Enterprise Apps

During the last downturn nearly every enterprise software vendor stayed alive for a quarter or more due to their support and maintenance revenue streams. Today, support and maintenance comprises the majority of revenue for many CRM vendors, both public and private. Existing customers are carrying t...

European retailers, like Germany's Metro and the UK's Marks & Spencer, are aggressively moving forward with RFID projects -- with a creative flair that appears to exceed that of their American rivals, experts say. A host of cultural, political and legal factors in Europe are helping push the tre...

Prospects, customers and investors must have a lingering question in their minds with the announcement of a new CEO at Siebel: "Since George Shaheen was already on the board and capable of major influence, why haven't things changed already?" Putting a board member into the CEO slot seems like wind...

Microsoft and SAP announced today they are working to build a program -- code named "Mendocino" -- to link together Microsoft's Word office suite with SAP's enterprise software, a move that analysts say could have a profound effect on the entire market. "The possibility of a close relationship betw...

There are many CRM solutions that track click-throughs, e-mail responses or track ads, but Manticore Technology today released a solution that does all three and takes that a step further to the generation of sales leads. The leads are discovered by organizing information from online marketing campa...

The wireless industry is mounting a very public defense for a controversial application of "contactless smart cards" while a number of consumer groups and privacy advocates have decried the technology as potentially invasive of personal privacy. Former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Securit...

Now that Oracle's acquisition spree has ended, the giant database company is focusing on melding the product lines of PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Retek into a cohesive Fusion. At a customer conference Wednesday, Oracle released its Fusion roadmap and a few more details on what customers can expect,...

May I take your order please?" These sometimes-garbled words uttered through a speaker at your local drive-through restaurant may soon originate from a different city or even another state thanks to new customer-relationship-management technology. Hardee's -- part of CKE Restaurants Inc. in Carpint...

Customer data integration (CDI) is becoming important for enterprises who want to target, acquire, develop and retain customers. In order to benefit from it, however, an enterprise needs to create a unified and comprehensive customer view from all disparate data sources -- including CRM, financial,...

Oracle has made its third purchase in less than a year, announcing today that it has acquired Oblix, a small identity management software company. Terms of the sale were not announced. Oblix's security software allows for Web access control of single sign-on, identity administration and user provisi...

While they worked closely together in the past to provide cutting-edge wireless, bar code and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, U.S. companies Symbol and Intermec are now locked in a widening patent battle that some fear could hamper the progress of RFID. Holtsville, New York-based S...

Oracle and its CEO, Larry Ellison, have won the battle to acquire retail software maker Retek, signing a definitive merger agreement announced today. SAP, Oracle's rival in the quest to buy Retek, bowed out of the bidding. The database giant will buy Retek's outstanding stock for $11.25 a share, or ...

Oracle bumped up its bid to acquire Retek late yesterday, in the second round of its battle with SAP for the retail applications developer. The move was expected, but the new offer, US$11.25 per share to SAP's $11, was lower than the $12 Gartner analyst Andrew White predicted yesterday. At the new h...

Home-grown ERP systems are the Oscar Madisons of the IT world. Grizzled by years of service yet reluctant to change, these massive home-grown systems resist the efforts of CIOs to transform them. More often than not, the home-grown ERP system ends up changing the CIO. The complexity and lack of c...

SAP took another shot in its battle with Oracle, raising to $11 a share its bid for Retek. SAP had been set to buy the retail applications provider for $8.50 a share, then Oracle countered at $9. The war, however, is far from over, analysts say. "I would be surprised if Oracle didn't go through anot...