several relatively subtle improvements, as well as a better level of suitability for multicore-driven parallelism in programming structures resulting from the Fork/Join framework (JSR 166y).
• The Sharks Are Circling: #Microsoft, #Oracle, #Apple Target #Google #Android Manufacturers
  If Oracle, Microsoft, and Apple continue to wring per-device settlements out of the industry, Google’s ‘free’ operating system is going to acquire a substantial price tag. Once the tactic has been proven to work, we can expect a virtual dogpile. Long term, Google may be forced to actually license Android in a way that provides a degree of patent indemnification.
• #Oracle and #Microsoft could cash in big on #Google #Android
  That’d be roughly double the amount that Google makes in search revenue, on average, from every Android device, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Jonathan Goldberg. Google gives away the Android operating system in hopes of generating that revenue.
• #HP Calls #Oracle’s Secrecy Claim a ‘Cheap Shot’
  HP reiterated its belief that Oracle made a commitment to continue working with HP.”Oracle argues that the provision is merely a ‘general reaffirmation of a non-contractual ‘partnership’ that ‘HP cannot seriously contend’ requires Oracle to continue to port its database and other software to HP’s platforms,” the filing states. “Yet that is exactly what Oracle’s own general counsel expressly told HP the provision meant during negotiation of the agreement.”
• #HP opens #BigData front with #Oracle
  Combined with HP’s reach and range, Vertica could end up in thousands more data centers.
• What #Oracle wants from storage
  “First and foremost, we will deliver storage that helps Oracle platforms run faster.” Think of it as best of breed storage for Oracle database apps. And as with the fully integrated computing “stack” offerings that are now appearing, the question for users is how much control over your environment do you want to hand over to a single vendor?EMC and NetaApp are about to see competition from an applications vendor, one that can call on contacts within its accounts that storage vendors have traditionally had trouble reaching. And while the attraction for Oracle may not be in selling storage for 35,000 exabytes worth of data, displacing EMC and NetApp in Oracle accounts represents a very profitable, multi-billion dollar opportunity.
• #Oracle Launches New Virtual Desktop Client for iPads
  Oracle Virtual Desktop Client App for iPad provides access to virtual desktops managed by Oracle’s Sun Ray Software and Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. It is not designed to work with other VDI software, such as that from Citrix, IBM, VMware, Hewlett-Packard or Wyse.
• #SAP Executive Board Member Angelika Dammann To Leave
  German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung Thursday reported that Dammann wanted to extend an arrangement that allowed her to use company planes for flights from SAP’s headquarters in Walldorf, southern Germany to her hometown of Hamburg in the north.Dammann had been granted the use of the company jets for one year after she became a board member and wanted the supervisory board to extend this arrangement by two years at its meeting Thursday, according to the report.SAP’s spokesman said, however, such an extension “wasn’t up for debate.”

  In an internal email to SAP employees, Dammann said, “The claims that were made in recent media articles are false.”

  “The events that happened this week hurt me deeply,” Dammann said.

  Sueddeutsche Zeitung also reported that Dammann continued to work at her law firm and SAP covered its expenses. Dammann, however, said these claims are also incorrect.

  Chief Financial Officer Werner Brandt is set to replace Dammann on a provisionary basis.

• #SAP’s #Sybase adds scalability to IQ analytic database
  Sybase IQ 15.3 employs a MPP (massively parallel processing) grid architecture, wherein all compute notes share processing power, memory and access to data, which is accessed through a SAN.
• Angelika Dammann Resigns from #SAP Executive Board
  “In just a short time, she introduced strategically important employee programs and raised the topic of diversity to central relevance at SAP. She also played a key role in setting the ambitious targets that SAP now strives for in advancing the role of women in management. We regret her decision and respect her wish to dedicate more time to her family, and we wish her much success for the future.”
• The Ups And Downs For #SAP
  4 of the most important drivers for SAP’s business and the upside as well as downside scenarios associated with each of these drivers.1. SAP’s share in ERP market: We estimate that SAP’s share in ERP market has declined from around 29% in 2005 to around 27% in 2010 and we expect it to decline further.2. SAP’s share in CRM market: We estimate that SAP’s share in CRM market has declined from around 26% in 2005 to 22% in 2010, and we expect to decline further.

  3. SAP’s share in BI market: We estimate that SAP’s share in BI market has increased from 7% in 2006 to 24% in 2010, and we expect it to continue to increase. SAP’s BI market share increased suddenly in 2008 due to its $6.8 billion acquisition of Business Objects in 2008.

  4. SG&A % of gross profits: This ratio declined from 42% in 2008 to 35% in 2010. However, we expect it to increase going forward.

• Legacy data can result in #ERP failure ( #SAP #ITfail)
  The Victoria Order of Nurses, on Tuesday, issued a statement that attempted to illustrate the sheer complexity of the deployment. “An information technology conversion of this size, which involved a huge amount of data transfer, requiring specialized configuration of the computer software and of business process flows, requires constant fine-tuning,” read the statement.The Victoria Order of Nurses said the ERP deployment is “progressing to plan” and that resolving issues is a “top priority.”
• Why Workday is a Major Threat to SAP
  Some will say that with “only” 210 current customers Workday is too small to be a serious threat to SAP but it is important to note that they have several large clients such as Flextronics, Kimberly Clark, Thomson Reuters, Chiquita, and recently Time Warner. Enterprise software buyers have been known to play follow the leader and often big deals set the foundation to win other big deals which is shown with Workday’s 75% growth in bookings in 2011. Workday has built a loyal and passionate client base, has a strong SaaS based product, an excellent management team and is delivering innovation as quickly as anyone in the enterprise software space which are some of the reasons why they are quickly becoming SAP biggest competitor in the midsize and large multinational enterprise space.
• The IT Spending Recovery and Implications for Enterprise Software
  US and Canada have emerged from the IT spending recession of the past two years. At the same time, the recovery is weak and organizations have not returned to the IT spending growth rates of the middle part of the previous decade.That said, some industry sectors are showing IT spending growth rates well above the median 2.0% for the composite sample, as shown in the accompanying figure. The insurance sector leads the way, at 5.0% growth in IT operational spending, followed by wholesale distribution, discrete manufacturing, high tech, healthcare, and process manufacturing, which all beat the composite median.
• Auditors: Army’s Huge #SAP Project ‘at High Risk’ ( #Accenture #ITfail)
  It has already seen delays and more than $53 million in cost overruns, according to the auditors’ report. An initial “operational capability” milestone first set for August 2007 was pushed back to September 2010, it stated. A proposed December 2009 target date for “full operational capability” was moved to December of this year, it added.There’s also the chance that the system, once implemented, won’t meet its original objectives, according to the auditors’ report. Between June 2005 and September 2009, testing requirements more than doubled from 314 to 634.
• #Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer addresses critics who say he needs to go
  “You tell me if I lack the energy, conviction … or drive,” Ballmer said to an audience member who asked what he thought of people who say it’s time for him to go.
• Open letter to BlackBerry bosses: Senior #RIM exec tells all as company crumbles around him
  Developing for BlackBerry is painful, and despite what you’ve been told, things haven’t really changed that much since Jamie Murai’s letter.
• Org Charts: #Amazon #Google #Facebook #Microsoft #Apple #Oracle
• #Oracle gives its version of break-up with #HP
  [Huh? Is this business or BS?!? -DBM]
  “Short of burning an Oracle flag in public, HP could not have done more to destroy any so-called partnership with Oracle than it did by hiring Léo Apotheker,” wrote Oracle attorney Daniel Wall.
• #ORACLE CORPORATION’S OPPOSITION TO MOTION TO SEAL RECORDS ( #HP)
  But there is no such agreement for porting
  the Oracle database to Itanium, which is why HP is advancing implied contract and promissory
  estoppel claims. And as for the written contract HP alleges, that is a mere two-sentence
  commitment Oracle made just nine months ago—not in the ordinary course of business but in the
  context of a lawsuit HP filed against its own former CEO, Mark Hurd—the substance of which
  the parties revealed in a press release announcing the end of that litigation: “HP and Oracle Corp.
  today reaffirmed their long-term strategic partnership and the resolution of litigation regarding
  Mark V. Hurd’s employment at Oracle. *** The agreement also reaffirms HP and Oracle’s
  commitment to delivering the best products and solutions to their more than 140,000 shared
  customers.” It was an agreement to make the “corporate hug” that immediately followed.
• Court rules against #Oracle on California overtime pay
  Employers based in California must pay nonresident workers for overtime work performed in the state, the California Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, a decision that could have wide ramifications for companies that do business in California.
• #Oracle Spends $1.1 Million on 1Q Lobbying
  Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., lobbied Congress, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and other agencies.
• #Oracle’s #Java plan trapped in last century
  That energy seems somehow lacking in present-day “official” Java, and Oracle’s roadmap does little to revitalize the platform. Where are the more vertical JSRs for solving cloud-specific problems?
• #OpenSource #EnterpriseDB Adds #HP-UX Support
  EnterpriseDB is hoping to capitalize on any unrest in the HP installed base, and says it is already talking to some HP-UX customers.
• #Lawson Shareholders Approve Sale to #Infor
  The US$1.8 billion sale, “is advisable, fair and in the best interest of Lawson stockholders,” CEO Harry Debes said during the brief meeting. Shareholders asked no questions about the deal.A number of Lawson shareholders had filed lawsuits against the acquisition, saying the $11.25 per share price agreed upon was unfair.Those legal matters were expected to be settled “on or about June 22,” Lawson said in a filing with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission last week.
• School District Approves a Budget ( #Workday)
  The board approved naming the student center at Monte Vista High School the Workday Student Center. The center will have no Workday logo on the outside of the building but will have a plaque inside with the company’s logo.The plaque also will read: “A gift from Dave and Cheryl Duffield, 2011,” who helped fund the building.
• #HP Girds for iPad Battle
  Starting Friday, H-P is deploying scores of employees to stand ready at special kiosks it has erected inside about 100 Best Buy Co. stores. The H-P staffers have all been trained to hawk the TouchPad, which starts at $499. H-P said its workers will be stationed in the Best Buy stores until the end of the year in an operation the company has dubbed “Top Gun.”
• More about the direction and impact of #SAP HANA… from an insider…
  If you can get access to all of the data instantaneously with extreme performance, what can you do? This is what will revolutionize industry!
• #Zynga Files for IPO
  IPO will seek to raise as much as $2 billion, and could value the company as high as $20 billion, double the amount the San Francisco start-up commanded a few months ago when it sold shares to venture capitalists in a private financing round.
• Platform as a Service tempts manufacturers with savings, customization
  According to Ray Wang, principal analyst and CEO at Constellation Research Group, NetSuite and SAP’s Business ByDesign software are the PaaS services that come the closest to targeting the industry, but others are likely to follow. “I’d expect Plex Systems to eventually open up their model and Microsoft Azure to mature into a platform manufacturers will use,” Wang said.
• Next Gen Enterprise: Enterprise headlines and excerpts, 2011-06-30
  Lots o’ buzz about SAP HANA and how it can transform enterprise software …Lots o’ legal action around Oracle and frenemies, especially Google and HP. Oracle lawsuit against Google regarding Android taking Java IP is moving along. HP is suing Oracle for failing to support Itanium.Oracle announces its financial results, and they look good for software and bad for hardware (plus it was the first $10 BILLION quarter for Oracle). Also, Oracle is buying companies again, including Pillar Data Systems, which could be a big boon for Oracle’s storage management business (and for Larry, the main shareholder of Pillar).

  Oracle Fusion Applications are coming to market, as evidenced by more stories about customers using Fusion Apps, and by the price list being posted online.

  Workday, SuccessFactors, Skype, Sybase, and SAP are good places to work in the Bay Area.

  HP is moving aggressively to improve its position in software, and Vertica could be their first breakout hit. HP has reorganized i

• Despite much hope, #Cloud #PaaS momentum hasn’t blown the doors off yet
  Indeed, while PaaS adoption hasn’t been going gang-busters of late, it’s not really possible to write-off the idea yet. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to assume there’ll be more of it, even if we don’t exactly know what form it will take.
• For San Francisco Giants, Dynamic Pricing Software Hits a Home Run ( #ITsuccess)
  The software spits out pricing recommendations daily, which Stanley or Drobny review. Revenues increased $7 million last season, which ended in the Giants’ first World Series win since 1954.
• Entrepreneurs Should Say No to Silicon Valley’s Bully
  This isn’t “process journalism,” it’s bullying. It’s also unethical. That’s why I tell clients to skip TechCrunch and reach the same influential audience with a story on a site like Business Insider, GigaOm, VentureBeat or AllThingsD. If it’s a big story, you can go to the Wall Street Journal. To be clear, I still think TechCrunch is a valuable publication, and I advise clients to pitch other TechCrunch writers. But there’s always the risk of winding up afoul of Arrington’s rules of the road.
• Enterprise Headlines and Summaries, June 2011
  SAP is by far the largest enterprise applications vendor, and Oracle is #2 by a long distance. Infor will move into the #3 spot, ahead of Sage, after the Lawson acquisition closes (this month?). Microsoft remains a distant #5 in enterprise applications, but might move into the #4 slot – if Sage gets acquired by Oracle or SAP, as is in the rumor mill. BTW, SAP also leads in business intelligence market share.
• Weekly #SAP Wrap-Up: July 1, 2011
  “The most popular software for writing fiction isn’t Word. It’s Excel.”
  -Brian Alvey, on Twitter (@brianalvey)
• Easy as pi: how #Google bid against #Apple and #Microsoft for patents
  “Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers,” one source involved with the auction told Reuters. “It [then] became clear that they were bidding with [numbers such as] the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi – $3.14159bn,” the source said. “Either they were supremely confident or they were bored.”
• James Gosling Says He Doesn’t Care About #Java
  But about the JVM, Gosling says that the virtual machine is “what I really care about.”
• Gosling doesn’t care about #Java? I think not…
  “Java happens to be a really good language for a broad spectrum of topics.”
• #Microsoft boosts #Java accommodations on Azure #cloud
  New features include a UI for remote access configuration for troubleshooting purposes, as well as schema validation and auto-complete for *.cscfg and *.csdef Azure configuration files. Other key features include an Azure project creation wizard, sample utility scripts for downloading or unzipping files, shortcuts to test deployment in the Azure compute emulator, an Ant-based builder, and a project properties UI for configuring Azure roles.Developers can download the plug-in or leverage the Install New Software feature in Eclipse. The plug-in is compatible with Microsoft’s Windows Azure Starter Kit for Java.
• WindowsAzurePlugin4EJ – #Microsoft Windows Azure Plugin for #Eclipse with #Java
  [Download site]
• CA Technologies PPM Solution Integrates #Salesforce.com Chatter to Meet Business Demand for Collaboration
  Integration with Chatter, a widely used business social network that allows teams to work more efficiently and closely. Using Chatter, project teams will be able to collaborate and easily follow requirements and status updates online or via mobile devices like the iPad, iPhone or BlackBerry.
  Deeper integration with leading ERP systems to bring in critical resource information to facilitate portfolio planning and decision-making. This addresses the growing need of many organizations to have a better integration strategy for data from multiple sources, including SAP® and Oracle®. Pre-built ERP adapters from CA Technologies and Pervasive Software enable organizations to maximize the business intelligence from data investments.
• #SuccessFactors and Halogen Software Announce Settlement of SuccessFactors’ Unfair Competition Suit Against Halogen
  Halogen acknowledges that it engaged in false pretexting. Specifically, Halogen manufactured a phony prospective customer, “The Magnus Group,” to inappropriately obtain SuccessFactors’ business information to learn about SuccessFactors’ services and product features, product demonstrations, pricing, and sales processes. In connection with the settlement Halogen agreed to pay an undisclosed payment to SuccessFactors. Halogen also agreed to allow entry of a permanent stipulated injunction, to destroy wrongfully obtained data, and to implement employee training along with new company guidelines to ensure that Halogen does not again engage in similar behavior.
• Why #Oracle Bothered Taking on Another Storage Provider
  Pillar Data brings new storage IP options to the company’s overall product set. No argument there; nothing in the former Sun catalog has the software agility and ease of use that Pillar owns. Customers, especially those in the mid-range and SMB markets without a lot of on-site IT help, tend to like “easy” and “quickly deployable.”
• RIM Employees Pen Letters Agreeing with Anonymous Exec
  we are drowning in paperwork
• Technology organization leadership charts ( #Amazon #Google #Facebook #Microsoft #Apple #Oracle)
  The drawing confirms things we’ve long suspected, such as Microsoft is a collection of warring states, Apple’s Cult of Steve is real, and Oracle focuses more on legal wrangling than engineering.
• #Yahoo! Kicks off Fourth Annual #Hadoop Summit
  Our Senior Vice President of the Cloud Platform Group, Jay Rossiter, opened the Hadoop Summit this morning with a keynote about Yahoo!’s development of the next generation of Hadoop applications, the important role that Hadoop plays in Yahoo!’s integrated technology ecosystem and how industry-wide adoption of Hadoop is benefitting the entire community. He also introduced Eric Baldeschwieler, CEO of Hortonworks and former Vice President of software engineering for the Hadoop team at Yahoo!, who also, in a keynote, outlined this plan for the new company.
• #Yahoo! and Benchmark Capital to Form Hortonworks to Increase Investment in #Hadoop Technology and Accelerate Innovation and Adoption
  The formation of Hortonworks increases investment in the development of Apache Hadoop and will accelerate adoption by making it more robust and easier to install, manage and use for enterprises and technology vendors. This investment will enable Apache Hadoop to meet the growing market demand and become the big data management and analysis platform of choice for the industry.
• Mozilla to start thinking about enterprise needs ( #OpenSource)
  Cooler heads have decided that it’s not good to spit on users.
• Firefox in the Enterprise | The Mozilla Blog ( #OpenSource)
  A key challenge for enterprises is that they need to certify their websites, apps and add-ons each time Firefox is updated. This can take weeks or months. Security is also paramount, enterprises need access to a version that includes all known security fixes.
  [Not just enterprises - about half my add-ons are NOT available with FF 5.0. But I WON'T use FF if you customers can't use FF. -DBM]
• #CA Shares Remain Attractive but Bad Acquisition Is Frustrating
  CA should use all its free cash flow to repurchase stock. CA could increase its EPS at an additional 11% a year by doing so, yet they continue to make dilutive acquisitions. Past acquisitions have shown little benefit, yet management continues down the same path.
• #CA Technologies Acquires Interactive TKO for $330 Million
  ITKO’s LISA solution enables organizations to “mock up” a service at enterprise speed and enterprise scale.
• #HP Isn’t Gunning For Apple With Their New TouchPad webOS Tablet
  “We think there’s a better opportunity for us to go after the enterprise space and those consumers that use PCs,” said Kerris, This market is in it’s infancy and there is plenty of room for both of us to grow, We think the world of Apple and have the utmost respect for their products, It would be ignorant for us to say that we are going to take it [the market] away from Apple.” — Richard Kerris, HP VP of Worldwide Developer Relations
• Review Roundup: #HP TouchPad Is No iPad Killer, But It Has Potential
  Still, the overall impression from most of the major reviews is that HP has some great ideas, that given enough time and developer support, could easily develop into something wonderful. Android tablets are having a hard time gaining traction and RIM has failed to really deliver on its promises for the Playbook, which means that despite a late entry, HP might have a shot at placing in the race.
• Interview: #HP says #Apple is not TouchPad’s target
  “We think there’s a better opportunity for us to go after the enterprise space and those consumers that use PCs,” said Kerris. “This market is in it’s infancy and there is plenty of room for both of us to grow.”
• #HP’s Apotheker goes bonkers on China tour – Vice Premier wheeled out for the Action Man
  HP’s dynamic Action Man Leo Apotheker has gone nuts running around China, doing his very best to butter up the vibrant, growing tech sector while tapping into the excellent opportunities for cheap labour.
• #HP in Discussions to License WebOS Software, CEO Apotheker Says
  “We are talking to a number of companies,” Apotheker said in an interview in Beijing yesterday, declining to elaborate on details. “I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest. We are continuing our conversations.”
• Was #HP’s board overconfident about cutting ties with Mark Hurd?
  “What Léo does well is that he can synthesize enormously complex systems into ideas and a strategy that everyone can understand.”
• #HP Targets $2 Billion for #Cloud Financing, Adds Features, Services to Portfolio
  Hewlett-Packard Co.’s Financial Services arm recently said that it will make some $2 billion available to help customers pay for cloud computing technology and services.The vendor said that underwriting the move of customers to cloud-based solutions mapped to its Instant-On Enterprises initiative to help clients embed technology in all aspects of their business to better serve customers, employees, partners and citizens.
• #SAP targets 30% conference attendee increase with new event strategy
  Key changes include a virtual experience for delegates unable to attend the live event, placing the key note speaker into the middle of the exhibition floor and introducing ‘micro-forums’ for 12-15 people wanting to discuss a specific topic.
• #Yahoo Spins Out #Hadoop to Create Hortonworks
  Yahoo has officially announcedthat it will become a player in the emerging Hadoop market. Hadoopprovides distributed computing capabilities that enable organizations to process very large amounts of data quickly. Backed by Yahoo and Benchmark Capital, a new entity called Hortonworkshas formed around a team from Yahoo that consists of more than 20 key architects of and contributors to the Apache Hadoop project. The company will start with some 25 employees and “will be hiring aggressively from our collective networks,” according to Rob Bearden, Hortonworks president and COO.
• Data Wizards Know #Hadoop is Powerful: But they want more automation
  Hadoop and the many capabilities associated with it (including Hive, Pig, HBase, Zookeeper, Flume, Sqoop, Hue, Oozie and Whirr) is really the rage. Enterprises with big data challenges, researchers with massive data sets and organizations seeking to make sense over seemingly unbounded data are learning how to use those many related technologies to solve problems that were impossible to tackle in a timely fashion just a few years ago.
• #Yahoo! tech boss gazes beyond #Hadoop
  A joint project between Yahoo! Research and the University of California, Berkeley, MapReduce Online is essentially an effort to modify the Hadoop framework for use with real-time tasks. “MapReduce is a sequential process. You map all the data. You reduce all the data. You can get the batch size smaller and smaller. But when you get to a batch size of one, it doesn’t make sense,” Stata says.
• MapR unleashes two ‘next-generation’ #Hadoop distros
  Though MapR refers to its two new products as “distributions”, these are not entirely open source. MapR has made extensive changes to the underlying platform that are proprietary. That said, the company recently signed a Corporate Contributor License Agreement with the Apache Foundation, signaling its intention to contribute code back to the community, and vice president of marketing Jack Norris tells The Register that such work is already underway. “It’s an evolving process,” he says.
• #Hadoop #BigData Analytics: 10 Reasons Why It’s Important for Business
  First, it was revealed that Hadoop officially—but not “spiritually”—will break away from Yahoo and be shepherded by a new VC-funded company called Hortonworks, named after the Dr. Seuss elephant character. Secondly, the Hadoop technology has gone from a science project to mainstream business in five years. Hortonworks is an appropriate name for the new company because it is congruent with Hadoop itself—which is named after the stuffed toy elephant that belongs to Cutting’s young son.† Apache Hadoop is an open-source software framework built in Java that works with distributed data-intensive applications. It enables applications to scale securely in order to handle thousands of nodes and petabytes of data. More and more businesses are finding out that they need to analyze their stored data to help them make better business decisions. A number of Hadoop distributions are now available. Some of them are mentioned in the following slide show, which touches on some of the key points in the
• #BigData …. petabytes of data is fast becoming commonplace
  Machine-generated information – such as call detail records, Web and event logs, financial trade data and RFID readings – is increasing at the highest rate. It’s hardly surprising that rapidly expanding data volumes are bumping up against many organisations’ ability to store and manage it all.
• Apache Streamlines #OpenSource Lucene, Solr
  Created by Doug Cutting, who also originated Hadoop, Lucene is a Java full-text distributed search engine, one aimed to run speedily across multiple platforms and across multiple servers. Solr provides the interface from which searches can be issued and results presented back to the user.
• AWS Lowers its Pricing Again! – No Inbound Data Transfer Fees and Lower Outbound Data Transfer for All Services including #Amazon CloudFront
  Effective July 1, 2011, customers will not pay for any inbound data transfer. Plus, we are slashing our pricing in each tier for outbound data transfer. We are also introducing new pricing tiers for our high volume users.New Data transfer prices for US-Standard, US-West and Europe regions (Effective July 1, 2011):
• #Amazon follows #Microsoft’s Azure lead; makes AWS inbound data transfer free
  Microsoft announced just over a week ago all inbound data transfers for both peak and off-peak times being will be free with Windows Azure starting July 1.Amazon also announced today a price cut for out-bound data transfer, as well as cuts in its CloudFront Content Delivery (CDN) pricing.
• SQL Server Denali on its way, #Microsoft shares insights on upgrades
  The compelling features in Denali that I’ve heard from customers thus far in looking at the product roadmap that are not there in SQL Server 2008 R2 [and] may push someone in that direction would be the BISM, AlwaysOn or Crescent. I don’t want to undersell the rest of the product improvements and enhancements like column-store indexes, contained databases, T-SQL [Transact-SQL] enhancements like Sequence objects or SSAS [SQL Server Analysis Services] enhancements around the 4 GB limit in dimensions. But to make a major decision such as leaping over a major database release to upgrade to a brand new version is a decision that should not be made lightly and requires compelling business reasons to do so. And if you are relying on components or LOB applications that use SQL Server, those products should first certify themselves on the Denali version of SQL Server.
• Mark Zuckerberg now richer than Steve Ballmer
  That also makes Zuckerberg the third-richest person in tech, behind just Bill Gates ($54 billion in March) and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison ($39.5 billion in March). Ballmer, meanwhile, was worth $14.5 billion in Forbes’ “world’s richest” list released four months ago.
• Has Stephen Elop doomed #Nokia?
  From a marketing perspective, Elop has to be about the worst thing ever done by Nokia.
• #Microsoft wants JavaScript on the server
  Node.js is receiving Microsoft’s support to move over to Windows. The logic behind this move isn’t clear as the approach used by Node.js doesn’t fit with anything else that Microsoft is doing.
• “Apple’s… Exclusive Supply Chain Of Advanced Technology [Is] Literally Years Ahead Of Anyone Else On The Planet”
  If it feels like new Apple products appear futuristic, it is because Apple really is sending back technology from the future.
• #BigData in real time is no fantasy
  The goal for everyone seeking real-time analytics is to have their services act immediately — and intelligently — on information as it streams into the system.
• How This Year’s Tech IPOs Are Doing, And Who’s Next
  Who’s Next Up To IPOZillow: Real estate listings giant Zillow filed its S-1 in April, so we could be seeing the company hit the public markets in the next two months. Zillow wants to raise $51.75 million in the offering, and while revenue has grown for the company year over year, Zillow has taked a loss for the past three years. Zillow will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “Z.”Kayak: Travel search engine Kayak filed its S-1 last November, aiming to raise $50 million. No word on when the search engine is planning to IPO, but Kayak did reveal revenue growth in the past year, however net income is down. The company will trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol “KYAK.”

  Groupon: Daily deals giant Groupon just filed its S-1 in June, aiming to raise $750 million in the public offering. Though the company has an impressive revenue run rate of $2.6 billion for 2011, but has drawn criticism for a lack of profits and the fact that the founders have taken a significant amount of money off the

• #Oracle Awarded the 2011 Silver International Design Excellence Award for Computer Equipment
  Oracle was recognized for its Sun Ray 3 Series Clients, simple, low-cost devices that are ideal for displaying server-hosted virtual desktops.
• Beyond #SaaS; #Cloud Computing Update and Investment Opportunities
  I continue to see investment opportunities the following areas:
• #Deloitte Wants Software Lawsuit Kept Away From Jury ( #SAP #ITfail)
  Marin didn’t do that because it was seeking “a more favorable forum” for its allegations against Deloitte, given that Herlihy “had by then shown he was skeptical of those allegations,” the filing adds. “That is blatant forum shopping.”
• #Wipro job racket busted
  Priya would lure job seekers and collect documents and original certificates from them with a promise to get them employed in Wipro in Bangalore.The accused would then accompany them to the Wipro campus, where she would arrange for a meeting with her accomplices, posing as Wipro personnel. The accused would then arrange for an “interview” with a person posing as an employee of the HRD division of the company.Mirji said the accused managed to gain entry into the Wipro campus by misusing the vendor entry cards issued by the company.

  The accused would then hand over the victims appointment letters for the post of software trainee engineers with a annual income of Rs 2.94 lakh. The fake letter also asked them to report to Wipro in the month of September, he said.

• Forrester: The #Cloud Is Inherently Green
  The self-service and pay-as-you-go nature of cloud computing encourages users to consume only what they need, driving energy and resource efficiencies, Forrester analysts Doug Washburn and Lauren E. Nelson say in the report, entitled ‘Cloud Computing Helps Accelerate Green IT‘.
• #Cloudera enhances #Hadoop for enterprises
  Cloudera Enterprise 3.5 updates the company’s platform automated service, configuration and monitoring tools, and adds a one-click security configuration for Hadoop clusters—essentially simplifying the management process in Hadoop environments through the entire lifecycle of the deployment.“Hadoop is challenging because it’s so distributed,” said Charles Zedlewski, VP of product for Cloudera. “So we created a service and configuration manager that allows all kinds of changes—configuration changes, restarts, rebalances and so on. It’s automated, so there’s less operator error, which means less downtime.”
• INTERVIEW- #Workday sees bookings up 75-80 pct this yr, IPO next yr
  “This shift to the cloud, whether its Workday or Salesforce or Netsuite Inc — it’s just a fact of life, it’s happening … and Oracle and SAP have been slow to move.”
• Enterprise Mobility FAQ: #SAP Mobile Project Questions, Answers
  SAP execs say that the highest ROI starts with workers in the field and employees who make approvals in the back office.
• #Infor and Golden Gate Capital Complete Acquisition of #Lawson Software
  Pledging to deliver incremental value quickly to customers, the Infor and Lawson product development teams have begun integrating applications using Infor ION, an innovative interoperability architecture.Under this development effort, first products targeted for release later this year are Lawson S3 and Infor FMS SunSystems Enterprise; Lawson S3 and Infor EAM; and Lawson Human Capital Management and Infor Workforce Management.
• AWS Summit 2011 : Opening Keynote State of the #Cloud Werner Vogels ( #Amazon)
• AWS Summit 2011: Architecting in the #Amazon #cloud
  Cloud Architecture Lessons using Amazon Web Services
  1. Design for failure and nothing fails
  2. Loose coupling sets you free
  3. Implement “Elasticity”
  4. Build Security in every layer
  5. Don’t fear constraints
  6. Think Parallel
  7. Leverage different storage options
• Architecting for the #Amazon #Cloud: Best Practices
  Business Benefits of Cloud Computing
  There are some clear business benefits to building applications in the cloud. A few of these are listed here:
  Almost zero upfront infrastructure investment: If you have to build a large-scale system it may cost a fortune to invest in
  real estate, physical security, hardware (racks, servers, routers, backup power supplies), hardware management (power
  management, cooling), and operations personnel. Because of the high upfront costs, the project would typically require
  several rounds of management approvals before the project could even get started. Now, with utility-style cloud
  computing, there is no fixed cost or startup cost.
  Just-in-time Infrastructure: In the past, if your application became popular and your systems or your infrastructure did
  not scale you became a victim of your own success. Conversely, if you invested heavily and did not get popular, you
  became a victim of your failure. By deploying applications in-the-cloud with just-in-time se
• AWS Summit 2011: #BigData Analytics in the #Amazon AWS #cloud
  Elastic MapReduce Key Features
  * Simplified Cluster Configuration/Management…
  * Enhanced Monitoring/Debugging…
  * Improved Performance…
• #RiminiStreet Reports Record Second Quarter 2011 Results ( #3PM #SAP #Oracle)
  The Company has signed more than 400 total clients, including 39 of the Fortune 500 and 12 of the Global 100
• #RiminiStreet second quarter bookings, revenue jump ( #3PM #SAP #Oracle)
  The company’s second quarter revenue topped $8 million, a company record.
  Invoicing for new deals in the second quarter was up 94 percent from a year ago.
  Average contract term was 11 years.
  Sales backlog for Rimini topped $264 million.
  Deferred revenue at Rimini as of the second quarter was more than $20 million.
• #SAP: No Change at the Top as Board Extends CEO Contracts
  “They still believe in the co-CEO role,” said analyst Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research. “The company’s big enough and complicated enough that the responsibilities can still be divided between the two.” Snabe oversees product development, while McDermott concentrates on sales and channel development.
• #SAP locks down co-CEOs
  The company has also extended the tenure of Gerhard Oswald, a member of the executive board, through June 30, 2014.
• #SAP Supervisory Board Extends Executive Board Contracts
  “Under Bill’s and Jim’s guidance, SAP has returned to growth and further extended its leadership in business software while delivering breakthrough innovations in the software industry to market. We remain committed to further pursuing this successful course.”
• #Workday: Mobilizing Against #SAP and #Microsoft
  [Weak article on a good topic -DBM]
  “Our strategy was to rip and replace existing installations of Oracle and SAP (NYSE:SAP),” said Aneel.