Stories by China Martens

Oracle's SAP suit raises users' ethics concerns

Oracle's surprise legal move against its main business applications rival SAP has raised questions again about the likely impact on customers of corporate scandals in the IT world. Whatever the outcome of the case, users are voicing their concerns about software vendors' ethics.

Oracle sues SAP for 'corporate theft'

Oracle took its bitter rivalry with business applications vendor SAP up another notch, filing suit Thursday against SAP alleging violations of U.S. fraud legislation, unfair competition and civil conspiracy.

IT vendors prepare SOA specs for submission to Oasis

A group of 18 software vendors made good on their previous commitment to hand over service-oriented architecture specifications to standards bodies once those specifications, designed to make it easier for users to develop SOA-based applications, reach maturity.

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.

MS's Ballmer talks up CRM Live

Microsoft demonstrated Dynamics Live CRM, its planned hosted customer relationship management software, during the closing Wednesday keynote given by CEO Steve Ballmer at its Convergence show in San Diego.

Microsoft creates 'Duet' for Dynamics

Microsoft has unveiled a new product designed to more tightly integrate its back-end Dynamics business applications with its desktop Office suite. It's an approach the vendor has already taken with applications rival SAP AG under their codeveloped Duet software.

Oracle ups involvement in Eclipse, open sources TopLink

Oracle is making the whole of its TopLink Java persistence framework freely available as part of the vendor's increased involvement in the open-source development tools Eclipse Foundation community, the company announced Tuesday.

Lawson enters hosting market with best buddy 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.

Partners prompt Oracle's multicore price change

In response to requests from some of its distribution partners, Oracle has changed the licensing pricing for some of its lower-end multicore servers in order to be more competitive with database rival Microsoft.

NetSuite ramps up e-commerce capabilities

NetSuite, a provider of hosted applications for midsize businesses, will announce Thursday that it has beefed up the electronic commerce capabilities of its software suite and has teamed up with online auction giant eBay in order to attract larger electronic retail (e-tail) customers.

No Valentines on the cards for Open XML, OpenDocument

It may have been Valentine's Day yesterday, but there are no love letters being exchanged between duelling electronic document formats, OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Open XML. Instead, Microsoft, the backer of Open XML, took a public swing at ODF supporter IBM

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