Enterprise Headlines and Highlights, 2012-08-20

Microsoft radically overhauls license agreements for Windows 8

Samsung CEO Said to Speak With Apple Today About Suit

“Did you use open source code to save time and the virus was hidden in it?”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The companies’ lawyers will report to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in federal court in San Jose, California, on the outcome of today’s telephone discussion between Apple’s Tim Cook and Samsung’s Kwon Oh Hyun, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

That last license type represent the first time Microsoft has formally acknowledged the right of its end-user customers to install Windows 8 on a new PC they build themselves, or to install it in a virtual machine or on a separate partition.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Given the prospect of Fusion and Applications Unlimited, what are your plans for the future?…Release of SAP R/3 currently in production…Plans to upgrade (for those on mySAP ERP 2005 [ECC6] with enhancement pack 4 or earlier)…What were your top three reasons for selecting Workday?…What HR portal technology are you currently using?

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Advances such as software-as-a-service (SaaS) have become impossible to ignore. Those companies maintaining the same HR structure as five, or even three, years ago risk missing opportunities to realize new efficiencies. Additionally, among organizations planning HR structure changes for the year ahead, improving operations is a major theme. A significant majority (64%) want to realize further efficiencies, while others are looking to capture synergies among processes and investments (54%), improve quality (51%) and reduce costs (46%).

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“Further acquisitions are possible,” Jim Hagemann Snabe told Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview to be published in its Monday edition. “Our long-term growth should come two-thirds from our own reserves and one-third from acquisitions.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Any Intel-based Windows 8 Pro tablet — like the one coming from Hewlett-Packard — will be able to run the regular version of Office — just as it runs today on any Intel-based PC.

And, in April, Microsoft preannounced that tablets running the RT version of Windows 8 will come with Office.

While there is speculation that Microsoft will initially ship a “preview” version of Office 2013 RT (upgradeable soon thereafter) and that the RT version will lack a few features, it’s big weapon in Microsoft’s arsenal nevertheless.

Big enough that Google acquired QuickOffice — which offers varying levels of compatibility with MS Office — in June in anticipation of the real version of Office making its way to mobile devices like tablets.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

8. Hewlett-Packard

Rating: 2.7
Number of reviews: 4,112
CEO approval rating: 82% for Meg Whitman
One-year stock change: down 38%
Employees: 349,600

Hewlett-Packard Co. has been through more management turmoil than any large company in the United States over the past two years. In 2010, former CEO Mark Hurd was forced out after an inappropriate relationship with an HP contractor. He was replaced by Leo Apotheker who lasted only 11 months. Meg Whitman, highly regarded from her time as CEO of eBay, is the new chief executive. And based on the Glassdoor CEO rating, Whitman is well-regarded. This may be because of her sterling reputation and the belief that she can get one of the world’s largest tech companies back on track. In the meantime, the human cost of the turnaround is high. Whitman said HP would eliminate 27,000 jobs.

Given the company’s track record, it’s not surprising that employees are fed up. Reviewers consistently pointed to the company’s poor performa

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Microsoft’s low-octane swan song was nothing if not symbolic of more than a decade littered with errors, missed opportunities, and the devolution of one of the industry’s innovators into a “me too” purveyor of other companies’ consumer products. Over those years, inconsequential pip-squeaks and onetime zombies—Google, Facebook, Apple—roared ahead, transforming the social-media-tech experience, while a lumbering Microsoft relied mostly on pumping out Old Faithfuls such as Windows, Office, and servers for its financial performance.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

For observers, these moves do not look like simple oversights. More so, it appears that Oracle is making its revision tests and histories closed source. It’s not so surprising knowing Oracle and its history.

But it does raise questions for the open source community about what to do as seen in the comments on Hacker News.

I like what one commenter said about the issue. Forget Oracle. It really is time to move on.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

MySQL is much harder to make better when tests are missing and bzr is no longer updated. My teams at Google and Facebook have made MySQL a lot better. I wish we didn’t have to deal with problems like this that slow us down. It might matter to you. While the corporate owners of MySQL have been productive, the community developers have also done a lot to make MySQL a lot better.

Maybe someone from Oracle will explain the changes to us. That would be a community-oriented thing to do. So, call us maybe?

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Xsigo, on the other hand, is a proprietary I/O virtualization suite that focuses on unified I/O delivery over InfiniBand. Sure, Xsigo supplies much-needed abstraction for diverse interfaces like 10 Gbps Ethernet and 4 Gbps and 8 Gbps Fibre Channel, as well as other perks, like dynamic provisioning. But what it really does is deliver storage, network, and other more-abstract I/O types in a unified fashion, yielding top-of-rack savings and improved I/O delivery by reducing I/O interconnect equipment and enabling central I/O provisioning and automation. Good stuff, but it’s not Nicira.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Oracle also criticized Google for funding certain trade associations, whose staff then wrote about legal issues in play during the litigation. In its filing, Google acknowledged contributions to various groups but said it has not paid any of them to comment on issues in the case.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Google allowed that “individuals or organizations” with some financial connection might have offered their views on the case. It asked the court for further instructions, saying that it wanted to avoid “flooding the court with long lists of such individuals or organizations who might have written something about the case.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

It has acquired many of the capabilities that will keep it ahead of its competition for a fraction of the cost that the market leader SAP has spent. If Vitrue were to flop, Oracle would lose $300 million. Comparatively, if Ariba flopped, SAP would lose almost 15 times that amount. Not to mention that Oracle has raises its profits margin in each of the last four quarters, even with the move toward an acquisition-based strategy. Things are clicking here. With an enhanced menu of options, Oracle has placed itself in a great position to grow its share of the market.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

But in a companywide meeting earlier this month, he conceded that it may be “painful” to watch as investors continue to retreat from Facebook’s stock, according to people familiar with the meeting.

The meeting was part of a new effort over recent weeks to buck up morale.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s turnabout may have steeled employees ahead of Thursday, when some early Facebook investors—but not employees—were able to cash out for the first time since the company’s initial public offering in May.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Talk has turned to whether a seasoned business person could better lead Facebook, while 28-year-old Zuckerberg, with his gray t-shirts and hoodies , could focus on the technology.

“I think so much of stock price is about confidence and perception, and Facebook has shattered a bit of the faith that investors had,” said Andrew Stoltmann, a securities lawyer based in Chicago. “I think there’s a lack of confidence in his ability to run a publicly traded corporation. Coming up with lightening in a bottle like he did is an extraordinary skill, but it’s not the same skill as running a publicly traded company.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

What this data shows is that companies are willing to spend millions of dollars to switch core HR or ERP vendors primarily to improve the user experience. That is, to create a “system of engagement” not just a “system of record.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

I felt uneasy about Facebook. The company seemed to be an actual person, and a creepy one at that.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[SaaS passes client/server in Google queries... -DBM]

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[Facebook is way ahead of Twitter in Google queries, but Twitter is rising and Facebook has plateaued... -DBM]

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[Apple passed Microsoft only two years ago in Google queries, despite having the "tailwind" of people searching for apples (the fruit)... -DBM]

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[Oracle still ahead of SAP in Google queries, but Oracle is declining while SAP is gaining... -DBM]

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Under its new rules, independent software developers who create new Twitter apps will only be allowed to have a maximum of 100,000 users. Existing apps with more than 100,000 users can double their user base before Twitter imposes a hard cap on user base.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Oracle pays $2 mln fine, no admission of wrongdoing

* Funds wrongly set aside for alleged India vendors -SEC

* Foreign Corrupt Practices Act said to be violated

* Oracle says has fired employees involved in deals

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Electronics Company Rankings
Company
(click to expand)
Rating
Score
Nintendo

Products include videogames and videogame consoles.
Lowest ranked company.
Unresponsive to repeated outreach efforts.
Has not undertaken any known efforts to investigate its supply chains.
Did not include conflict minerals in its audit policy.
Did not join the Public Private Alliance or participate in a program to source clean minerals from Congo.
Nintendo can improve its score by taking the first step to determine the smelters in its supply chain and publish the information, engage with necessary stakeholders, require its suppliers to use only audited conflict-free smelters when enough are available and enforcing this policy through audits, joining the CFS Early Adopters program, joining the Public Private Alliance, piloting the OECD guidance, and fully supporting and implementing Section 1502 regulations issued by the SEC.

0
Share Your Message with Nintendo

Send a message to N

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Companies like Nintendo, Canon, Nikon, Sharp and HTC all received low ratings in Enough Project’s report, meaning that they’ve taken little to no steps to source the materials.

Nintendo got a rating of zero.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

At the top: Intel, HP, Motorola Solutions, and Apple, all of which have taken significant steps to trace and audit their supply chains, as well as support industry-wide certification efforts. At the other end of the spectrum: Canon, Nikon, Sharp, and HTC have made little progress to address conflict minerals in their supply chains, achieving less than 10 percent of the 100 possible points of Enough’s criteria. Notably, Nintendo ranks at the very bottom of the list, having failed to make any known effort to trace or audit its supply chain, despite growing public awareness.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

President Obama and the Times are the two big winners after Klout changed its influence-scoring algorithm this week.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

But the problem that bedeviled Apotheker, and would have still weighed on him even if he had not been fired last year, still remains: there is no pan-HP strategy, no way of talking to the market about how the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, no synergistic product set that taps into the company’s ability to provide a mix of services, hardware, and software that, taken together, provide that value-added positioning that would remake HP’s tarnished brand.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Enterprise Manager, and Oracle E-Business Suite all need to be patched. Oracle Database Server 10.2.0.3, 10.2.0.4, 10.2.0.5, 11.1.0.7, 11.2.0.2, and 11.2.0.3 are affected.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“Send to Kindle for Google Chrome” adds a Send to Kindle button to users’ Google Chrome browsers, explains Amazon community manager Kevin Goddard in a Kindle forum post. The button sends text published on the Web to the user’s Kindle device and any Kindle reading apps.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“The dark underbelly of enterprise software is the deliberate complexity that a lot of systems integration partners add to the mix by overcharging customers for implementations. That’s a given,” Greenbaum said.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Standard edition of Java will run on Mac OS X, two versions of ARM processor; JavaFX gains Linux and multitouch capabilities

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

When defined, approved, evangelized and enforced appropriately, these policies have the power to accomplish a feat that grassroots data governance efforts fail at repeatedly: Evolving your corporate culture to one that actually does manage data as an asset.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Join Chris Belmont, CIO of Ochsner Health System, and Lynne Dunbrack, Program Director of Connected Health IT Strategies at IDC Health Insights, as they address the following questions in the latest Let’s Talk Healthcare

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Decertifying the class could make it harder for authors to win a large award.

Chin had said it would be unjust to force Authors Guild members to sue individually, likely resulting in disparate results and much higher legal costs, “given the sweeping and undiscriminating nature of Google’s unauthorized copying.”

But Google countered that many class members, perhaps a majority, benefited economically, and that case-by-case determinations were needed to show whether it was making “fair use” of their works.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

As Adobe warned earlier in the year, new installations from Google Play won’t be an option from August 15th onwards. Any downloads after that point will be limited to updates for existing installations or to those willing to raid Adobe’s archives — assuming would-be users aren’t already running Android 4.1, that is.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

One example: Denis @djBrowne, SAP’s SVP of imagineering, and Tom Rodden, director of applications at Varian Medical Systems, demoed Personas, a new SAP GUI slated for availability later this year. With Personas, users of Varian’s X-Ray, oncology treatment and other products can customize and simplify SAP screens, making them easier to operate. Modifying SAP screens is hardly new, but in the past it required considerable levels of training and effort. With Personas, anyone with the right permissions can simply drag and drop commands into new configurations with no knowledge of ABAP, back-end systems or coding.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Langenbach told police that he did not intend to steal the items, according to court papers. He said that he had seen a video on YouTube about how to make fake barcodes to get cheaper toys. He switched the barcodes out of curiosity, to see if it really worked. He also wanted to see if the customer price scanner and cash-register scanner priced the items the same or cheaper, he said.

He told police he was not paying attention when he checked out the item on May 8 and that he hadn’t checked his receipt to see if the price was cheaper before leaving the store, according to the police report. He denied having switched the barcodes in the other incidents. Police have also linked a credit card he used for his eBay account to one used in one of the April 20 incidents, according to the report.

Supervising Deputy District Attorney Cindy Hendrickson has said although the thefts for which Langenbach is charged only amount to about $1,000, the sophisticated nature of the crimes and presence of h

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Expect to hear a lot from SAP on how the Internet of Things, aka M2M, will progress, shortly.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Salesforce Communities is basically an offshoot of Chatter but with many more possibilities for public forums, such as a helpdesk, and private communities for collaboration between sales partners. The platform is 100 percent cloud-based, and Salesforce touts that it is deployable within minutes.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Salesforce Communities is only launching its limited pilot today and won’t be generally available until 2013.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Organizations of all sizes and in all industries are recognizing the importance of high-quality data and the critical role of data quality in information governance and stewardship, driven by broader EIM initiatives (see “Q&A;: Information Governance” and “Gartner’s Enterprise Information Management Framework Evolves to Meet Today’s Business Demands”). Data quality issues have a significantly adverse impact on businesses by reducing efficiency, creating risk and inhibiting value creation. Organizations need to measure, track and work toward continuous improvement of data quality in order to turn avoid these negative impacts and increase the value of data to their business (see “Measuring The Business Value of Data Quality”).

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The deal exceeds a $140 million sale to State Farm Life Insurance Co. Salesforce booked earlier this year, and is notable because it comes in the middle of its fiscal year, not in the fourth quarter, when many large transactions close, Piper Jaffray analyst Mark Murphy said in an Aug. 12 note to clients. Salesforce is scheduled to report fiscal second-quarter earnings Aug. 23.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Google also warned that investors should expect to see “significant revenue variability” from the company in the coming quarters.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The underlying problem here is that most software is not very good. Writing good software is hard. There are thousands of opportunities to make mistakes. More importantly, it’s difficult if not impossible to anticipate all the situations that a software program will be faced with, especially when–as was the case for both UBS and Knight–it is interacting with other software programs that are not under your control. It’s difficult to test software properly if you don’t know all the use cases that it’s going to have to support.

There are solutions to these problems, but they are neither easy nor cheap. You need to start with very good, very motivated developers. You need to have development processes that are oriented toward quality, not some arbitrary measure of output. You need to have a culture where people can review each other’s work often and honestly. You need to have comprehensive testing processes — with a large dose of automation — to make sure that the thousands of pieces

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Motorola Mobility is cutting 4,000 employees as the company shifts its emphasis from feature phones to focus on high-end devices, the company said late Sunday.

About two-thirds of the staff reduction is set to occur outside the U.S., the company said in a statement.

Motorola, which was acquired by Google in May, plans to close or to consolidate about one-third of its 90 facilities, as well as simplify its mobile product portfolio, making a shift from feature phones to more “innovative and profitable” devices, the company said.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Still, over the coming nine months, about 1.91 billion shares will be freed up, compared with fewer than 500 million now available for trading.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Hadoop won’t render traditional warehousing architectures obsolete; instead, it will supplement and extend the data warehouse to support a single version of the truth, data governance, and master data management for multi-structured data that exists in at least two of the following formats: structured (such as relational or tabular), semi-structured (including XML-tagged free-text files), and/or unstructured (for example, ASCII and other free-text formats).

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The speaker roster features such noted technologists as:

Aaron Morton (@aaronmorton) – Apache Cassandra Committer
Adrian Cockcroft (@adrianco) – Cloud Architect at Netflix
Arun Jacob (@arunxjacob) – Director of Data Solutions at Disney Technology and Shared Services
Christian Romming (@cromming) – CTO at VigLink
Darshan Dawal – Engineering Director/Lead Architect at Openwave
Ed Anuff (@edanuff), Vice President of Mobile Platform Apigee
Edward Capriolo (@edwardcapriolo) – Hadoop Systems Admin at m6d.com
Eric Evans (@jericevans) – Cassandra Committer and Engineer at Acunu
Eric Lubow (@elubow) – CTO at SimpleReach
Gary Ogasawara (@go10) – Vice President of engineering at Gemini Mobile Technologies
Gregg Ulrich – Cassandra Operations, Netflix
Jason Brown (@jasobrown) – Software Engineer at Netflix
Jason Rutherglen (@JasonRutherglen) – Architect at Think Big Analytics
Jay Patel (@pateljay3001) – Architect at eBay
Jeremy Hanna (@je

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[I]n Paris, the top-scoring elements zero-in on some of the main features that make Paris look like Paris: doors, balconies, windows with railings, street signs and special Parisian lampposts. It is also interesting to note that, on the whole, the algorithm had more trouble with American cities: it was able to discover only a few geo-informative elements, and some of them turned out to be different brands of cars, road tunnels, etc. This might be explained by the relative lack of stylistic coherence and uniqueness in American cities (with its melting pot of styles and influences), as well as the supreme reign of the automobile on American streets.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Ultimately, the biggest challenge will be in integrating big data effectively into updated and revised business processes. Thus again, change itself will be the large overall obstacle as technology out-paces the ability of most organizations to absorb it. This will likely push big data into the cloud for most organizations look for strategies to speed adoption, further hastening cloud-related migration of so much of IT. This may not be a bad thing.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Today, I am very pleased to announce that Log Insight, together with its technology and team, have been acquired by VMware. We are very excited for the opportunity to accelerate our vision and maximize the impact of our technology.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

VMware hasn’t made any official announcement, but Pattern Insight on Tuesday issued a statement indicating it has agreed to sell its Log Insight product, along with its team and technology, to the company. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Hadoop is not an RDBMS killer
Hadoop runs on commodity hardware and storage, making it much cheaper than traditional Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMSes), but it is not a database replacement. Hadoop was built to take advantage of sequential data access, where data is written once then read many times, in large chunks, rather than single records. Because of this, Hadoop is optimized for analytical workloads, not the transaction processing work at which RDBMSes excel.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“Speaking only for Cloudera, four of the top five commercial banks, four of the top five general retailers, four of the top five entertainment companies and all three of the tier-one telecom carriers run Cloudera,” Charles Zedlewski, vice president of product at Cloudera, a company that provides Hadoop-based software and services, told LinuxInsider. “A number of” large government agencies and small data-driven startups also run Cloudera.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Certainly, the three V’s of big data — velocity, variety and volume — are hitting everybody, big and small, and corporations in every type of business. Going after this unstructured data — social media data, Web data, all sorts of communications data, machine data, et cetera — that type of data is certainly a different variety than what existing data integration tools were built for. So the whole NoSQL [movement] and the text search tools that have come up are addressing that part of the market. But I think those are complementary tools. I don’t think they really address structured data as well. And I don’t think the existing data integration tools address unstructured data very well. So a company needs both.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

More and more organizations today are adopting business models offering a free version of their product in the hope that users sign on for the full package. As the primary means of customer acquisition, this business model is not sustainable given the resources required to support free customers and the low conversion rate to paid plans. As attractive as the freemium model looks, the “appearance” of a large user base without the ability to convert them is much like the proverbial putting lipstick on a pig. It’s only with a focus on the fundamentals, creation of sustainable and real revenue streams that are supported by innovation, that we can avoid a repeat performance.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

But it turns out Zeidman has a history with Microsoft. Rebecca Mercuri, another forensic computing researcher, pointed out in the comments of the IEEE Spectrum article that Zeidman’s resume says he’s an expert witness in the ongoing battle between Microsoft and Motorola over the Android mobile operating system. This tie was not disclosed in the article. Zeidman runs a firm called Zeidman Consulting that — among other things — provides testing services and expert testimony for intellectual property cases involving software.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Analysts agreed the way the decision was unveiled was poorly executed, but some actually believe it makes sense for H-P to consider a break-up, arguing that it simply cannot compete on two major fronts.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Kildall maintained that QDOS, and subsequently MS-DOS, had been directly copied from CP/M and thus infringed on his copyright. But until now there’s been no way to conduct a reliable examination of the software itself, to look inside MS-DOS for the fingerprints of CP/M, and settle the issue once and for all.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“We had to hop on the bandwagon,” Mr. Davis says.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

IBM made an informal approach about possibly acquiring the division, which operates a network of secure servers used to support RIM’s BlackBerry devices, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. The business may be valued at $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion depending on the mix of assets included, according to Berenberg Bank.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“The Court is disappointed by the parties’ respective reports regarding their meet and confer efforts on final jury instructions. Lead trial counsel shall meet and confer in person today and file joint and disputed final jury instructions by Monday, August 13, 2012 at 8 a.m.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

As an investor it tells me you need patience with cloud vendors. Companies like Rackspace (RAX), Red Hat (RHT) and VMWare (VMW) have a lot of market growth ahead of them. But it also tells me that cloud laggards such as Dell (DELL), HP (HPQ), Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) also have some time to kill before customers start leaving them en masse for cloud.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Microsoft, the largest software maker, views the stake as a strategic investment reflecting the pair’s aim to combat Google Inc. (GOOG), rather than as a near-term moneymaker, said the person, who requested anonymity because the plans are private. Microsoft held 26.2 million Facebook shares, or 1.7 percent, after the initial public offering, regulatory filings show. The stake is worth $571.9 million.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

One intellectual property blogger, Florian Müller, disclosed that he had become a consultant for Oracle shortly after the trial had begun, but no other similar disclosures have been made. It could be that the court order has had a similar effect to peeling back just the corner of a can full of hyperactive worms.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“The concerns were around whether Oracle would keep Java implementations in open source, whether it would seek to monetise Java more aggressively by increasing its licensing fees, or how Oracle would govern Java and whether it would do so with sufficient community input,” he added.

Contrary to some people’s expectations, Hilwa believes Java enthusiasts’ worst fears have not been realised and that Oracle is taking good care of the project.

“Two and a half years after Oracle closed on the Sun acquisition in January 2010, many of the fears of the broader Java community have not materialised. Oracle has navigated most decisions with a deliberate and decisive approach,” Hilwa said in the report.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[Wait - was there something wrong with their old strategy?!? -DBM]
Mayer is mulling a shift in direction as part of a sweeping review of the company. Yahoo Inc. lured Mayer away from rival Google Inc. three weeks ago to become its fifth CEO in the past five years.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The judge determined that Mformation Technologies Inc., which makes software for managing mobile devices, failed to show that RIM infringed on a key patent in question.

A federal jury in San Francisco had awarded Mformation $147.2 million last month based on an infringement finding. The judge overseeing the case nullified the earlier decision Wednesday.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Perhaps the most important takeaway I can share is that there is no reason for organizations to be stifled by inflexible systems incapable of supporting and driving their businesses forward. There are better options available that reduce costs and unnecessary work, improve business responsiveness, and bring modern, relevant technologies and experiences to our workforces.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The largest maker of business-management software has a realistic chance of overtaking IBM in database revenue in the next three years as it wins customers with new applications, integration with mobile and real-time technology, and lower prices, said John Chen, head of Sybase, the database and mobile- software maker that SAP bought for $5.8 billion in 2010.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Work.com is likely to be a combination of Rypple’s capabilities and the corporate-perks functionality Salesforce.com gained through the recent acquisition of ChoicePass, according to Forrester Research analyst China Martens.

That matches up with the Bloomberg report, which said Work.com “will let managers set organizational goals and recognize employees.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

@Benioff is drawing on the expertise of John Wookey, a Silicon Valley engineering executive who joined Salesforce last year after spending 12 years at Oracle and almost three at SAP.

“The challenge here is it’s a company that grew out of selling primarily to small and medium-sized businesses, to selling to large enterprises,” Wookey said.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

A scattered HP can’t compete with IBM and EMC in the enterprise, or Apple and Samsung in consumer technology, USB analyst Steve Milunovich argues.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

¶ On Wednesday the company announced that it would be taking an accounting charge of $8 billion related to its 2008 acquisition of Electronic Data Systems for $13.9 billion. It also said that it would take a charge of $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion related to layoffs announced last May. H.P. had originally projected a charge of $1 billion in cutting some 27,000 jobs from its work force of almost 350,000, but said more workers took early retirement than it expected.

¶ As a result of the charges, Hewlett-Packard said it would report a loss of between $4.31 and $4.49 a share when it announces its third-quarter results on Aug. 22. Without the charges, the company said, it would have earnings of $1.00 a share, up from earlier projections of 94 cents to 97 cents a share.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

John Visentin, who previously ran HP ES, will be leaving the company to pursue other interests…HP expects to record a non-cash pre-tax charge for the impairment of goodwill within its Services segment of approximately $8 billion in the third quarter of its fiscal 2012.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

SAP’s Michael Eacrett goes on the record regarding HANA—what it is, what it isn’t, the successes, the challenges and the future of SAP’s in-memory platform and database products.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

HANA running under analytical apps versus transactional apps, if there’s any customer value in the “Oracle vs. SAP” database wars, and whether SAP is trying to “lock down” its customers.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Governor Jerry Brown is asking Californians to approve a tax hike in November, one that will move your tax rate to 13.3 percent, the highest in the land. But we need that money. Need it. Don’t. Go.

Your salary and bonuses last year reportedly totaled $15 million. I’m going to guess you paid around $1.5 million in taxes. Of course, you were also awarded $62 million in stock options, which are taxed as regular income in California. At some point you’ll cash those in and we’ll get more taxes from you. This may have already happened in order to pay the more than $500 million it reportedly cost to buy Lana’i.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Application vendor Infor is giving its channel partners the green light to sell to customers with annual sales up to $500 million.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“Dell’s future is a tug of war between deteriorating PC results and an intriguing enterprise strategy,”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The acquisition of Group Laurier strengthens Infor’s relationship with Infor10 Distribution Business (SX.enterprise) customers in Canada by creating a 100-percent direct relationship with them. Software, support and services are now provided directly by Infor. Infor can now better manage strategic customer relationships and provide more guidance, value and direct access to Infor innovation.
Existing Group Laurier customers will experience no disruption in their support, and will be able to take advantage of Infor’s award-winning Xtreme Support.
The acquisition of Group Laurier is a sound, practical business transaction for Infor and creates new opportunity in Canada, adding strong consulting resources in Canada and specific expertise in the French Canadian market. In addition, Group Laurier has completed all French Canadian localizations and translations for Infor10 Distribution (SX.e).

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Watts acknowledged that while SAP will continue to ramp up its operations in China, there are cost and wage pressures, which are rising. Additionally, growth in China could dip slightly for the rest of the year in line with an expected moderation in the wider global economy’s growth.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Also, we acquired Sybase (a mobile database provider, for $5.8 billion in 2010) and that business is now growing at 60% year over year. You get a mature business like a database growing at 60%, that’s exciting. Our mobile business is growing in triple digits and our cloud business is growing in triple digits.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Do you think social media will be more or less important to SAP in three years?

I would say that it’s very important to our business today, but it isn’t yet ingrained in the everyday business of people’s tasks in their lives, and the way that they behave and work. I think it will grow to become a core capability that many if not most of SAP’s employees need to develop.

For example, we have five transformational pillars that our marketing organization is focused on for 2012, and two of those pillars are directly relevant to social.

One is called “shift from push to pull marketing.” The idea there is to move from a marketing organization that does negative things that marketing and advertising are infamous for doing, like pushing information at people, interrupting their lives, sort of imposing our will and our agenda and our timeframe on others. You can think about television commercials interrupting your program, or billboards interrupting your beautiful view as you’re driving down

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Instead of the thousands of relational tables and millions of lines of code used to define traditional enterprise software, Workday applications consist of millions of metadata definitions. Workday uses a relational database to store all metadata and all application data. To optimize application performance, Workday keeps all application metadata and most application data in memory.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[So don't waste your money on iPhone -DBM]
In a publicly released exhibit, Apple also detailed exactly how much in damages (.pdf) the company wants from Samsung for infringing on its various patents. The answer: more than $2.5 billion total.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

But once large-cap growth takes over, he says, its outperformance can be huge and last for quite a while. He thinks the current bull still has a ways to run, and recommends focusing on growth stocks with market caps in the $100 billion or more range. “There aren’t many stocks there to pick from; but do it,” he says. “The longer the bull market runs, the bigger you should go.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Google Inc. (GOOG), Oracle Corp. (ORCL) and their attorneys must disclose any payments made to authors, journalists and bloggers who have reported or published comments on Oracle’s copyright infringement case over Android software, a judge ruled.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Apple can’t stop a malicious hacker once he’s broken into your iCloud.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

In many ways, this was all my fault. My accounts were daisy-chained together. Getting into Amazon let my hackers get into my Apple ID account, which helped them get into Gmail, which gave them access to Twitter. Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened, because their ultimate goal was always to take over my Twitter account and wreak havoc. Lulz.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The point has been so prominent in the early days of the trial that it came as a something of a shock that no one had measured the rounded corners on Samsung’s models, except, of course, Samsung.

Bressler, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and founder of design firm Bressler Group, was introduced to the jury as having designed cellphones. Verhoeven later elicited the fact that he had not designed a smartphone and pointed out that none of his designs had been put into production. Only two or three had even been given shape as models. “Five or six” were made into mockups, Bressler corrected him.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Near-term, we are enabling ISVs, startups, and even developers in our customer base access to best practices and community support forums. We recently had a Startup Forum at SAP Palo Alto, where we had more than two dozen (with a longer waiting list) startups looking at the possibility to develop on HANA. SAP is creating a US$ 155 million venture fund for startups and a US$ 337 million SAP HANA Database Migration Acceleration Program.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

To be able to easily comprehend the impact of the 10,000x performance improvement that SAP HANA delivers, consider this: a 10,000x improvement in the typical speed of a snail, moving 1 centimeter in 10 seconds, would allow the snail to compete with world record holder Usain Bolt’s sub-10s sprint in the 100 meter dash at the London Olympics!

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“Disruptive enterprise startups no longer face a credibility gap in the way we used to,” he says.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The company would not institute a hiring freeze to cut costs, Mr. Brandt said. Instead he urged employees to use video conferencing technology instead of traveling.

“In the second half we must reduce expenditures significantly in order to reach our internal goal,” he said.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Sounds good, right? Unfortunately all of these positive moves are overshadowed by three things:

Microsoft reported the first quarterly loss in its 26 years of being traded as a public company. Slipping into the red for the first time in nearly three decades, Microsoft has reported a loss of US$492 million in the June quarter. Most worrisome is the reason for the loss. Microsoft took a non-cash write-down of $6.2 billion related to non-performance of online advertising business and Internet services division aQuantive, which it acquired in 2007. On a positive note, revenue for the fourth fiscal 2012 quarter rose 4 percent to $18.05 billion, compared to the $17.36 billion sales Microsoft posted in the same period a year ago.
Vanity Fair magazine published “Microsoft’s Lost Decade,” a scathing profile by contributing Editor Kurt Eichenwald. In it, Eichenwald makes a case that Microsoft has spent the last 10 years unsuccessfully dithering in several key market segments including s

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[Reminds me of Oracle and SAP booths at Dreamforce -DBM]

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Oracle donated the OpenOffice code to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) in June 2011. The only stable version released under ASF’s stewardship since then was Apache OpenOffice 3.4 on May 8.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

For Oracle’s part, while its appeal is pending it will have to rejigger its plans and issue an update to its database software for Itanium systems. Existing customers had nothing to worry about in the first place. But it now faces the prospect of paying out a significant damages award to HP. Even if it is as high as $4 billion as many reports have suggested — and it likely won’t be — Oracle’s balance sheet, flush with almost $31 billion in combined cash and short term investments, can take the hit.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Kleinberg’s order on Wednesday signaled that the so-called Hurd Agreement, which the companies negotiated after former HP CEO Mark Hurd left the company and joined Oracle, will be taken seriously as a legal commitment. Oracle co-President Safra Catz had dismissed the first part of the document, in which the companies said they would keep working together just like before the fight over Hurd, as a non-binding “public hug.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

As a result, the Microsoft public cloud application hosting and development platform was unavailable for about two and a half hours on Thursday. Microsoft didn’t say how many customers were impacted.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“Oracle tools also can parse and report the Sybase T-SQL requiring translation,” the description added. “Allow Oracle translators to rewrite the code for you as you test and patch the application as needed before deploying to production on Oracle Exadata.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

There was no impact to other regions or services throughout the duration of the interruption. The incident began at 11:09AM GMT and lasted for 2 hours and 24 minutes. Below is a more detailed analysis of the service disruption and its resolution.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Outlook.com, which builds off the power of the Outlook people have long used on their PCs and Macs, has a fresh, clean user interface that gets the clutter out of inboxes and takes away display ads and large search boxes, and works well with smartphones, tablets and the new Outlook 2013 Preview. He noted that webmail was first introduced with HotmaiL in 1996. Back then, it was novel to have a personal email address you could keep for life—one that was totally independent from your business or Internet service provider.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

SAP doesn’t have to pay the damages until after all appeals or new trials in the case have concluded, according to court filings. If Oracle wins a judgment that’s less than $306 million in any subsequent ruling or trial, SAP agreed to pay the difference.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The company is racing to engage start-ups in a global effort to develop HANA apps. Since February, SAP has talked to 460 start-ups and has invited 124 to present their technology at forums being held around the world. Of those 124, 37 are participating in a year-long incubation program where they are developing apps that will run on HANA.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

On digits, Kara Swisher takes a look at Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s first memo to the internet company’s employees.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Privileged and confidential — Do not forward
Dear Yahoos!
I couldn’t be more excited to be here — thank you for the warm welcome over the past two days! I can’t wait to get to know more about Yahoo’s products, culture, and all of you. I’ve always had a deep respect for Yahoo! — I first experienced it as a student at Stanford in 1994 as “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” — and I’ve been fan ever since. I’m incredibly honored to now be a part of the team and work with all of you. Yahoo! is an Internet icon — in terms of brand, reach, user following, in its products and service. There is an enormous amount of opportunity in front of us.

The company has been through a lot of change in the past few months, leaving many open questions around strategy and how to move forward. I am sensitive to this. While I have some ideas, I need to develop a more informed perspective before making strategy or direction changes. In the meantime, please do not stop. You are doing important work.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Several reports named Metro AG, a Dusseldorf, Germany-based conglomerate that’s the world’s fifth-largest retailer, as the origin of the complaints that led Microsoft to dump Metro.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

By the first quarter of 2013, SAP will sell software that will let both IT departments and end users personalize most classic SAP screens, said Browne at an event at the company’s offices in Palo Alto.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The second option–the one that Judge Kleinberg chose–was to require Oracle to continue support, and for Oracle to pay for damages HP has already incurred.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Attendees will learn how they can build an “enterprise cloud environment” in just two hours using Oracle’s technology, according to the events’ website.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Oracle’s unanimous 2010 jury verdict awarding it $1.3 billion can now be immediately taken to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Infosys is now the target of a federal criminal investigation, probing its use of visitor visas, the company stated in a corporate filing in May.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Benioff’s addition to Cisco’s board fits perfectly with the ongoing shake-up that CEO John Chambers has been undergoing during the last year or so. Once you get Chambers talking about the new strategy at Cisco, you only hear the word “cloud” about 200 times in five minutes.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

According to a recent customer survey, Sales Cloud customers experienced a 32 percent average increase in sales productivity, a 30 percent average increase in social leads and a 27 percent average increase in revenue. Among mobile users, customers are also seeing a 28 percent average increase in team productivity and an average 23 percent decrease in sales cycles.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The new Outlook continues Microsoft’s overhaul of all its Web properties to the new touch-centric Metro feel — the same look that’s coming to the Windows 8 Start Screen and is already on Windows Phone.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

A damages phase in front of a jury is still pending in the case, with HP reportedly seeking up to $4 billion in damages from Oracle following the latter company’s decision more than a year ago to stop porting new software to HP’s Itanium servers.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The slides cite comments from an interview with Apple designer Shin Nishibori that he had come up with an iPhone design by studying examples of Sony’s Walkman design concepts. He said he was commissioned by Jonathan Ive, Apple’s head of industrial design, to determine “if Sony were to make an iPhone, what would it be like?”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Workday 17 release expected later this month will include new budgetary controls, benefit-management, and contract pay capabilities. With spending under tight scrutiny at educational and government institutions, Workday says the financial controls and commitment accounting capabilities will let users check whether funds are available throughout a purchasing process. The benefits-management functionality will help organizations calculate total benefits and the appropriate share of benefits paid for by different departments and funding sources when employees serve in multiple roles. The contract pay upgrade will accommodate special pay structures, such as the common educational practice of spreading payment for a nine-month academic year across 12 months.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The launch of Google’s Nexus Q media streaming device has been postponed, and those who preordered will get the device free, the company said on Tuesday.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Tebow is clear about his faith and purpose in life. The concept of having a higher purpose is also what makes companies great. At SAP, in addition to our mission to help every customer become a best run business, our vision is to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. The leading enterprises have purposes higher than just profit. They become brands whose purpose galvanizes employees, customers and communities. A higher purpose creates broad commitment and winning teams.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

[Basic claim appears to be that investors were ignorant and didn't do any due diligence, hoping to get rich quick. Is stupidity actionable? -DBM]

According to the lawsuits, the gaming company wasn’t clear with its shareholders that the business was performing poorly and changes to Facebook’s platform made it easier for users to be drawn away by competing games. Zynga users play games like Farmville, Words With Friends, and Draw Something exclusively on Facebook.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“Whether those differences can be protected in court is the question.”

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Google mounted a public relations and lobbying campaign deflecting attention from its refusal to honor its promise to standards bodies to license standards-essential patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, a practice that has prompted regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to investigate its conduct. Unfortunately, we have no reason to believe that Google’s diversionary tactics will cease any time soon, and in fact expect more of them in the future.

Microsoft has always been, and remains open to, a settlement of our patent litigation with Motorola. As we have said before, we are seeking solely the same level of reasonable compensation for our patented intellectual property that numerous other Android distributors – both large and small – have already agreed to recognize in our negotiations with them. And we stand ready to pay reasonable compensation for Motorola’s patented intellectual property as well.

But a lasting solution of these disputes will not be

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The upgrade adds prebuilt connectors, reusable integration templates, and a developer’s edition aimed at custom scenarios.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The Touch 2 mobile application framework is used to build mobile applications for the enterprise. Using the new OData Connector for SAP, developers can connect to mobile offerings such as NetWeaver Gateway and the Sybase Unwired Platform, according to a blog posted by Sencha.

The Sencha Touch OData Connector for SAP is available for download from Sencha Market.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

The SAP Mobile Apps Partner Program offers ISVs a package of tools, technical and commercialization support services, SAP certification of mobile applications built on the vendor’s platform, and the ability to sell those apps through SAP’s online app marketplace, the SAP Store.

The free developer license through AWS includes access to a hosted development environment and a software development kit. While there are no developer fees, developers still have to pay the hosting fees, according to SAP.

SAP also is offering developers a free 30-day trial of the SAP mobile platform and the company’s ERP applications to help with development.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Driving intuitive use and adoption, CRM On Demand Release 20 debuts new key user interface changes, including optionally displayed related information as tabs and easier search for users, allowing administrators to create optimal search layouts and restricted searchable fields.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Oracle has prepared the recently released Oracle Tuxedo 12c to run more effortlessly on the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, a hardware and software package for running applications in an “enterprise private cloud,” Patel said. Oracle has been urging organizations to consolidate their IT resources into a uniform architecture — using either Oracle or non-Oracle hardware — so these resources can be shared and IT costs correspondingly cut.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Nokia is in the midst of cutting thousands of jobs and has, in the process, lost key talent that it otherwise would have preferred to keep. Several former senior leaders, for instance, recently launched a new mobile-device company that will use old Nokia technology to compete in the handset industry.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Veteran patent attorneys for the two companies squared off in a debate over smartphone innovation that they traced back to before Apple co-founder Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007. The event filled much of a grey federal building here, as a crowd of lawyers in suits, Silicon Valley bystanders and reporters packed a courtroom as well as an overflow room equipped with two TV monitors.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Earlier today, Microsoft unveiled Outlook.com, a massive overhaul of Hotmail that features a visual redesign, integration with the SkyDrive cloud-based storage service and free online Office apps, and ties with several social networking sites, from Facebook and Twitter to LinkedIn.

While Microsoft will run Hotmail and Outlook.com side-by-side for an indefinite period, eventually the company will ditch the former, the company said today.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Outlook.com…will eventually replace Hotmail.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

SAP announced a number of incremental improvements to Business ByDesign last week. For one thing, currency and regulatory localization and language support has been extended to Denmark, Italy, The Netherlands, and Spain, bringing the total number of countries supported to 14. Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S. were already supported. SAP has also released a software development kit for Business ByDesign through which partners can develop and deliver industry-focused and “micro-vertical” products, such as ByDesign-based applications for maintenance contractors or heavy equipment suppliers. Finally, the suite has been put on the same quarterly update cycle as the SuccessFactors suite, so SAP will deliver customer-requested features and improvements more often.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Oracle said Monday it has inked a deal to buy software-defined networking vendor Xsigo Systems, in a move that will support Oracle’s ongoing foray into cloud computing. Terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close within a few months, were not disclosed.

The announcement comes a week after VMWare said it would buy Xsigo competitor Nicira for US$1.26 billion.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

And still … @larryellison has just one tweet, follows no one on Twitter, and yet has 28,894 followers (up about 1,000 in the past month). This means that only about 1 out of every 4 Oracle employees (MAX!) follows Larry on Twitter. Fortunately, so far, they’re not missing much …

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

RT @Irregulars: Enterprise Headlines and Highlights, 2012-07-30 http://dlvr.it/1wrz16 #EnSW

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

Highlights of enterprise software and solutions news from the past week:

Apple sales slip as phanboyz wait for a new iPhone. Apple is still, however, generating almost as much cash as the Obama administration is spending on wasteful programs

More details emerge about Windows 8 and Microsoft’s strengthening product portfolio. Will skeuomorphic (iOS, Android) or non-skeuomorphic (Metro/Windows 8) be the future?

SAP reports strong results, claims strength in HANA and mobile. In the Apps space, SAP showed significant growth while Oracle is fading. SAP becomes Germany’s most valuable company, passing Siemens on the strength of its quarterly results.

Google Nexus 7 and Android Jelly Bean 4.1 impress. Meanwhile, Google faces huge fines in the EU, and Android-based devices are losing a number of legal challenges for patent violations vs Microsoft and Apple.

And still … @larryellison has just one tweet, follows no one on Twitter, and yet has 28,894 followers (up abou

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)

“The proliferation of alternative devices…such as smartphones and tablet computers, creates challenges from competing software platforms,” Microsoft said in its 10-K form recently filed with the SEC. “Users may increasingly turn to these devices to perform functions that would have been performed by personal computers in the past.” Market research firm NPD DisplaySearch expects tablet shipments to exceed laptops by 2016.

Not wanting to be left out of the mobile device party, and unwilling to rely on its hardware partners, Microsoft is jumping in with its own line of Windows 8-based slates called Surface. The problem, however, is that a big part of Microsoft’s revenues come from licensing Windows to hardware manufacturers.

(Curated by Dennis Moore. Read the complete article here)