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'Ghost servers' can haunt your bottom line The problem may not rival the movies "Poltergeist" or "The Amityville Horror" for sheer terror, but CIOs and datacenter managers are still well advised to deal decisively with so-called ghost servers. Like celluloid zombies, these forgotten pieces of equipment are dead when it comes to improving the bottom line, but they are very much alive when it comes to eating up IT budgets. Forrester points out missing pieces in SAP's A1S hosted ERP SAP's launch Wednesday of Business ByDesign, a hosted on-demand offering for mid-market customers, is a significant improvement relative to its other offerings in this space, but simplicity and ease of use still remain elusive to the vendor, an analyst observed. September 20, 9:45 a.m. PDT Update: SAP christens its hosted ERP suite Business ByDesign SAP has christened its suite of hosted ERP software for the midmarket SAP Business ByDesign and said it will be available initially in the U.S. and Germany, with the U.K., France and China to follow soon after. September 19, 9:45 a.m. PDT SAP charts new waters with hosted ERP SAP is stepping into uncharted waters with the launch of its hosted business applications service, codenamed A1S, on Wednesday. The move will give it a head start over Microsoft and other rivals, but could also mean SAP learns the hard way that offering hosted ERP on a wide scale is difficult to do. September 19, 7:53 a.m. PDT Best of open source applications A hunger for lighter-weight and lower-cost sales and CRM applications has brought great success to SaaS vendors such as Salesforce.com, and also lifted the fortunes of open source offerings in the space. Open source ERP has had a harder time breaking out, but here too there are several impressive offerings to choose from. And if you're looking to open source for an enterprise portal, CMS, or Microsoft Exchange substitute, you will not be disappointed.  September 10, 3:00 a.m. PDT Update: SAP pushes for settlement talks with Oracle SAP AG has asked a U.S. court to order settlement talks in its legal battle with Oracle Corp., arguing that Oracle exaggerated its claims against the German software maker. Oracle said it opposed such talks and accused SAP of trying to "make this case go away." August 29, 4:27 a.m. PDT SAP doubles customers in India SAP has doubled its customer base in India from 1,000 to 2,000 over the last one year. Markets in India and China will play a key role in its drive to sign up 100,000 customers by 2010, the company said Tuesday. August 28, 4:38 a.m. PDT Workday fleshes out more of its hosted ERP suites Workday, the startup headed by Dave Duffield, the co-founder of PeopleSoft, put more meat on the bones of its ERP (enterprise resource planning) software Monday with the beta release of its financials on-demand service. August 20, 11:02 a.m. PDT SAP describes road ahead for its PLM software Business applications vendor SAP on Wednesday laid out the future path for its product lifecycle management (PLM) software over the next three-plus years. August 8, 4:24 a.m. PDT OSA debuts CCV interoperability prototype Nonprofit vendor consortium the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) made good on its April promise to deliver a prototype demonstrating interoperability between open source and proprietary business applications in time for LinuxWorld this week. August 7, 9:18 a.m. PDT SAP polishes Business One update SAP is showing a new version of its Business One software to channel partners on Monday, an important step toward the general release of the product later this year. July 30, 12:24 p.m. PDT Update: SAP profit climbs 8 percent on new license growth SAP reported an 8 percent jump in its second-quarter net income on Thursday, helped by a sharp increase in revenue from new software licenses. July 19, 5:41 a.m. PDT Update: Oracle adds Google Maps to Field Service Oracle is integrating one of its applications with Google's mapping service to help service providers locate customers more quickly. July 17, 8:26 a.m. PDT Microsoft debuts Dynamics Entrepreneur Solution Microsoft hopes to better meet the back-office needs of smaller businesses with a new take on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software called Dynamics Entrepreneur Solution. July 11, 4:23 a.m. PDT SAP to offer hosted Business One in India SAP AG will announce a partnership shortly to offer a hosted version of its Business One applications to small businesses in India, a spokesman for SAP India said on Monday. June 11, 3:15 a.m. PDT NetSuite goes wireless with help from its friends NetSuite announced Thursday that three of its partners now provide extensions to the vendor's hosted midmarket applications suite so that the software will run on mobile devices. May 24, 11:23 a.m. PDT SAP still on track with A1S Executives of German business software maker SAP remain committed to a first-quarter 2008 launch of the company's hosted midmarket application despite acknowledging problems with product development. May 14, 8:57 a.m. PDT SAP fills gaps with two Nordic acquisitions In line with its acquisition strategy to fill technology gaps, SAP has purchased two privately held Scandinavian software companies. May 14, 5:06 a.m. PDT MS, SAP extend Duet partnership SAP AG and Microsoft Corp. have underscored their commitment to their Duet partnership, jointly developed software that integrates Microsoft's desktop Office suite with SAP's back-end mySAP enterprise applications. April 24, 10:11 a.m. PDT Update: SAP first-quarter profit climbs 10 percent SAP has posted its financial results following a turbulent quarter for the company, reporting a 10 percent jump in profit on increased sales of its software and support services. April 20, 7:44 a.m. PDT Microsoft: No acquisitions planned in ERP area Microsoft, with its hands full integrating its Dynamics ERP (enterprise resource planning) line, does not plan to acquire any of the smaller vendors competing with the software giant in the midmarket area, a senior executive said. April 10, 9:37 a.m. PDT SAP subsidiary mum on Oracle suit SAP AG's TomorrowNow subsidiary has finally publicly commented on the legal action it's facing from SAP's bitter applications rival Oracle Corp. April 9, 9:57 a.m. PDT Does ERP matter? If there was any question about whether the ERP market was in turmoil, the recent shakeup in senior management at ERP stalwart SAP that pushed out rising star Shai Agassi should have answered it. April 9, 9:50 a.m. PDT What the enterprise can learn from consumer technologies Today’s corporate end-users are far more tech-savvy than their productivity with IT tools indicates. After all, screen-deep in IMs, widgets, and elaborate consumer Web apps, they’re proving themselves well-versed in the production and distribution of content as facilitated by the consumer Web 2.0 craze. April 9, 3:00 a.m. PDT Infor buys Workbrain for $227M Acquisitive midmarket applications player Infor Global Solutions is at it again. The company announced Monday plans to purchase Canadian online workforce management software vendor Workbrain Corp. for around US$227 million in cash. April 2, 9:37 a.m. PDT China's Ufida strengthens bond with IBM The already close working relationship between IBM and one of China's largest software vendors, Ufida Software Co., got a bit cozier on Wednesday with the announcement that Ufida has added support for DB2 and IBM middleware to its business application lineup. March 29, 5:35 a.m. PST Dynamics users: Microsoft is listening more Microsoft is spending more time soliciting and responding to feedback from users of its Dynamics business applications, according to attendees at the vendor's recent Convergence show in San Diego. March 20, 4:29 a.m. PST The changing face of Project Green As Kermit the TV frog puppet was wont to lament, "It's not easy being green," something Microsoft continues to find out in relation to its Project Green program to bring its four acquired Dynamics ERP and its homegrown CRM application product families closer together. March 16, 11:54 a.m. PST Microsoft gets enterprise fever Get ready to rumble: the fight for enterprise applications customers is going to heat up as Microsoft Corp. this week confirmed its intention to more aggressively compete with the dominant high-end ERP and CRM players Oracle Corp. and SAP AG. March 16, 9:47 a.m. PST SAP to offer regular updates for Business One More and faster: That's how SAP wants to deliver enhancements to its software for small businesses. March 15, 6:12 a.m. PST Microsoft's new industry focus yields IP buy Just a day after debuting a new initiative to produce more industry-specific functionality for users of its Dynamics business applications, Microsoft Tuesday announced it had purchased IP (intellectual property) and code relevant to the manufacturing sector. March 13, 10:48 p.m. PST Q&A: SAP chief developer heads 'clouds' In search of new markets and customers, SAP AG is developing a new breed of hosted, on-demand products and looking at ways to make its complex business software easier to use. March 9, 8:59 a.m. PST Lawson enters hosting market with IBM Lawson Software continues to broaden its relationship with close partner IBM as the midmarket applications vendor Monday announced plans to enter the hosting market and use more of IBM's middleware. March 5, 7:47 a.m. PST SAP to offer hosted midmarket apps later this year SAP's planned suite of hosted midmarket applications will be available in select markets later this year. The company will offer more details on pricing and functionality after the Cebit trade show in March, according to CEO Henning Kagermann. February 23, 6:41 a.m. PST SAP acquires Pilot Software In a move to strengthen its portfolio of analytic applications, SAP has agreed to acquire privately held Pilot Software, a maker of strategy management software based in Mountain View, California. February 20, 4:25 a.m. PST SAP signs Kagermann through '09 Henning Kagermann will stay on as CEO of SAP AG through May 2009, the company announced Thursday, ending recent speculation that he would leave the helm of the German software maker. February 15, 7:34 a.m. PST Vendors form open-source business alliance Ten leading open-source software vendors have created a nonprofit consortium, dubbed the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA), to push the adoption of more open-source technology in the business world. February 14, 8:36 a.m. PST Oracle seeks more SMB, industry, and compliance business Oracle is positioning itself to try and attract more SMBs as well as customers that have specific industry requirements and those with particular governance or compliance needs. February 2, 12:27 p.m. PST Oracle apps launch, short on glitz, long on reassurance Oracle Corp.'s launch of new releases of its five application families was a surprisingly sober affair, designed to restate the vendor's May 2006 pledge to continue to enhance all of the software products. February 1, 1:28 p.m. PST IBM teams with Lawson to target SMBs IBM Corp. and Lawson Software Inc. are expanding their existing relationship to jointly target small and midsize business (SMB) users, initially in North America and three specific industries. February 1, 9:50 a.m. PST SAP names team to lead new global SME unit Following through on plans to win more midsize businesses as customers, SAP AG has filled several key positions in its newly formed global SME (small and medium-size enterprise) unit. January 31, 11:23 a.m. PST SAP launches application for sales planning Business software vendor SAP has added an offering to its growing suite of quickly deployable applications aimed at helping businesses manage specific tasks across diverse industries. January 31, 9:57 a.m. PST German army recruits SAP Germany's Federal Armed Forces has recruited SAP as part of an IT modernization project. January 25, 11:42 a.m. PST SAP looks to better serve information workers SAP plans to release more software this year to make it easier for users to access its back-end applications including ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) products. January 24, 9:09 a.m. PST SAP to offer hosted suite of midmarket apps SAP is developing a hosted suite of business applications for the midmarket, hoping to attract an untapped segment of customers with the promise of faster implementation and lower ownership costs. January 24, 6:10 a.m. PST Vendors court the retail industry at New York show Microsoft and IBM were among the vendors pitching new software for the retail industry at the start of its biggest annual conference in New York on Monday. January 16, 7:11 a.m. PST SAP launches new All-in-One version Simple PC-like interfaces and integrated reporting capabilities are among the features of a new version of SAP's All-in-One business software targeted at midsize companies, the business software maker said Tuesday. January 16, 4:59 a.m. PST SAP delivers first mySAP 2005 enhancements SAP AG has delivered the first in a planned series of regular enhancements to the current version of its ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, as the vendor embarks on a new way to deliver ERP applications. December 4, 1:20 p.m. PST Good ideas take time Two years ago, I publicly floated the concept that IT should start thinking more like entrepreneurs. What a disaster! I was speaking at a meeting of CTOs, and I mentioned that I’d heard of a few IT departments that were focusing, at least in part, on creating saleable new products and services for their companies. I asked the group what they thought of the idea. December 4, 3:00 a.m. PST Infor CEO ready to fight SAP Midmarket applications vendor Infor Global Solutions Inc. sees challenges for companies like SAP AG and Oracle Corp. to adapt their enterprise software products for small and medium-size business. November 27, 4:16 a.m. PST Open Text readies Livelink ECM 10 Amid the ongoing consolidation in the enterprise content management (ECM) software market, Canadian player Open Text hopes to remain both an independent entity and relevant by tightening its partnerships with vendors that provide more base-level ECM. November 13, 9:48 a.m. PST In Brief: SAP appoints head of new SME unit Keen to carve out a larger chunk of the global market for enterprise applications, German business software vendor SAP has established a new global unit to target small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and appointed a company veteran to head the assault. November 13, 5:35 a.m. PST Microsoft tailors Dynamics CRM for Office and Vista Microsoft will release a new version of its Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) software with functions that mesh with its forthcoming Vista OS and Office 2007 software, the company said Tuesday. November 7, 7:02 a.m. PST HP, SAP embark on major collaborative research The research organizations at Hewlett-Packard and SAP will work together to resolve IT issues faced by their joint customers, notably around virtualization. November 7, 5:31 a.m. PST PeopleSoft co-founder launches his ERP Workday Dave Duffield, the co-founder of PeopleSoft, is hoping he can duplicate the success of his previous applications venture, although this time around he's focused on hosted software. November 6, 11:58 a.m. PST Apps player Infor aims at $3B business within 12 months Midmarket applications vendor Infor Global Solutions shows no signs of satisfying its hunger for gobbling up its peers in the hopes of becoming a US$3 billion business within a year. October 31, 1:20 p.m. PST SAP competitors throw in towel The air appears to be growing thinner for small suppliers of ERP (enterprise resource planning) software competing against industry giants SAP and Oracle. October 27, 4:44 a.m. PDT Open-source ERP vendor hustles in SAP's backyard What's it like for a small German provider of open-source ERP (enterprise resource planning) software to peddle its product in the home market of SAP AG, the world's largest maker of commercial business software? "It's a challenge but we have a business that's growing," Hilmar Brodner, managing director of Synerpy GmbH, said Monday on the sidelines of the Systems IT trade show in Munich. October 23, 9:27 a.m. PDT SAP remains on growth path in Q3 Demand for business application software from SAP appears stronger than ever, with the German company reporting yet another quarter of significant sales growth. October 19, 7:05 a.m. PDT SAP extends global partner program SAP will broaden its PartnerEdge initiative to include all partners involved in building, selling and implementing services for its products. The extended program will also target companies of all sizes, the company said Tuesday. October 17, 7:25 a.m. PDT Oracle broadens its applications management Oracle is to broaden its Enterprise Manager 10g software to include comprehensive applications management. The vendor will make the new capabilities available with the upcoming release of three new management packs for three of its different enterprise applications families. October 13, 4:44 a.m. PDT SAP to simplify banking communications SAP plans two separate enhancements to its core ERP (enterprise resource planning) software in a move to help enterprises manage their payments with banks and their cross-border electronic transactions in Europe. 6:29 a.m. PDT Oracle buys data integration company Sunopsis Oracle has acquired French data integration software company Sunopsis for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced on Monday. 4:06 a.m. PDT Update: EMC, Microsoft perform 'Duet' around ECM EMC Corp. and Microsoft Corp. are substantially stepping up their existing enterprise content management (ECM) relationship to provide tighter integration between EMC's Documentum ECM software and Microsoft's Office, Outlook and SharePoint products. October 3, 6:53 a.m. PDT Oracle releases first Portal product Oracle Corp. has shipped a new version of Portal's billing and revenue management software after winning a hard-fought battle to acquire Portal earlier this year. October 2, 9:53 a.m. PDT Accenture, SAP partner to build healthcare SOA Accenture and SAP will co-develop software using SAP's NetWeaver integration platform to streamline the sharing of data among healthcare organizations and applications in a SOA (services-oriented architecture), they said Wednesday. September 20, 9:09 a.m. PDT SAP responds to Ellison statements SAP reacted quickly and angrily to statements made by Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison during his company's quarterly results meeting Tuesday. September 20, 4:31 a.m. PDT Indian outsourcer invests in SAP training Indian outsourcer Satyam Computer Services plans to train over 1,500 staff over the next two years on software and technologies from business software vendor SAP in a move to meet growing demand worldwide for consultants certified on SAP software. September 13, 6:49 a.m. PDT SAP's ERP 2005 'stable core' for five years SAP AG is making a major change in the way it delivers ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications to customers, breaking with the traditional approach of upgrading the entire software release every 12 to 18 months. September 12, 1:20 p.m. PDT SAP, Cisco team up on compliance Enterprise applications vendor SAP and networking company Cisco Systems are touting their new marketing alliance on governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) business processes as a major milestone in their 18-month-old partnership. September 7, 8:05 a.m. PDT Beware the programming guru Ten years ago I took a job with a large, privately owned plastics manufacturer. The firm’s president had decided to update the proprietary systems that had been running the business for more than a decade with more efficient versions. The company had experienced rapid growth, and the old systems were creaking under the load. September 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT Oracle: Most Fusion development still to come When Oracle executives in January publicly described the vendor's Fusion project to create a new suite of enterprise applications as halfway done, they were referring to the completion of the smaller middleware piece of the massive multibillion dollar project, according to the man in charge of that undertaking. Much work remains to be done on the larger applications piece of Fusion. August 25, 9:31 a.m. PDT SAP's Zimmer: China just starting to embrace IT Klaus Zimmer, SAP's president and chief executive officer of Northern Asia, took charge of SAP's Chinese operations in 1997, a time when the most powerful executive at many Chinese companies was still the Communist Party secretary. August 16, 6:24 a.m. PDT SAP makes first NetWeaver Fund investment Enterprise applications vendor SAP opened the purse strings of its NetWeaver Fund for the first time Tuesday, making an unspecified equity investment in Questra, an intelligent device management software company and SAP partner. August 16, 6:15 a.m. PDT Getting a raw deal on a green card I’ve been in the U.S. as an H-1B worker for almost six years now, and while I’ve managed plenty of successful projects, one job I’ve never managed to complete is landing a green card. August 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT Oracle calls Kingdee acquisition report 'speculation' Oracle on Thursday dismissed as speculation a report that it plans to acquire Kingdee International Software Group, a Chinese ERP (enterprise resource planning) software maker. August 10, 4:16 a.m. PDT Use ERP, axe office jobs If German office workers aren't feeling a bit nervous about losing their jobs, maybe they should be. More than 100,000 administrative jobs in the private sector will disappear over the next five to 10 years as companies move to reduce operating expenses by automating and optimizing numerous administrative processes with the help of modern IT systems, in particular ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, according to a study released Tuesday by the German subsidiary of the consultancy A.T.Kearney. August 9, 4:32 a.m. PDT SAP, Indian school partner on e-governance SAP announced Thursday a partnership with the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (IIM-B) for addressing the e-governance market in the country, and training students at the institute on enterprise resource planning (ERP). August 3, 6:19 a.m. PDT Microsoft shifts Dynamics to per-user pricing Microsoft Corp. is streamlining the pricing of its four Dynamics ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications families from a per-module basis to a per-user basis as a way to make it easier for its partners to sell the software, the company announced Monday. July 10, 6:36 a.m. PDT Update: CompUSA to sell NetSuite's hosted software NetSuite Inc. believes it has scored a real coup, clinching a deal with CompUSA Inc. announced Tuesday where the technology retailer will offer NetSuite's on-demand business software in all of its U.S. stores. June 27, 4:27 a.m. PDT Oracle releases PeopleSoft version 9 Oracle released version 9 of its PeopleSoft Enterprise application suite on Monday, an upgrade the company said will prepare customers to move toward a service-oriented architecture (SOA). June 26, 4:21 a.m. PDT Open-source ERP vendor Compiere gets $6 million funding Compiere has secured its first external funding to the tune of US$6 million and is planning to relocate its headquarters, the open-source midmarket business applications company said Tuesday. June 20, 11:02 a.m. PDT Dynamics NAV first Microsoft business app on Vista Microsoft's Dynamics NAV 5.0 will be the first of the vendor's ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications to run on its upcoming Windows Vista operating system come 2007, Microsoft executives said Monday. June 12, 10:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft ships Dynamics AX 4.0 Microsoft is due to unveil Dynamics AX 4.0, the latest version of its high-end ERP (enterprise resource planning) software Monday at its Tech Ed 2006 user conference in Boston. June 12, 6:31 a.m. PDT Airbus flies on Web services European aircraft builder Airbus is implementing a Web services-based travel management application from SAP as a first step in a planned group-wide migration to a service-oriented architecture. June 8, 6:35 a.m. PDT InfoWorld CTO 25: Roland Whitehead When your IT department has successfully accommodated five M&As in the past four years, you must be doing something right. For Roland Whitehead, global director of IT for the elite auction house Bonhams, the secret lies in custom development, which he considers a key component of Bonhams’ dramatic growth. June 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT InfoWorld CTO 25: Beth Perlman Beth Perlman is an agent of change in an industry not exactly known for nimbleness: regulated utilities. When she joined the Constellation Energy Group in 2002, she became its first CIO. June 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT SMBs offer SAP big opportunity, big challenge Some business application vendors see it as highly fragmented, others as inherently complex. Donna Troy sees the small and medium-size business (SMB) market simply as "a huge opportunity." June 2, 6:36 a.m. PDT SAP targets Eastern European midmarket Even if SAP has gone west to conquer the large and lucrative U.S. market for business software, the German company hasn't lost sight of the potential lurking in its backyard to the east. May 31, 4:32 a.m. PDT Kagermann says SAP to remain independent SAP Chief Executive Officer Henning Kagermann said Monday that the company intends to remain independent and sees no reason to grow through acquisitions as its closest rival Oracle has done. May 30, 5:56 a.m. PDT SAP sets up collaborative centers for SMBs Determined to carve a bigger slice of the huge but highly fragmented midmarket, SAP plans new regional centers to expand its portfolio of industry-tailored business applications, the company said Tuesday at its European Sapphire customer event in Paris. May 30, 4:23 a.m. PDT Hack Tales: Network auditing on a shoestring What do you do when the auditors are breathing down your neck, wanting to see an exhaustive report on the Windows network security of a 2,000-user network across eight sites? That’s easy. Break out a text editor and start writing some Perl. May 29, 3:00 a.m. PDT Send us your hacks Do you have a hack you’re particularly proud of? (And by hack I mean an ingenious fix-it job that may not follow established procedures but gets the task done.) I ask because this week’s cover story, “Heroic Hacks and Inspired Work-arounds” (page 26), relates six seat-of-the-pants hacks that saved the day when a company was in a pickle. These enterprising enterprise rescues, from the case files of three InfoWorld contributing editors, are all variations on a theme — how to solve a problem using smarts, a certain twisted logic, and the tools at hand. May 29, 3:00 a.m. PDT Tales of heroic hacks and inspired work-arounds What does it mean to be a hacker? The mainstream media has long used the term as a kind of pejorative, calling to mind images of pale, skinny misanthropes launching denial-of-service attacks from their parents’ basements. Real hackers know better. May 29, 3:00 a.m. PDT China's Kingdee wants to take on SAP, Oracle Catering for the small and midsize business (SMB) applications market in China is its primary focus, but that doesn't stop Kingdee International Software Group from hankering to take on global enterprise software players SAP and Oracle. May 26, 4:23 a.m. PDT Microsoft to deliver CRM in China Microsoft is joining with channel partner CDC to deliver various applications in China using the software-as-a-service model, Microsoft announced Wednesday. May 24, 6:21 a.m. PDT SAP targets Chinese, Brazilian users SAP is targeting Chinese and Brazilian companies less than a week after talking up the importance of both markets at the business applications vendor's annual U.S. Sapphire user conference in Orlando. In separate formal announcements Tuesday, SAP intensified an already close relationship with leading Chinese IT services and training firm Neusoft Group and opened a new global services center in Brazil. May 23, 8:41 a.m. PDT Agassi: SAP to 'compete like gentlemen' SAP has been strengthening its partnerships with Microsoft and IBM while competing against Microsoft in the small to mid-size business (SMB) applications market and advancing in the middleware software market where IBM has a noticeable presence. May 22, 9:36 a.m. PDT SAP: Google a rival to-be If SAP AG's biggest rival today is Oracle Corp., five years from now it could be a Chinese player or even possibly Internet search company Google Inc., according to SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner. May 19, 9:51 a.m. PDT SAP demos new Muse user interface SAP gave users an early look Wednesday at a new interface known as Project Muse, which the company will roll out across its high-end applications over the coming 18 months. May 18, 8:39 a.m. PDT > Applications |
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