Enterprise Headlines and Highlights, 2012-06-15

Business-software company Yammer Inc. agreed to sell itself to Microsoft Corp. for $1.2 billion, according a person familiar with the matter, in a sign Microsoft may be trying to plug holes in its ubiquitous Office software.

It is unclear when the Yammer acquisition will be completed and announced, according to the person familiar with the deal.

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

If I were starting a transactional SaaS (Software as a Service) vendor today, I might look at an architecture a lot like Workday’s. In particular:

Having everything start in a Java object model makes loads of sense. (This is a use case for which Java seems far from obsolete.)
The dual data model (object and tabular) seems very appealing. Rather than shoehorn data into an uncomfortable model, deal instead with the discomfort of running a couple of (logical) data stores side by side.
Having multiple server tiers is pretty much a best practice.

However:

Workday’s extreme wheel-reinvention in the area of database management might not make sense for smaller companies.
In any given case, the exact choice of tiers might be different from Workday’s. In particular, there might need to be more explicitly analytics-oriented tiers than Workday chooses to split out.

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

But now the next Draper generation is readying its coming-out party. Three of Tim’s four kids–Jesse, Adam, and Billy–are entering the startup game. Unlike many twentysomethings who put it all on the line to make the techie pilgrimage west, the Draper kids have Silicon Valley in their breeding. They have inherited connections and wealth from their father and grandfather; and yet they are wired with the Silicon Valley worldview of individualism and relentless optimism. “We’ve just been raised with this anything-is-possible mentality,” says Tim’s youngest son, Billy, who went to prep school at Andover. Each kid is now making a play in a different industry: Jesse’s going for media, Adam for finance, and Billy for marketing. Silicon Valley observers like TheFunded’s Ressi says there’s little guarantee that these Drapers can extend the Draper dynasty. “The only way you can have a dynasty in Silicon Valley is if every generation is exceptional,” says Ressi. “You’ve had a unit of two with th

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

The “Workday thing” threatens to upend the business—or enterprise—software market. It sells software that corporations use to keep track of their employees and finances. Normally such applications are expensive, a pain to use, and, because they become so entwined in a company’s operations, rely on a kind of monopoly of inertia. Workday’s software for filing expenses or approving a hire, on the other hand, is about as easy to use as Facebook (FB). It’s an example of cloud computing, selling software as a Web-based service rather than a product customers install in their own computing centers.

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

Oracle has issued an “urgent bulletin” asking desktop administrators to immediately turn off the Java Runtime Environment auto-update option “for all Windows end-user desktops connecting to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i, 12.0, and 12.1″ due to a critical incompatibility.

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

The acquisition extends IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative with qualitative analytics software that helps organizations deliver an optimal digital experience to their customers via the Web and mobile devices.

Tealeaf provides a full suite of customer experience management software, which analyzes interactions on websites and mobile devices. Through these views, chief marketing officers (CMOs), e-commerce and customer service professionals can spot patterns and address issues in website and mobile application design, making marketing more of a welcomed service for consumers.

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

Oracle turns 35 on June 16, and it has been among the sales leaders in enterprise IT for most of those years. When the company went public in 1986, it had 450 employees and annual revenue of $55 million. Twenty-six years later, Oracle has a market cap of $135 billion, a global full-time workforce of 108,000 and annual revenue of $37 billion. Those numbers say a lot. Perhaps Bruce Scott, co-architect and co-author of the first three versions of Oracle Database, explains Oracle’s success succinctly with a simple story about its co-founder and CEO, Larry Ellison. “I’ve thought a lot about why Oracle was successful,” Scott said. “I really think that it was Larry Ellison. There were a lot of other databases out there that we beat. It was really Larry’s charisma, vision and his determination to make this thing work no matter what. It’s just the way Larry thinks. I can give you an example of his thought processes: We had space allocated to us, and we needed to get our terminals strung to the

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

SAP’s ERP software “is deliberately not optimized for a particular data store and makes little use of stored procedures, according to a FAQ document written by HANA expert John Appleby head of business analytics and technology at SAP consulting firm Bluefin Solutions. “However, to optimise ERP on HANA it is necessary to push the logic down into the database and make use of the SAP HANA stored procedure language SQLScript,” he wrote.

Although the technical hurdles for the HANA-Business Suite port don’t seem insurmountable, any effort by SAP to poach Oracle database customers will no doubt result in fierce tactical resistance and counter-marketing from Oracle. It also could take years for SAP to build a critical mass of high-profile reference customers who make the switch, something crucial to selling the idea of HANA to the bulk of its user base.

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

[Silicon Valley’s influence… -DBM]
He was about to begin a new job as Barack Obama’s campaign manager, and being a diligent student with access to some very smart people, he arranged a rolling series of personal seminars with the CEOs and senior executives of companies including Apple Inc. (AAPL), Facebook Inc. (FB), Zynga Inc. (ZNGA), Google Inc. (GOOG), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM), and DreamWorks SKG, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its June 18 issue.

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

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

What do CIO’s care about?

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

An ARIBA deal could be viewed along these lines: Making the critical mass even bigger – but I am not sure if this describes it correctly or at least completely. The most valuable asset of ARIBA is the ARIBA Network, an established network enabling electronic business between companies. Businesses can connect with their vendors, customers and partners simply by plugging once into the network. With every new member of the network, the possibilities and value for the other members increase. Like with all networks, owning it is great, but building and establishing it, is very hard. ARIBA seems to have done this successfully. And here is where I see the strategic value for SAP.

SAP with its gigantic installed base of transactional systems (30.000 Business One installations alone) can make it extremely easy for its customers to link to the ARIBA network. This creates value for the network (somehow exponentially) as well as for the individual customers, so it is a good deal for the value of

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

Looking at these five points, you can’t help but think that Microsoft faces myriad problems, ranging from too many cooks in the soup to driving individuality in the face of corporate control to simply lacking a grand plan other than “the cloud.” Only time will tell if these problems can be solved-but the tea leaves are there for you to read.

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

The case is Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Oracle Corp. (ORCL), 11- cv-203163, California Superior Court, Santa Clara County (San Jose).

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

With more than 400 million Tweets per day, Salesforce Radian6 and Twitter provide companies with new opportunities to listen, engage and gain customer insight in real time –Alliance connects social enterprises to the voice of the customer

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

Islandia-based CA Technologies has announced it has opened a search to replace current CEO Bill McCracken.

CA spokeswoman Jennifer Hallahan said the company plans to hire a firm to assist in the search process.

McCracken took over as CEO in January 2010. His contract with CA allows him to remain in the position until March.

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

Informatica Cloud Spring 2012 integration PaaS (iPaaS) is shipping with updated enterprise-caliber features. The company also launched a Developer Edition, with connector tools and templates to help devs build customize cloud integrations and deliver them as simple-to-use wizards for enterprise and SaaS users and providers. IDN talks with Ron Lunasin, Director of Informatica Cloud Product Management.

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

Desk.com’s Multilingual Customer Support Will Make it Possible for Businesses of Any Size to:
1) Automatically route incoming cases, so that agents are able to respond to customers in their languages of fluency.

Desk.com’s Multilingual Customer Support will automate case routing so that every customer inquiry can be sent to an agent fluent in that language. Filters and business rules will detect and set language preference based on case or customer language attributes. The system will also help determine a customer’s preferred language, assigning a default language for e-mail inboxes, phone cases, chat cases, tweets and Facebook posts.
2) Publish their internal knowledge base and customer-facing help center in multiple languages.

With a fully-stocked multilingual knowledge base, agents will always have the best answers available. Customers will feel at home because they can choose their preferred language as they seek answers in the help center.
3) Efficiently and confidently manage

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

The service will allow access to a wide range of applications in the cloud for social enterprises, such as Box.com, Cisco WebEx and Google App, with only a password that is stored securely via Salesforce.

Intel said companies can rely on this service to provide functions of identity and access management in the cloud through thousands of applications, with security provided by a process of “two-factor authentication.” The password will also be available for mobile devices.

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

Beginning on June 6, Desk.com will have support for 39 languages and regional dialects, among them Arabic, Dutch, French, German, simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish

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

Both Rypple and Radian6 have become poster children of sorts for a new generation of Canadian tech startups, held up as proof that Canadian companies no longer have to move stateside after being snapped up by U.S. firms.

“Marc (Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com) didn’t want to take all the (Toronto) people and move them to San Francisco,” said Rypple vice-president Dan Debow.

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

[This is like the Rockwell Retro Encabulator video… -DBM]
The first root cause is related to the streaming data API which connects the dyno manifold to the routing mesh. On the dyno management side, an engineer was performing a manual garbage collection process which created an unusual record in the data stream. On the routing side, the subprocess of the router which handles the incoming stream could not parse this record.

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

About 6,000 of Salesforce.com’s 100,000 global customers are located in Canada.

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

Vectorwise 2.5 delivers better manageability and faster performance to help companies realize the value of their data and execute on business opportunities in real time.

“Since the inception of Vectorwise almost two years ago, it’s made tremendous progress in helping businesses to gain new insights and drive operational efficiencies,” said Fred Gallagher, general manager of Vectorwise at Actian Corporation. “As the business world develops data solutions at a rapid pace, Vectorwise continues to amaze by achieving record-breaking performance for the TPC-H benchmark and establishing industry bests in speed and affordability.”

Vectorwise 2.5 offers faster performance while requiring less hardware than traditional databases. New features such as Predictive Buffer manager further enhance performance on concurrent queries. In-memory updates are now performed at a more granular level for faster and more efficient inserts and updates. And improved Parallel Execution exploits the full potentia

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

Half or more of graduates of the tech incubator Y Combinator, a widely watched Silicon Valley institution, now move to San Francisco, founder Paul Graham said by email. Four years ago, he said, the city lacked the seriousness of purpose that infuses Silicon Valley. “I’m suspicious when startups choose SF,” he wrote at the time. “Things have changed,” he declared recently.

“This is really where the center of gravity is,” agreed Y Combinator graduate Dan Siroker. He worked for Google in Mountain View but started his own business, a company that lets businesses test versions of websites, called Optimizely, in San Francisco. And the profitable company just got a round of venture funding.

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

The SAP HANA Project
2006 in Berlin, Germany
SAP began an academic research project to experiment with the inner workings of in-memory databases with faculty and students at the Hasso Plattner Institute at the University of Potsdam. The team of academic researchers was able to look at the prototypes from the Tracker team (now called NewDB) and add some valuable external perspectives on how to mature the technology for enterprise applications.

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

[I fell off my chair laughing… -DBM]

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

Ahmed Ezzat joins Actian with 25 years of development experience at the architecture and senior management levels with expertise in core data management, including structured and unstructured data. He previously served as Hewlett Packard’s Fellow and Chief Technologist with the company’s Cloud Division where he led the analytics area. Prior to Hewlett Packard, Ahmed served as Senior Director and Architect at Oracle where he architected, designed and implemented Oracle’s buffer cache in Oracle 7.3. At Cray Research, Ezzat managed the OS group in the flagship T3D NUMA supercomputer product. Ahmed has co-authored and won the Arno Penzias award for his contribution to the NEST system and has been serving as Adjunct Professor at Santa Clara University’s Computer Science and Engineering Department for the past 20 years.

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

Mark Milani joins Actian with over 20 years of engineering experience, having most recently served as Senior Vice President of Services Engineering at Oracle where he led the technology direction for Oracle’s Cloud Services products and provided engineering support to Oracle Global Customer Support and Advanced Customer Services. Mark also served as the Vice President of Platform Technologies at Oracle where he was instrumental in leading the development of Oracle’s database, middleware, and application software for 18 operating systems and hardware platforms. Prior to Oracle, Mark held a variety of management positions for OS/390 and Gateway Development, Cross Access Corporation, Aion Corporation and IBM.

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

Joining OpenText as Executive Vice President, Worldwide Field Operations, is Greg Corgan. Mr. Corgan was most recentlyCorporate Senior Vice President and President, Global Field Operations for Infor, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise software for a broad range of business functions including inventory and asset management, resource planning, and human capital management. Prior to Infor, he wasSenior Vice President, Worldwide Sales for Fair Isaac Corporation, a leading developer of credit scoring systems. Mr. Corgan spent three years at CA Technologies at positions including Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales.

Muhi S. Majzoub joins OpenText as Senior Vice President, Engineering. Mr. Majzoub is a seasoned enterprise software technology executive having recently served as Head of Products forNorthgateArinso. Prior to that he was Senior Vice President of Product Development for CA, Technologies. Mr. Majzoub also worked for several years as Vice President for Product Developmen

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

Lawson unveiled Project Landmark in 2005, soon after its acquisition of Intentia. The main idea behind Landmark was to standardize the way that Lawson developers wrote software and the ways that Lawson customers modified and maintained their systems. The project has several components, including a 5GL development environment that was based on the Lawson Pattern Language (LPL), a Landmark runtime operating within a J2EE-based Web application server (IBM WebSphere running on AIX is the preferred solution), a user interface (later dubbed Smart Office), and a services oriented architecture (SOA) integration environment.

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

Facebook is a long-time user and uses the platform across its entire business, according to Jay Parikh, Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure engineering. The company has seen a broad set of use cases for the technology and found that that it needs even more extensibility. Facebook’s single-largest cluster is over 100 petabytes of data, and the company is looking to make the data available at all times.

Metamarkets CEO Mike Driscoll told the crowd that Hadoop is a technology — not a solution. And instead of batch processing for later analysis, users need interactive dialogs with data. You need data to be in conversation, and Hadoop is more like a penpal and should be available as a service. Olsen and Oracle SVP Andy Mendelsohn stated that users want their data source to be close to their Hadoop installation.

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

But there really are slumlords. There really are acquirers whose only interest is to squeeze as much profit as possible for their owners/investors and let the customers be damned. They may not be able to attract many new customers once the word gets out, but that takes time. And it can take years before enough customers bite the bullet and walk away from the lock-in that major HRM products produce for the slumlord to suffer any real pain. And by then the smartest of these slumlords has already sold off that diminished revenue stream.

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

Workday has been something of a secret in EMEA. Andy Leaver, VP and vernal manager Workday EMEA set the record straight.

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

With Workday, you are always on the current release of the software and the latest technology, helping to create and maintain your competitive advantage.

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

upgrading your ERP system is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, organizations want to keep up with technology improvements while, on the other, they don’t want to constantly change their operations to adapt to functionality. To add insult to injury, most organizations don’t upgrade because it delivers any sort of tangible ROI. Instead, they do it because they have to and often have no other choice if they want to continue to have annual maintenance and support. Upgrades aren’t necessarily a good or bad idea in general, but a company should upgrade only if it can point to three key reasons for doing so:

1. The business operations are going to benefit from the ERP system upgrade…
2. The organization can effectively digest the upgrade…
3. There is a clear upgrade project strategy and plan in place.

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

SuccessFactors is addressing the broad purpose of human capital management, which is to attract, engage and retain talent to meet business objectives. The company is advancing in a highly competitive market for next-generation applications focused on people and workforces. It has new releases coming across its applications portfolio, including compensation and learning, which I will cover later.

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

one less competitor on the buyer’s long-list;
uncertainty in the buyer’s mind about future direction, product strategy for the SAriba offerings;
twice as much chance that the buyer is someone who just “doesn’t like SAP / doesn’t like Ariba”; and
perhaps a less aggressive pricing stance than Ariba have been taking.

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

Version 1 of the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP), to be released June 15, will be Hortonworks’ first production-ready product release. Hortonworks was set up a year ago by Yahoo, along with Benchmark Capital, to provide enterprise support for Hadoop, the large-scale data analysis platform. Yahoo played a pivotal role in the early development of Hadoop.

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

Management said that the acquisition of Rypple should not be looked at as the company
entering the ERP market, in terms of back office applications such as accounting. The
company might someday enter these markets, but its current focus is to bring front-office
HR applications, such as training, hiring, and performance management, into its CRM
solution. The goal is to create a seamless experience—where, for example, employees can
insert comments into performance reviews while in applications that they use every day,
such as the Sales Cloud. Additionally, salesforce does not plan to recreate the existing
paradigms of front-end HR, but rather bring new modern social functionality into the
applications.

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

The previously set start date of June 18 has been vacated and now the SAP-Oracle retrial “will trail a criminal trial set to begin on August 27,” according the filing

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

What’s It Going to Take?

Oracle—Median effort for 500 or fewer users: 535 person days, over 35 weeks, at a cost of $250,000. For more than 2,500 users: 1,845 days, for 52 weeks, costing more than $2 million.
SAP—Median effort for 500 or fewer users: 150 person days, over 12 weeks, at a cost of $125,000. For more than 2,500 users: 3,350 days, over 31 weeks, costing more than $1.4 million.

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

The former director of Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau, Ng Boon Gay, was charged with corruptly obtaining “sexual gratification” from Cecilia Sue Siew Nang, twice as an employee with Oracle in December, and two times before when she was employed with Hitachi Data Systems.

The sexual favors were made so that Ng would help “further the business interest” of the companies, the court documents said, without elaborating.

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

Obviously this is a simple exercise to underscore that a smart workplace policy on social applications is one that supports employees’ natural inclination to use these apps intelligently while still ensuring the company is safeguarded from security risks. It also puts into context the reality of how these technologies are really used at work and points towards opportunities for businesses to leverage their employees’ desire to collaborate with each other online. Finally, it’s important to realize that effective social media use policies are often linked to enterprise-specific collaboration tools as well, which are often delivered online via Web applications.

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

As I speculated last week, Oracle is defining “application services” in at very fine-grained level, almost down to individual programs.

For example, within “Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management – Marketing” is “Fusion Marketing Segmentation – up to 500,000 records” really a separate and distinct application from “Fusion Marketing Segmentation – up to 1,000,000 records?”

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

Microsoft opened its TechEd 2012 conference with a discussion of its updated cloud platform around Windows Server 2012 and Windows Azure, along with new Visual Studio tools in Microsoft Team Foundation Server and LightSwitch.

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

Here’s how SAPs IT department has become more effective:

1. SAP’s IT department is perceived by the organization as a group that improves products by gathering customer input and that sells products by educating SAP customers through blogs, Twitter, SAP communities and other social communication channels.

2. Most of SAP’s enterprise customers want to communicate with the CIO over their salespeople – Bussmann obliges when necessary.

3. The IT department reaches out to SAP’s external customers to test concepts. Bussmann realized quickly, how big opportunity it was to help the company convey the SAP story. It’s become so popular, that as a result, Bussmann has taken over 250 meetings in the last 12 months.

4. By interacting with people on Twitter, Bussmann has learned of several key trends that have helped SAP prepare to be more competitive. As an example, in 2010, Bussmann was alerted by several analysts on Twitter that the iPad was an enterprise product and not just a consumer prod

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

“The trend-setters now use their support sites as a platform for hosting large user communities, for delivering skills training, and for interacting with customers over the whole life-cycle of product ownership. In turn, customers tend to reward these companies with higher satisfaction scores and long-term loyalty.”

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

In a note to investors Monday, Needham & Co. analyst Laura Martin rates Facebook a buy with a target price of $40 — more than 40% above where it opened the week. Martin cites Salesforce’s $689 million purchase of Buddy Media and Oracle’s acquisitions of Vitrue (for a reported $300 million) and Collective Intellect to support her recommendation.

“These commitments of new money to the social space, of which FB is the anchor tenant, imply that well-regarded public companies are valuing FB more robustly than investors are valuing FB,” she writes. “Without a vibrant FB platform, these investments will be worth zero.”

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

HP is a full-service hardware player with holes in its product line (no tablets, no phones), and its software offerings seem arbitrary.

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

Last May, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts flew to California from her London headquarters to introduce herself to an executive she thought could be critical to the future of her business: Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. When the two met at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, they stood in the hall batting around ideas for 15 minutes before even sitting down. Ahrendts explained her vision: to create a company where anyone who wanted to touch the brand could have access to it. She just needed a digital platform to make it happen.

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

IT services company Steria has appointed former HP and SAP CEO Leo Apotheker as an independent member to its supervisory board for his ‘strategic planning experience’.

Laetitia Puyfaucher, co-founder and chairwoman of global communications agency WordAppeal, was also appointed to the board.

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

This Critical Patch Update contains 14 new security vulnerability fixes. Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply Critical Patch Update fixes as soon as possible.

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

“This week’s Norwegian Developer’s Conference included a skit that involved inappropriate and offensive elements and vulgar language. We apologize to our customers and our partners and are actively looking into the matter.”

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

[Embarrassing on so many levels -DBM]

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

Member States shall take measures to ensure that fair compensation is received for carried traffic (e.g. interconnection or termination). Regulatory measures may be imposed to the extent that this cannot be achieved through market mechanisms and to the extent that such measures do not hinder competition.

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

[Let’s start by compensating the US taxpayers for subsidizing the creation of this “essential” resource. -DBM]
Revisions of the ITRs should
acknowledge the challenges of the new Internet economy and the principles that fair compensation is received
for carried traffic and operators’ revenues should not be disconnected from the investment needs caused by rapid
Internet traffic growth.

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

The European proposal, offered for debate at a December meeting of a U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, would amend an existing telecommunications treaty by imposing heavy costs on popular Web sites and their network providers for the privilege of serving non-U.S. users, according to newly leaked documents.

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

Is There Anything New?…Oracle Exaggerates Its Cloud Apps Availability…Oracle’s Developer Cloud Still in Controlled Availability…Ellison is Rewriting History…Ellison’s Characterization of Competitors is Out-of-Bounds…Oracle Exaggerates Adoption of Fusion Apps…Oracle Customers Choose Cloud Because of Fusion Complexity

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

Oracle’s got 100+ enterprise applications live in the ‪cloud‬ today, SAP’s got nothin’ but SuccessFactors until 2020

[Wow. That’s just wrong on so many levels. The of apps is pretty inconsequential. Oracle has close to zero users on the cloud. SAP, while not the leader by any means in the cloud, has gazillions with SuccessFactors. Sometimes a reality distortion field is not helpful … -DBM]

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

In a release, he called the Oracle Cloud the “most comprehensive cloud on the planet Earth” and said other cloud vendors “only have niche assets.” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who has 34,550 followers on Twitter, responded to Ellison’s claims with his own jab: “Beware of the false Tweet” (Benioff had previously referred to Oracle’s cloud as the “false cloud”).

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

Oracle’s expansion into cloud computing also puts Ellison on a collision course with an old antagonist, software entrepreneur David Duffield. Ellison bought Duffield’s former company, PeopleSoft, for $11.1 billion in 2005 after a bitter takeover battle that lasted 18 months. Duffield has since started a cloud-computing service called Workday that sells human resources management tools.

Ellison predicted Oracle eventually will trump Salesforce and Workday by offering a wider and more secure range of services that will fulfill all the cloud computing needs of big companies and government agencies.

Oracle’s new services include “”social relationship management” tools to analyze what people are saying on Facebook’s social network and other online forums such as Twitter. In an apparent effort to underscore his commitment to Oracle’s new focus, Ellison sent his first tweet shortly after leaving the stage Wednesday. His message promoted Oracle’s new cloud computing applications while still

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

Oracle Cloud is rolling out with more than 100 standards-based, enterprise-grade applications for services dedicated to databases, Java developers, mobile, analytics, and more. Those industry standards include SQL, Java, and HTML5. Ellison quipped that, naturally, the Oracle Cloud will be running on the Oracle Databases: Exadata and Exalogic.

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

The good part was seeing Fusion Applications finally getting their due, along with some newly acquired bits like RightNow and Taleo. More on that in a moment.

Among the bad parts was seeing Ellison, who posted his first Twitter tweet on Wednesday, walking through a demo of “Oracle Social Intelligence,” demoware based on functionality acquired in recent days from Vitrue and Collective Intellect. When it comes to social, Oracle is reacting, late once again, to a social networking trend born years ago and most articulately and effectively brought to the enterprise by Salesforce.com.

The ugly? Well, those were the off-base (though admittedly entertaining) slams, like the claim that SAP has nothing in the cloud but SuccessFactors until 2020. Ellison went on the offensive to take attention away from the fact it took Oracle seven long years to get serious about cloud computing.

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

Oracle did not “round out” its cloud offerings, as many had been expecting, but rather company co-founder and CEO Larry Ellison did walk through the Oracle Cloud in a little more detail than he did back during the OpenWorld extravaganza last October.

And he cut a lot of jokes and even did another demo, this one on the social marketing aspects of the Fusion apps running on the Oracle Cloud, Big Red’s implementation a platform and application cloud for running its own code. But the news was a little light.

It could be – and at press time Oracle PR could not yet confirm this – that what Ellison was trying to communicate between all the jokes and demos that the Oracle Cloud was out of testing phase and now generally available.

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

“Keep it simple and make sure you can build upon it,” Ahrendts explained. “Every year, you keep layering on.” Whether that is SAP or Salesforce or any other vendors’ offering seemed irrelevant to the conversation. It was simply about what would deliver the most benefits to the business—now and in the future.

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

Google’s Apps Status Dashboard confirms that Gmail has had a service interruption as of 9:20 a.m. this morning. (Under “detailed technical info,” Google just says “Numeric Code: 152,” and you can read the obtuse explanation of that here.)

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

Logistically, what are the challenges of having two chief executives?

So far we haven’t had many. There were, at the beginning, [questions] of who to ask; that was easily handled because you make sure nobody asks both [of us]. That’s rule number one: you can only ask one of us. Secondly, we try to always stay synchronised. It’s a little bit like a team sport, where you know where your colleague on a team is and their skill, and you pass the ball at the right moment and know it’s better for the company. I think that’s hard work.

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

$4 Billion

Without such an order, Hewlett-Packard estimates it should be awarded more than $4 billion in damages, based on an extrapolation to 2020 that accounts for projected losses, said the person, who didn’t want to be identified because the court document containing the damages request is confidential.

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

Oracle will have to prove that it can adjust to the changes triggered by cloud computing. All this while still trying to profit from the old model of installing and maintaining software on the premises of its corporate and government customers.

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

LinkedIn engineer Vicente Silveira said in a blog that the company had instituted new security measures to protect customer passwords, including the use of salting techniques.

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

Team Obama officials, on background, said the president, after arriving at SFO, will head first to a “small campaign round table” at The Landmark at One Market with just 25 people.

Tickets for the sold-out event — aimed specifically at tech executives — cost $35,800 per person, making the Obama campaign take there nearly $1 million.

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

ASUG members and SAP customers are looking for more insight on the topic—how SAP and its cloud chief Dalgaard will marry SAP’s HCM software for the on-premise and on-demand worlds, what customers need to know about the purported “out of the box” integration espoused by leaders, and what’s the future HR roadmap.

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

More than 62,000 staff – or about 70 per cent – had been overpaid, with one staff member from the department’s office receiving an extra $178,000, Mr Springborg told parliament.

However, Mr Springborg said any staff who had been overpaid $200 or less would not have to return the money.

The decision would mean almost 10,000 staff would not have to return overpayments and about $1.5 million would be written off.

Mr Springborg said “tens of millions of dollars” was also overpaid to staff who have now left Queensland Health.

“Obviously some of this will be very difficult to recover,” he told reporters outside parliament.

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

And there was also no provision for necessary upgrades or reimplementation of the system before licensed support ends in 2014/15.

The report, tabled in parliament on Wednesday, showed just over $1 billion of the projected $1.253 billion cost related to day-to-day operation, to ensure Queensland Health staff were paid fortnightly.

The rest, about $245.5 million, is to be spent fixing key flaws with the system and an analysis to determine a longer-term solution.

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

One of the most touchy jobs remains for Mr Springborg – recouping the overpaid wages.

There is $91 million outstanding, or about $1,000 for every worker.

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

[Good explanation of what seems like a very high number – and is! -DBM]

Of the total cost, $416.6 million will have been incurred to the end of the 2011/2012 financial year.

The remaining $837 million is forecast to be spent over the following five financial years.

The report warns that the $1.25 billion “excludes any costs associated with the reimplementation or upgrade of the system, any contingencies associated with the implementation of system solutions, and additional [fringe benefit tax] costs that may arise from waiving overpayments rather than recovering them”.

Of the total expected costs, about $1 billion relates to payroll operations that has and will continue to ensure Queensland Health staff are paid on a fortnightly basis, the report says.

There were always going to be operational costs to run the payroll system each year, for example on salaries for payroll officers, but the audit shows costs had been expected to be about $60 million a year.

The expected operational

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

Microsoft has today taken the wraps off a rather ambitious project dubbed on{X}, which is available exclusively for Android smartphones initially (support for more platforms is planned), and offers a range of tools that promise to help “automate your life.”

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

In 2010, as she and Catz discussed the settlement of the Hurd dispute, Livermore said she asked Oracle for a commitment to keep porting its software to Itanium. Catz never told Livermore that Oracle didn’t want to make that commitment, Livermore said.

[Not saying “no” is not the same as saying “yes” … -DBM]

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

Oracle will enable marketing organizations to create more targeted marketing campaigns; help customer service teams respond quickly to customer feedback on social media; generate targeted leads and opportunities for sales teams; and strengthen how companies build more effective brands using the Internet and social media.

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

As for Benioff slamming SAP, we thought that was Larry Ellison’s job.

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

His main message, though, is not so much about the acquisition or his heart, but about fear and whether it’s holding you back. It’s clearly not hindering Lazerow.

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

Oracle, it seems, is not one for irony. Right after an epic court fight with Google in which it was accused of abusing its intellectual property, the software maker is now trying to dissolve another company’s patents.

This time, though, Larry Ellison’s company gets to be the good guy. In a lawsuit filed in Wisconsin federal court, Oracle is asking the court to invalidate four patents belonging to a patent troll that has been terrorizing corporations and small software developers across the country.

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

Hewlett-Packard said Oracle committed itself to porting its core software products to future versions of Itanium in a 2010 partnership agreement with HP, while Oracle said that deal fell far short of a true contract, as the companies’ lawyers gave opening arguments on Monday in a courtroom in San Jose, California.

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

Salesforce has been looking to add more products that can help its customers manage their marketing campaigns. Salesforce makes software designed to make it easier for companies to track their current customers’ needs and identify new sales opportunities.

Buddy Media, which is based in New York, allows customers to create content on social-media sites, place ads there and measure the effectiveness of such campaigns. Combined with the Radian6 products that Salesforce acquired last month, Salesforce will be able to deliver a package that lets customers “engage, gain insight, publish, advertise and measure social marketing programs,” Michael Lazerow, CEO and co-founder of Buddy Media, said in a blog post Monday.

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

So now, when a user enters one of the words that Google engineers have identified as problematic, a drop-down menu highlighted in yellow will appear beneath the search box that reads, “We’ve observed that search for [X] in mainland China may temporarily break your connection to Google. This interruption is outside of Google’s control.”

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

The existence of Stuxnet and the presumption of U.S. and Israeli involvement have been widely reported, even though U.S. officials have never confirmed the government’s role. The code name and scope of the project and other details of the effort were reported on Friday by the New York Times in an adaptation from a coming book.

[Wouldn’t it be great if members of the current US administration would stop leaking critical details of our nation’s intelligence and security operations??? -DBM]

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

:44 Cloud messaging versus HANA messaging – do the two connect?

1:52 Dissecting the future of Business ByDesign

2:52 Why ByD “process integration” seems to be giving way to individual products

3:59 SAP’s cloud direction: are apps winning out over PaaS?

4:52 Cloud integration is not trivial

5:31 Does cloud matter to SAP or is it “all HANA all the time”

6:49 Lars’ view of “loosely couple” versus cloud integration

7:25 Will SAP’s partners play a role in app development and integration?

8:28 Future of the NetWeaver Cloud

9:26 What do SAP’s customers need to hear next?

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

It’s a bold decision, and due to Internet Explorer’s large size, it potentially could deal a damaging blow to big ad networks’ ability to provide personalized, targeted ads.

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

“Even if a suit found for one company or the other — or, in particular, if it found for HP — you have to wonder about how valuable a relationship that Oracle was forced back into would really be for both companies.”

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

Sadly, Java programs don’t even come close to scaling linearly, and the reasons why all boil down to locking.

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

Overall, Oracle has a good chance in its appeal, Naughton said. “The cases where you don’t have a good shot is where the case turns on the credibility of a witness, a ‘he-said, she-said’ situation. On a case like this, where it’s based on a legal question, they have a fine shot on appeal.”

Still, “they’re going to have to contend with a thorough, well-written decision by a careful judge and that’s not easy,” Naughton added.

The ruling is so artfully rendered, in fact, that Oracle will have a tough time winning an appeal, according to Tyler Ochoa, an intellectual-property law professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

“This is by far the most careful and well-written opinion on software copyright I’ve ever read,” Ochoa said via email. “I will be astonished if it is not upheld on appeal.”

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

If ad blocking is the hacksaw of Internet-protecting add-ons, Do Not Track Plus (DNT+) is a finely honed katana, slicing out tracking behaviors embedded in sites without destroying the modern Web.

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

Apps, where art thou? It’s a nice OS. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it. Where we stand now, there’s little risk of anything happening to it because there’s so few native apps to test on it. Like Sync being finished by the final version, Microsoft says that there will be plenty of apps for you to play with by the time it launches in the fall. But now? Aside from the default apps like Mail, People, News, and Travel, you’ve got Evernote, Slacker Radio, and Cut the Rope and a handful more. It takes time to build a deep bench of apps, and Microsoft’s on a tight schedule.

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

How do I turn the Do-not-track feature on?

The Do-not-track feature is turned off by default. To turn it on:

At the top of the Firefox window, click on the Firefox button (Tools menu in Windows XP) and then click Options
Select the Privacy panel.
Check Tell websites I do not want to be tracked.
Click OK to close the Options window

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

Do Not Track Plus blocks tracking technologies that advertisers and other companies use to track your browsing behavior. Automatically block websites from following you and see all the ways and the number of times you’ve stopped tracking.

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

Sohaib Abbasi, CEO of Informatica, says the company continues to grow despite worries about reduced government spending in Europe and the U.S.

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