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Salesforce.com and VMware jointly announced Tuesday a new platform for enterprise application development in the cloud. They will offer application development as a service in their VMforce venture. "[Information technology] needs to be transformed into and accessed as a service whether it's into th...

For decades, companies have leveraged technology with the twin goals of reducing the cost of customer support while improving its quality and dependability. This is reflected in the significant investments many organizations have made in providing information, products and services through self-serv...

In Internet time, it's been an eon since "smart appliances" were said to be stocked on the near horizon, but many sunsets later -- eight years, actually -- the futuristic devices are still, well, in the future. One would think the green movement, among other things, would have pushed this concept al...

Memo to telecom service providers: "We never thanked you, but you did a great job offering us consolidated billing. It is hard to remember now, as for the last few years you have been so aggressive in promoting bundled services, but five years ago, this was a major pain point. Three bills for ISP, c...

Are cable "bundle" customers changing channels to wireless telecom services? A recent study by the CFI Group, which focuses on measuring customer satisfaction and CRM issues, indicates they are. That is, if they can. Some can't, either because the choice is unavailable, or they have signed the optio...

In Internet time, it's been an eon since "smart appliances" were said to be stocked on the near horizon, but many sunsets later -- eight years, actually -- the futuristic devices are still, well, in the future. One would think the green movement, among other things, would have pushed this concept al...

You're the manager of a Hilton Garden Inn, and it's the height of family vacation season. The lobby is abuzz with kids toting skateboards and moms pushing strollers; your front desk agents are overloaded with check-ins. In the middle of all this, a harried business traveler calls to the front desk f...

The joke used to be on the U.S. Postal Service. Indeed, jabs about the government's mail system may have driven business to private-sector competitors like United Parcel Service, Federal Express and DHL. That was decades ago; now, it seems, some of the same companies designed to outperform the USPS...

Five years ago, Mark Goldstein and three partners recognized that loyalty programs were becoming a cottage industry. Coming up with the right way to manage those programs, he believed, would be a neat trick. So would finding an effective way to lure in customers. "The toughest part of the business i...

What a difference a few years make. Back when Al Gore ran for president in 2000, experts and laypeople alike engaged in lively debates about whether climate change was real or imagined. Two elections later -- after a mammoth public education effort by that same Al Gore -- most people believe that th...

Oracle is acquiring Primavera Software -- a best-of-breed vendor in the project portfolio management niche. The company already has some in-house functionality in this asset category; it now plans to leverage its existing technology with the Primavera product line to produce an enterprise applicatio...

Oracle OpenWorld wasn't a day old before Twitter-like blog posts began peppering the Internet. Mike Gotta from the Burton Group posted notes encapsulating his essential gleanings from Charles Phillip's keynote. Paul Greenberg was equally terse in his posts, which numbered at least five by the middle...

In Internet time, it's been an eon since "smart appliances" were said to be stocked on the near horizon, but many sunsets later -- eight years, actually -- the futuristic devices are still, well, in the future. One would think the green movement, among other things, would have pushed this concept al...

You're the manager of a Hilton Garden Inn, and it's the height of family vacation season. The lobby is abuzz with kids toting skateboards and moms pushing strollers; your front desk agents are overloaded with check-ins. In the middle of all this, a harried business traveler calls to the front desk f...

Oracle has reached an agreement to buy Skywire, a firm that makes software for the insurance business, as the database and applications giant continues to build out its menu of industry-specific tools. The purchase of Skywire marks the second consecutive acquisition in the insurance space for the vo...

Oracle beat many Wall Street predictions in its second fiscal quarter, reporting $1.3 billion in net income and a year-over-year 36 percent increase in stock earnings. The increase in quarterly profit equated to 25 cents per share. The Redwood Shores, Calif., software giant raked in $5.3 billion in ...

Several years ago when Salesforce.com burst onto the CRM scene, it was difficult to imagine how the upstart firm could make a dent in the space. At the time, the gorilla in the room was Siebel and the thought of an Internet-based application -- an experimental delivery mode then -- besting the deepl...

After two weeks of rebuffing offers from Oracle to buy it for $17 per share, BEA Systems said Thursday it will consider a takeover bid that values it at $21 per share. The move came two days after Oracle tried to turn up the heat on BEA's board by setting a deadline of this Sunday for it to accept i...

Microsoft has cut by almost half the cost of its CRM Live application for partners, bringing its price point down to $15 per user per month. The price cut, of course, is part of Microsoft's ongoing support for its partner network that the company must leverage to make inroads in the Software as a Se...

Hoping to turn up the heat on BEA's board of directors, Oracle on Tuesday set a deadline for the company to accept its $6.7 billion buyout offer. In a letter to BEA's board, Oracle said its current offer of $17 per share in cash would expire at 5 p.m. on Oct. 28. Oracle said the board has rejected i...