Enterprise Apps

Software developer SAP and chip designer Intel said today at the CeBIT trade show in Hannover, Germany, that they would collaborate on technology to allow companies to integrate data collected from RFID chips. "The announcement provides additional evidence that RFID is real and is moving from being ...

Oracle, never a company to shy from head-on competition, announced today that it would outbid rival SAP in its attempt to buy software maker Retek, offering $9 per share. SAP had agreed last week to pay $8.50 a share. Oracle's offer bumps the bid for the retail applications provider from $496 millio...

There's a dangerous undercurrent tugging at even the best manufacturer and distribution channel relationships: the inability to set and manage expectations based on supply chain visibility. While many manufacturers insist they have the ability to make and keep commitments based on visibility into mu...

Storage giant EMC today announced updates of two backup products, days after it went on the attack, beginning a campaign -- "Safe Switch" -- to lure customers from its rival and the leader in the backup software market, Veritas. EMC has released Legato NetWorker 7.2 and Dantz Retrospect 7 for Window...

Having gobbled up JD Edwards and PeopleSoft, Oracle yesterday held a coming out party for "Project Fusion," its plan to meld the products of the three companies and hold onto the customer base for which it paid $10.5 billion. "The big news is that Oracle is not forcing customers to migrate," Evan Qu...

Hoping to gain traction with PeopleSoft customers unnerved by Oracle's recent takeover, SAP has acquired TomorrowNow, a leading PeopleSoft support and maintenance vendor. With the acquisition of Bryant, Texas-based TomorrowNow, SAP is working to insinuate itself into the enterprise software upgrade ...

Oracle today officially released the mobile version of its grid computing database, 10g. A version of Database Lite 10g has been in use since 1996 as a means of accessing the main 10g database through PDAs, laptops and handheld computers. The company says its new release is a giant step ahead of the...

Many retailers already use automation in their supply chain and inventory management. Vendor-managed inventory (VMI), for example, has made its way into many retailers. It optimizes supply-chain performance by keeping the responsibility for restocking with the manufacturer, not the distributor. The ...

Hoping to expand its customer base while also enhancing the so-called front office services it already provides, Siebel Systems said it will buy e-billing service provider eDocs in a deal worth US$115 million. Siebel will take control of Natick, Massachusetts-based eDoc's 180 employees and gain acce...

Oracle's OpenWorld conference last week in San Francisco combined the company's traditional shows Oracle AppsWorld and OracleWorld in the company's largest conference ever. More than 25,000 customers, vendor partners, Oracle employees and analysts took part. Even Microsoft made its first appearance....

Now that e-commerce is no longer a novelty, most corporations recognize some basic realities about online sales: Building and maintaining a Web site is no walk in the park; not all browsers are equally interested in buying; and when it comes to sales, slick Web copy can't replace the human touch. T...

Loyalty card programs operated by grocery and drug retailers have been focused on rewarding shoppers for isolated activities. Typically, retailers dole out extra points for buying Brand A today or discount the price of Brand B during a given week and not much more. But now these loyalty programs are...

The introduction of retail RFID comes with many challenges: technological capability, the adoption of appropriate software architectures and the production of cohesive standards, to name but a few. Not the least of these challenges is finding ways to address the concerns of consumer privacy groups.

Oracle today announced a quarterly schedule of security bulletins and patch releases for 2005 that is "a bit of a tradeoff," according to one analyst. "I fully understand why Oracle would want to use a timed release-cycle, but I'm not sure what the reason is for their decision to move away from the ...

The consumer backlash against unsolicited telemarketing and e-mails coupled with ever-increasing competition for customer attention have forced companies to take a new look at their inbound call centers. Long considered a profit drain and necessary evil, inbound call centers are now seen as a critic...