Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-28

• Microsoft Introduces Major ERP and CRM Incentive Offerings
  Furthering an ongoing commitment to help businesses thrive in today’s economy, Microsoft Corp. today introduced three major incentive offerings. The first is Business Ready Flexible Pay, which gives new Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM customers in the U.S. the option to purchase the solutions today but pay for them in equal payments over three years…While other vendors have significantly raised their maintenance fees over the past year, Microsoft has not only held its enhancement rates steady, but has also launched a number of money-saving offers… Second,…a 50 percent discount on licensing, and receive a rebate equal to 25 percent of the suggested retail price of the Microsoft Dynamics solution…from Sage MAS 90 or MAS 200, or Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. … Third,…now Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be purchased as a stand-alone product from Business Ready Licensing.
• Business Ready Flexible Pay for Microsoft Dynamics
  • Get affordable and predictable payments Manage cash flow and control costs with predictable payments over three years, resulting in ownership of the Microsoft Dynamics software licenses. • Realize rapid return on investment Align software expenses with the long-term benefits of your Microsoft Dynamics solution, resulting in rapid return on your investment up front. • Increase productivity today Start using a Microsoft Dynamics solution today to increase productivity. Also, enjoy access to the Business Ready Enhancement Plan which provides the tools and resources you need – product information, downloads, self-support resources, training and more – to keep your users working efficiently.
• Oracle Committed to Sun’s Hardware Business
  The company has a strong track record with acquisitions. Since 2005, Oracle has spent about $30 billion on acquisitions that have fueled both top-line and earnings growth. Oracle’s track record does bode well for the company as it makes a push to become a serious player in the hardware space. Oracle believes customers will want to buy high-end servers from the same company that makes the software running on them, a model that’s been successful for competitor IBM, which sells both servers and the software applications.
• H-1B Visa Law: Trying Once Again
  The bill would not reduce the number of H-1B visas — now 85,000 per year — but contains provisions to increase oversight and enforcement and discourage outsourcing of H-1B visa holders. It also requires all employers seeking to hire an H-1B visa holder to pledge that they have made a “good faith” effort to hire American workers first.
• Sun Microsystems expected to post 3Q loss
  ANALYST OPINION: Some analysts are concerned about what happens to Sun’s different divisions under Oracle, particularly hardware, but most agree that a sale was the only way for Sun to improve its finances. Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Doug Reid called the deal an “escape hatch” that will likely close in the summer as scheduled – since there are fewer potential antitrust issues than a tie-up with IBM – and will make Sun more efficient and competitive. While Sun’s standalone numbers are still expected to fall in the third quarter, Reid says Sun, once incorporated into Oracle, will be able to leverage Oracle’s brand to become more effective against Hewlett-Packard Co. ( HPQ – news – people ) in servers and “gain a slightly larger share of wallet within existing Oracle accounts.”
• Imagine Where Microsoft Would Be If It Had The Discipline of Oracle
  Now, contrast that with Microsoft. Ballmer doesn’t know what the company is about. Is it focused on the desktop, games, internet, enterprise? Who knows? He doesn’t have a coherent vision of where all these markets are going. Who could? As a result, Ballmer doesn’t have a coherent strategy. He’s attempting to do everything; and he’s doing nothing well. Seriously, does anyone have a clue what Ballmer will do next, and why? If you say you do, you’re lying. You can’t know, because there is no strategy. There’s just a bunch of incoherent initiatives. It’s too bad, because if Microsoft had been as focused as Oracle, they could be hugely dominant in the enterprise space. As it is, they’ve wasted ten years.
• The SAP/Teradata deal explained
  Just to be clear — I still don’t see this as a big deal. It doesn’t portend any grand SAP/Teradata joint mission to smite Oracle, IBM, and/or Microsoft. Nor is it a telling first step toward an SAP/Teradata merger. It just removes a particular competitive disadvantage Teradata had vs. Oracle et al., from which Teradata’s smaller specialist competitors still suffer. And it offers SAP BW customers another high-quality DBMS option.
• Marc the software slayer’s new mission
  “It’s time for The End of Maintenance.” Salesforce is now going after the maintenance fees that the software industry has long charged for updates and bug fixes. With such costs ranging from 20 percent to 25 percent of the original price of the software, Benioff points out that means customers are paying for their software all over again every four or five years. For Salesforce and “software as a service” peers like NetSuite, Workday, SuccessFactors and RightNow, they don’t charge charge maintenance fees as all costs are included in subscription fees.
• America’s Cup – It’s back to Court we go
  Societe Nautique de Geneve is the Defender of the America’s Cup, and was required in a decision of 7 April by the Appeal Court, to accept the Challenger in a 90ft yacht, lodged on 11 July 2007. At the first meeting of the Challenger and Defender last week, SNG announced that they were planning to stage the Match in May 2010, in apparent contravention of a New York Supreme Court Order stipulating that the Match should take place in three months earlier in early February 2010. It has been rather obvious since the Appeal Court decision in early April, that SNG has been playing for time in meeting the US challenger, and has a number of ploys underway to achieve this end. … ‘SNG/Alinghi also announced that they would Defend in May 2010, and apparent contravention of a New York Supreme Court order requiring a match to be sailed on 8 February 2010.
• Sun Microsystems lost $201 million last quarter, better than analysts had expected
  But the loss was not as bad as some analysts had expected. Sun said the loss amounted to 27 cents per share, or 7 cents per share after excluding certain one-time charges. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast a net loss of 18 cents per share, excluding one-time charges, on revenue of $2.9 billion.
• Satyam, Tech Mahindra set to have $2.2 bn revenue
  Satyam Computer Services and its new owner Tech Mahindra are set to have combined revenues in the range of around $ 2.2 billion. While an immediate merger is ruled out, the two companies may be integrated two or three years down the line to have one large Tech Mahindra, a top Tech Mahindra official told employees at the “Tech Mahindra All Hands Meet Conference” last week.
• CIO Salaries Rise, But Bonuses Slip
  According to more than 400 respondents, CIOs’ average salaries are $193,000 in 2009, a slight increase from the 2008 average of $188,000. Last year saw the biggest year-over-year jump in salaries, with a 17 percent increase over 2007’s average of $161,000. Average bonuses slipped in 2009 ($33,000) from 2008 ($46,000), dropping total average compensation for 2009 to $226,000 from the 2008 total of $234,000.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-27

• The Biggest Loser in Oracle-Sun Deal: SAP
  During the next several months, important questions will have to be sorted out by Oracle, such as can the Silicon Valley behemoth succeed in a subsuming Sun’s wares and employees into its own world, and will Oracle be able to achieve the lofty earnings predictions made by CEO Larry Ellison? But another critical question is this: What will be the effect of this transaction on Oracle’s other main product area: business software applications, such as its ERP, CRM, supply chain and BI lines? And, of course, how will this affect Oracle’s number-one competitor in the space: SAP?
• Oracle’s Dicey Deal — and Why It’s a Sign of the Mergers Ahead
  Goldmacher is advising clients to sit tight on Oracle shares at least until the dust settles, figuring the shares will trade in a range of 15-20 over the next 12 months. Still, he sees a long-term defensive benefit in keeping Sun’s Java software platform, on which many Oracle applications are based, out of the hands of its database nemesis, IBM.
• Will Oracle kill MySQL? Who cares?
  Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL isn’t like a lottery ticket. There is no chance that MySQL will get significantly better by leveraging some of Oracle’s technology. MySQL developers and practitioners are worried because the only outcomes of this uncertainty are either neutral or negative. Is this growth on my pancreas benign? We’ll have to wait and see.
• Virt tool maker Cassatt is going titsup
  William Coleman – the founder and chief executive officer at server virtualization management tool maker Cassatt – has bared his soul to Forbes magazine and says that the company is in the process of trying to sell itself or shutting down and selling off its assets. A company spokesperson confirmed the Forbes report and added that Cassatt currently has 55 employees and about a dozen very large customers who have been in deployment for quiet a while.
• President Obama Announces Members of Science and Technology Advisory Council
  Craig Mundie is Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft Corporation. He has 39 years of experience in the computer industry, beginning as a developer of operating systems. Dr. Mundie co-founded and served as CEO of Alliant Computer Systems. … Eric Schmidt is Chairman and CEO of Google Inc. and a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc. Before joining Google, Dr. Schmidt served as Chief Technology Officer for Sun Microsystems and later as CEO of Novell Inc.
• The Next Enterprise War
  The entry of Cisco and Oracle into the server business is the first salvo in the battle to reshape the data center.
• Sun, Oracle address sale worries
  Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. are trying to allay concerns that Oracle could sell Sun’s hardware business after the planned merger of the two tech innovators is completed. If Redwood City-based Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ:ORCL) wants to keep the Sun hardware business, that would reduce the post-merger uncertainty at the roughly 2,200-employee Sun campus in Broomfield, where many people work on its hardware products.
• Wipro bids adieu to 300 more ‘Non-Performers’
  The spokesperson said, “Those who don’t clear the ‘tests’, are the ones who are sent off.” Pointing out to similar kinds of measures by other companies, she added, “This type of a move is taken by many companies these days, due to the economic downturn.”
• Satyam Installs SAP And Its Employees Get Well-Deserved Praise – Global CIO Blog – InformationWeek
  Most of Satyam’s 40,000 employees, who had nothing to do with the financial fraud that nearly destroyed the company earlier this year, have spent the past three months dutifully serving their customers and fulfilling their professional obligations. So it was nice to see a big client lavish praise on Satyam’s employees upon completion of a complex SAP project vital to India’s security and national defense. The SOA-based ERP solution from SAP has gone live at Mazagon Dock, one of India’s leading shipbuilders, and Satyam’s team was recognized by Mazagon officials for their diligent work during difficult times.
• Drizzle, MySQL and a Public Apology to Karen Padir
  So, when I heard Drizzle being referred to as “the MySQL Drizzle project”, it irked me. If the MySQL engineering group had embraced Drizzle and been active in contributing to it, I wouldn’t have any problem with referring to the project in that way. Furthermore, Drizzle has a lot of contributors outside of Sun Microsystems. If MySQL wants to call it the MySQL Drizzle project, then they should be able to call it the Mixi Drizzle project or anything else they want to. Is it true that the Drizzle code base finds its lineage in MySQL? Certainly, but I don’t believe at this point that the MySQL group has contributed to Drizzle enough to warrant changing its name.
• BNY Mellon Drives Post-Merger Efficiencies With Informatica
  The Bank of New York Mellon is successfully using the data integration platform from Informatica Corporation to streamline the consolidation of Asset Servicing data after the 2007 merger of The Bank of New York and Mellon Financial Corporation. Following the development of a merged banking infrastructure, BNY Mellon, leveraged the Informatica data integration platform and Informatica Professional Services to help create an Integrated Information delivery platform for global institutional clients of its Asset Servicing business.
• ‘Mad Money Lightning Round’: Go With Salesforce.com
  Salesforce.com (CRM Quote): “This is one that always confounds me. It’s always expensive, but it always goes higher. Anyone who wants growth with some risk, that’s the one to own.”

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-26

• But rivals question Oracles’ motives
  “I have a feeling Oracle is starting to get to that position and fortunately they’re financially strong, but they do have all these brands out there. Some of them are conflicting, but at some point they will have to rationalise all that, and that’s going to be painful.”
• In downturn, an opportunity for Silicon Valley tech giants to get stronger
  Oracle’s decision to buy Sun Microsystems was a surprise for many in Silicon Valley, but analysts say the deal is a logical outgrowth of two related trends that are reshaping the tech industry as it wrestles with a bruising global recession. With stock prices in the cellar, bigger and stronger companies are seeing opportunities to buy small or struggling ones at bargain rates. And tech giants such as Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard are expanding their businesses now, with an eye toward a future when the economy comes roaring back, by moving to become full-service suppliers of hardware and software for the big data centers that increasingly support commerce around the world. “There’s going to be that next wave, and the big vendors are positioning themselves to be ready to capture that opportunity,” said Jean Bozman, who follows the tech industry for research firm IDC.
• MySQL 2009-2010 roadmap
  The development model for MySQL Enterprise took a big step forward with the new community process Karen Padir announced in her Tuesday keynote. This is great for both the open source server as well as enterprise customers, because the closer the tie between the community and the development path, the better the quality and faster the progress towards new functionality. I’m not entirely sure everyone at Sun still completely understands why a working community process is a benefit for the enterprise customer base, but I’m happy steps are made in the right direction, and it seems to me that Karen Padir is going to be a good leader for the product.
• Oracle’s pursuit of Sun gives rise to job anxiety
  “We want to see Oracle do well with the acquisition,” Paul said. “But from a Denver and Colorado point of view, it’s probably not going to bode well. Unfortunately there are going to be a fair number of people who are redundant.”

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-25

• Raising Bill Gates
  In interviews with The Wall Street Journal, Bill Gates Sr., Bill Gates and their family shared many details of the family’s story for the first time, including Bill Gates Jr.’s experience in counseling and how his early interest in computers came about partly as a result of a family crisis. The sometimes colliding forces of discipline and freedom within the clan shaped the entrepreneur’s character. The relationship between father and son entered a new phase when the software mogul began working full-time seven months ago at the Gates Foundation. For the past 13 years, the father has been the sole Gates family member with a daily presence at the foundation, starting it from the basement of his home and minding it while his son finished up his final decade running Microsoft. They now work directly together for the first time.
• Drizzle seeks to scale up MySQL – SD Times On The Web
  Brian Aker is rebuilding MySQL in the image of the Apache Web Server. As the director of architecture at MySQL, he’s been spending much of his time over the last year studying what it is that developers actually use in MySQL. To that end, he expects to deliver Drizzle, a complete fork of the MySQL codebase, sometime next year. For now, Drizzle is developing smoothly in four-month windows. “The focus is the restructuring of the code and enabling others to write the features they actually need,” said Aker. That means tossing out most of the typical features, such as authentication and stored procedures, found in a modern database.
• The End of Innocence at Apple: How Steve Jobs Was Able To Save the Company
  For Jobs, 1997 was shaping up to be a propitious year. Pixar, the little computer animation studio he’d bought a decade earlier, had had the second-highest-grossing film of 1995 with Toy Story, its first release. The year after that, Apple had bought NeXT, the computer startup he’d founded after John Sculley showed him the door, and brought him back as a special advisor. Now, with Apple’s latest CEO ousted and nobody left to challenge him there, he simply assumed power.
• What the Spike in Mergers Means for the Economy | Newsweek Voices – Daniel Gross | Newsweek.com
  Multinational tech and pharmaceutical companies face a common dilemma—once you’re huge, it’s tough to consistently churn out new innovations that can add meaningfully to revenues. Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, has evolved from enfant terrible into a sort of J. P. Morgan of the software industry (right down to the giant yacht)—a consolidator rather than an innovator. In the past four years, Oracle has purchased at least four dozen companies, including PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems, Silicon Valley high fliers that had been laid low. Now Ellison is presenting an encore with Sun Microsystems.
• IBM’s Oracle emulation strategy reconsidered
  I’ve now had a chance to talk with IBM about its recently-announced Oracle emulation strategy for DB2. (This is for DB2 9.7, which I gather has been quasi-announced in April, will be re-announced in May, and will be re-re-announced as being in general availability in June.) Key points include: * This really is more like Oracle emulation than it is transparency, a term I carelessly used before. * IBM’s Oracle emulation effort is focused on two technological goals: o Making it easy for an Oracle application to be ported to DB2. o Making it easy for an Oracle developer to develop for DB2. * The initial target market for DB2’s Oracle emulation is ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) much more than it is enterprises. IBM suggested there were a couple hundred early adopters, and those are primarily in the ISV area.
• Some DB2 highlights
  # DB2 is getting Oracle emulation, which I posted about separately. # IBM says that it had >50 new DB2 data warehouse customers last year. I neglected to ask how many of these had been general-purpose DB2 customers all along. # By “data warehouse customer” I mean a user for InfoSphere Warehouse, which previously was called DB2’s DPF (Data Partitioning Feature). Apparently, this includes both logical and physical partitioning. E.g., DB2 isn’t shared-nothing without this feature. # IBM is proud of DB2’s compression, which it claims commonly reaches 70-80%. It calls this “industry-leading” in comparison to Oracle, SQL Server, and other general-purpose relational DBMS. # DB2 compression’s overall effect on performance stems from a trade-off between I/O (lessened) and CPU burden (increased). For OLTP workloads, this is about a wash. For data warehousing workloads, IBM says 20% performance improvement from compression is average. # DB2 now has its version of one of my favorite Oracle securit
• Adobe Flash Platform Diversity From SAP to Facebook
  The diversity in the types of experiences that can be delivered on the Flash Platform and the developer communities that are embracing Flash continues with the announcement this week that Adobe and Facebook have partnered to release an official ActionScript client library for the Facebook platform; meanwhile the SAP Community Network site has just added a new section which provides resources for SAP developers interested in embedding Rich Islands into Web Dynpro applications.
• The Truth is Out There: Is It At JavaOne and Oracle OpenWorld?
  Some of the questions that people will be talking about and looking for answers to at these two major conferences are: * Is 2009 JavaOne the last JavaOne? With Oracle’s OpenWorld being a huge event in its own right, will Oracle have interest in maintaining a separate and very large conference? What will JavaOne be like in the future under Oracle if the conference continues? * Will Oracle support JavaFX with the same passion and resources that Sun did? * Will Oracle support GlassFish and NetBeans with the same passion and resources that Sun did? * Will Oracle support MySQL with the same passion and resources that Sun did or is this another conspiracy theory with potential? * Will Oracle support JRuby and other largely Sun-sponsored community projects with the same passion and resources that Sun did? * What effect will this have on the Java Community Process (JCP)? * How will the life of the Java developer change?
• Oracle suits to strap on Sun’s Java sandals
  For the first time in any of its many acquisitions, Oracle’s getting more than products and customers along with a purchase: It’s getting a cause.
• Ballmer sees years of economic contraction
  [DBM-He’s almost certainly correct, at least with respect to Microsoft‘s revenues and profits!] Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Friday that the company expects to have to deal with a weak economy for at least the next several years. “We are planning essentially for the economy to contract,” Ballmer said at a media forum in Cologne, Germany. “That may take two, three, four years, partly depending on government policy to ease some of the pain. Then we will see growth again.” The comments came the day after Redmond-based Microsoft reported that its quarterly revenue fell from the previous year for the first time in its 23-year public history, while its profit dived 32 percent.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-24 (part 2)

• Microsoft cancels company picnic
  When Microsoft said on Thursday that it had found more ways to trim expenses, it wasn’t kidding. The software maker notified its workers on Friday that it is canceling its annual summer picnic for Seattle-area workers. … The yearly picnic was one of the few events that brought together the bulk of Microsoft’s Puget Sound workforce, which is spread out over many different parts of the region, including Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond. The company also has a company meeting, typically held in September, that takes place at Safeco Field, the home of the Mariners baseball team. “We’ll still have that because it’s very business-oriented,” Gellos said.
• Amdocs Q2 Beats on Sales, Profit; Q3 Forecast In Line
  Telecom software maker Amdocs (DOX) this afternoon reported sales and profits for its fiscal second quarter ended March 31 that beat estimates. Revenue fell 8% to $711 million, while profit fell to 50 cents a share. That compared to analysts’ estimates for $704 million and 49 cents. The company forecast FY Q3 profits and sales in line with analysts’ estimates, at 46-50 cents a share, compared to the Street consensus of 49 cents, on sales of $670 million to $690 million, versus the consensus $687 million. In late trading, Amdocs shares are unchanged at $19.37.
• Informatica Q1 2009 Earnings Call Transcript
  Our sustained results underscored the merits of our singular focus on data integration. As we noted before, data matters even more in these uncertain times of economic turmoil. The current global economic recession continues to influence industry analyst projection as well as customer IT priorities and budgets. With our singular focus and track record of continual innovation, we are well positioned with the compelling value proposition. Our strongest ever product portfolio enables our customers to do more with less while aligning IT with top business imperatives. Industry analyst, Forrester, recently revised downwards their U.S. IT spending growth estimate from an increase of 1.6% to a decrease to 3.1% in 2009.
• Citi Upgrades Informatica (INFA) to Buy; Remarkably Consistent
  Citi analyst says, “INFA can “point to the scoreboard” following another quarter of strong execution in a tough environment. INFA hit the upper-half of 1Q rev guidance and would have beaten if not for foreign currency’s negative impact. Deft expense controls led to a 380bps op-margin improvement y/y to 21.6% from 17.8% leading to a EPS guidance beat despite $0.01 dilution from the mid-quarter Applimation acq. We believe INFA can maintain this performance and outperform Street expectations.”
• Informatica Shrs Soar On Strong Q1, Citi Upgrade
  Informatica (INFA) shares are sharply higher after the company posted strong Q1 results and solid Q2 guidance, which together podded Citigroup analyst Brent Thill to upgrade the shares. Informatica yesterday reported Q1 revenue of $109.1 million, about $1 million light of estimates, but profits of 18 cents a share, 3 cents above the Street. The top line miss was largely related to currency; the enterprise software company said revenue would have been $6.4 million if exchange rates at quarter end were the same as when the quarter started.
• Proposed H1 B Visa legislation restrictive: Wipro
  The country’s third largest software exporter Wipro on Friday said the proposed US H1B visa legislation, which was introduced in the US Senate yesterday, is antithesis to globalisation and is a restrictive trade practice. Wipro Ltd’s Executive Vice President (Human Resources) Pratik Kumar said, “The proposed H1-B Visa legislation is anti -thesis to globalisation. It is a restrictive trade practice. Over the years India has helped the US to compete globally and this has brought benefits to both countries. A reversal of this could impact the US economy adversely.”
• Rajus used 17 aides to manipulate demat accounts
  Seventeen trusted lieutenants of B Ramalinga Raju, the defamed promoter of Satyam Computer Services, and his family were made to open demat accounts to fraudulently trade in shares of the promoters of the beleaguered IT firm. Investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) reveal that the promoters of Satyam — Raju’s mother Applanarasamma, his brother Suryanarayana Raju and his wife Jhansi Rani — sold their shares in 1999 to 17 employees and made a killing in the market. The modus operandi shows the promoters transferred the physical shares through endorsement in the names of these 17 individuals, who, in turn, deposited the same in their demat accounts and then sold these shares through five investment companies. The investment companies, floated by Raju and his family, included Elam Investment, High Grace Investments, Fincity Investments, High Sound Investments and Veeyes Investments. Later, these investment companies sold these shares in the market.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-24

• Should the database market be interesting?
  EnterpriseDB or Ingres may appear to offer an alternative to the “Oracle Tax,” but if Ingres grows who is to say Oracle won’t just buy them? They bought mySQL, didn’t they? This question is not an academic one. It holds big implications for business generally.
• Oracle says it intends to grow, integrate Sun’s hardware business
  Oracle Corp. intends to grow Sun Microsystems Inc.’s hardware business after the pending acquisition closes and focus the server and storage businesses on the two companies’ common enterprise customers, Oracle officials disclosed Thursday. “Key to this strategy will be our plans to develop software-optimized hardware that integrates all of the enterprise components: hardware, database, middleware and applications,” officials said in a filing made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC filing was made as part of Oracle’s Monday announcement that it planned to acquire Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun for about $7.4 billion. Sun employs more than 2,000 people at its Broomfield campus.
• Microsoft Winces at Recession’s Blow
  As expected, the tech spending slowdown is taking its toll on Microsoft(MSFT Quote), with the software giant registering its first ever year-over-year revenue decline.
• Tom Siebel Offers 20 Million Dollar Prize
  After his presentation today, Tom Siebel fielded audience questions. A voice began speaking… “What are you?” Siebel asked. “A freshman,” the voice said. “What are you studying?” “Still figuring that out.” “Me too,” said Siebel. Silicon Valley gets Zen.
• Earn, learn, have fun, Wipro tells employees
  Software services firm Wipro Ltd is asking its employees to take a break. As it struggles to manage rising human resources costs, India’s third largest software provider is offering sabbaticals and reduced work days to benched employees. Benched employees refer to staff not engaged in any specific project.
• PwC auditors ‘ignored’ Satyam fraud for fees
  Two PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors were aware that accounts of Satyam, the IT outsourcer at the centre of India’s biggest corporate fraud, were being misstated but signed them off in return for an “exorbitant audit fee”, Indian investigators have alleged. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which looks into India’s most serious and complex crimes, has filed documents in a court in Hyderabad that outline what it alleges are the outlines of a scandal that has become known as “India’s Enron”.
• Amdocs Reports 2Q Results
  Amdocs DOX reported fiscal second-quarter results Wednesday that came in slightly below our expectations, but not enough to change our fair value estimate. Overall revenue decreased to $711 million from $774 million in the year-ago quarter, a decline of 8.2%. Amdocs’ results reflected a very tough macroeconomic environment, which forced service providers to pull back their investments in new project implementations and some support activities. Amdocs’ North American business managed to hold revenue steady with last year, as this business mostly includes long-term managed services business and maintenance support services that are considered critical by service providers. The same can’t be said for the company’s European and emerging markets business, which fared the worst–revenue from these two regions declined more than 26% from last year. Most of the revenue from these two regions is project-based and considered more discretionary than managed services business. Despite a signific
• H-1B Visa Law: Trying Again
  “The H-1B visa program should complement the U.S. workforce, not replace it,” Durbin said in an Apr. 23 statement. “The…program is plagued with fraud and abuse and is now a vehicle for outsourcing that deprives qualified American workers of their jobs.”
• Microsoft: ‘Pressures are broad and deep’
  “We remain more cautious than most about the state of the world economy,” Liddell said. “Economic pressures are broad and deep.” His comments are in contrast to statements by executives at EMC and Intel, who held out hope that the worst could be behind them.
• Sun, Oracle address sale worries
  That wouldn’t necessarily rule out the kind of sale Staten predicted that Oracle could pursue. He said Oracle could sell Sun’s hardware business to an Oracle partner company, such as Hewlett-Packard, that would sell Sun hardware in coordination with Oracle’s software and consulting, giving customers the benefit of integrated technology but without Oracle itself having to expand into hardware manufacturing and sales.
• EMC asks staff to take a pay cut
  EMC CEO and president Joe Tucci said there’ll be no more layoffs beyond the 2,400 announced at the start of the year, but he has asked employees to take a 5% pay cut for the remainder of the year, an initiative that will impact EMC Australia New Zealand staff. In an email statement issued by EMC’s Australian PR company, David Webster, EMC’s ANZ President told SearchStorage ANZ that “This is a worldwide initiative to improve our effectiveness and efficiency and will help EMC ride out this period of economic uncertainty – putting us in a position of even greater strength when conditions improve.”

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-23

• Arbitrage Analysis: Oracle’s Acquisition of Sun
  Thus regulatory risk and potential deal closing time probably the key variables to be watching for this arb. Should the deal close within the next five months, then there is potentially a decent spread remaining to be captured despite the run-up-on-news today. Arbitrage metrics shown below.
• Think Big! Could Sun/ORCL Trigger IBM/SAP Combo?
  Patrick Walravens, an analyst with JMP Securities, proposes a whopper: He thinks Oracle’s move to acquire Sun could make IBM (IBM) itchy to move into the applications software business “in a big way.” How? By going after SAP (SAP).
• MySQL 5.4 gets bigger anyway, encroaching on new parent Oracle’s turf
  If you remember the days when “Toyota Truck” was an oxymoron in the heavy load division, you know how it feels when barriers are shattered. This puts MySQL into the heavy load category, which isn’t exactly inside the boundaries of Larry Ellison‘s nice little stack.
• Microsoft Unveils $300M Expansion (into Russia)
  Praising the government for its “amazing work” fighting the crisis, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced Monday that his company would invest 10 billion rubles ($300 million) in Russia over the next three years. The U.S. company will expand the free services it offers students and startups across Russia and will also help fuel innovation in sectors that are not directly software related, Ballmer said at a news conference in Moscow.
• Cognizant Technlogy to Back-Pay H-1B Workers
  The Computerworld article rightly points out that this Cognizant Technology case is relative small potatoes compared to some of the other abusers of the program like Mumbai-based Patni Computer Systems and Michigan’s Computech, who owed collectively over $5 million dollars in backpay and fines.
• VMware Expected To Get A Lift
  You can’t accuse VMware of bad timing. The virtualization specialist on Tuesday announced vSphere 4, its new data center operating system, a day before it reports earnings. The upgrade aside, analysts expect VMware ( VMW – news – people ) on Wednesday to report first-quarter net income of 20 cents a share, nearly double the 11 cents a share the company reported in the same period a year ago. Analysts attribute the earnings growth to rising sales of VMware’s virtualization products.
• Jonathan Schwartz’s Blog
  In the last three updates to this blog, I’ve tried to set out a clear direction of where Sun’s headed. I’ve talked about our three basic priorities: 1. Technology Adoption 2. Commercial Innovation 3. Efficiently Connecting Adoption and Commercial Opportunity.
• Sun Expands Identity Management Suite With New MySQL Database Interoperability for Dramatically Lower TCO
  Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced expanded interoperability between the Sun Identity Management Suite and MySQL(TM) the world’s most popular open source database, allowing customers to radically reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for deploying identity management solutions. In addition, the new integration helps to enable companies to create more dynamic identity architectures, comprised of powerful directory services and relational databases, to improve performance and simplify management of large-scale applications. For more information visit: http://www.sun.com/identity.
• A Vision for Oracle’s Cloud Platform: The Red Cloud
  They’re very powerful, and the interesting discovery Tony made is that they absolutely love Force.com. It’s not hard to see why. The SaaS model squeezes the SI ecosystem. The normal meat and potatoes business around just getting on-premises software installed is greatly reduced. The business of just keeping the lights on is almost non-existant for SaaS. Yet SI’s have a lot to bring to the table. A good SI often understands the Domain, its Best Practices, and the key Business Processes better even than the software vendor. Having access to a SaaS platform makes it possible for the SI to turn that valuable knowledge into product which can then be sold. That’s why having a platform on which to do that is so important to them. Tony goes on to speculate that Oracle is picking up the components necessary to create such a platform…I suppose they would argue the coming Fusion represents such a platform. At the same time Sun, like every big hardware vendor, was hard at work crafting
• Microsoft Partners See Threats In Oracle-Sun Deal
  Despite industry speculation that Oracle (NSDQ:ORCL)’s acquisition of Sun will help winnow competition for Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) in various market segments, Microsoft partners see plenty of competitive threats arising from the deal. For example, Oracle’s newly acquired ability to build turnkey appliances shouldn’t be underestimated, according to Andrew Brust, chief of new technology at New York-based IT consultancy twentysix New York.
• Oracle expected to slash thousands of Sun Microsystems jobs
  Oracle, which has reshaped the business technology industry by acquiring and carving up other companies, is sure to shed thousands of Sun workers after its $7.4 billion acquisition of the server and software company, industry observers say. Some figure it will cut from a third to a half of Sun’s work force. “A lot of jobs will be cut,” said Cassatt Software CEO Bill Coleman, a Sun alumnus who also cofounded BEA Systems, which Oracle acquired last year for $8.5 billion.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-22

• Arbitrage Analysis: Oracle’s Acquisition of Sun
  Thus regulatory risk and potential deal closing time probably the key variables to be watching for this arb. Should the deal close within the next five months, then there is potentially a decent spread remaining to be captured despite the run-up-on-news today. Arbitrage metrics shown below.
• Think Big! Could Sun/ORCL Trigger IBM/SAP Combo?
  Patrick Walravens, an analyst with JMP Securities, proposes a whopper: He thinks Oracle’s move to acquire Sun could make IBM (IBM) itchy to move into the applications software business “in a big way.” How? By going after SAP (SAP).
• MySQL 5.4 gets bigger anyway, encroaching on new parent Oracle’s turf
  If you remember the days when “Toyota Truck” was an oxymoron in the heavy load division, you know how it feels when barriers are shattered. This puts MySQL into the heavy load category, which isn’t exactly inside the boundaries of Larry Ellison’s nice little stack.
• Microsoft Unveils $300M Expansion (into Russia)
  Praising the government for its “amazing work” fighting the crisis, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced Monday that his company would invest 10 billion rubles ($300 million) in Russia over the next three years. The U.S. company will expand the free services it offers students and startups across Russia and will also help fuel innovation in sectors that are not directly software related, Ballmer said at a news conference in Moscow.
• Cognizant Technlogy to Back-Pay H-1B Workers
  The Computerworld article rightly points out that this Cognizant Technology case is relative small potatoes compared to some of the other abusers of the program like Mumbai-based Patni Computer Systems and Michigan’s Computech, who owed collectively over $5 million dollars in backpay and fines.
• VMware Expected To Get A Lift
  You can’t accuse VMware of bad timing. The virtualization specialist on Tuesday announced vSphere 4, its new data center operating system, a day before it reports earnings. The upgrade aside, analysts expect VMware ( VMW – news – people ) on Wednesday to report first-quarter net income of 20 cents a share, nearly double the 11 cents a share the company reported in the same period a year ago. Analysts attribute the earnings growth to rising sales of VMware’s virtualization products.
• Jonathan Schwartz’s Blog
  In the last three updates to this blog, I’ve tried to set out a clear direction of where Sun’s headed. I’ve talked about our three basic priorities: 1. Technology Adoption 2. Commercial Innovation 3. Efficiently Connecting Adoption and Commercial Opportunity.
• Sun Expands Identity Management Suite With New MySQL Database Interoperability for Dramatically Lower TCO
  Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced expanded interoperability between the Sun Identity Management Suite and MySQL(TM) the world’s most popular open source database, allowing customers to radically reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for deploying identity management solutions. In addition, the new integration helps to enable companies to create more dynamic identity architectures, comprised of powerful directory services and relational databases, to improve performance and simplify management of large-scale applications. For more information visit: http://www.sun.com/identity.
• A Vision for Oracle’s Cloud Platform: The Red Cloud
  They’re very powerful, and the interesting discovery Tony made is that they absolutely love Force.com. It’s not hard to see why. The SaaS model squeezes the SI ecosystem. The normal meat and potatoes business around just getting on-premises software installed is greatly reduced. The business of just keeping the lights on is almost non-existant for SaaS. Yet SI’s have a lot to bring to the table. A good SI often understands the Domain, its Best Practices, and the key Business Processes better even than the software vendor. Having access to a SaaS platform makes it possible for the SI to turn that valuable knowledge into product which can then be sold. That’s why having a platform on which to do that is so important to them. Tony goes on to speculate that Oracle is picking up the components necessary to create such a platform…I suppose they would argue the coming Fusion represents such a platform. At the same time Sun, like every big hardware vendor, was hard at work crafting
• Microsoft Partners See Threats In Oracle-Sun Deal
  Despite industry speculation that Oracle (NSDQ:ORCL)’s acquisition of Sun will help winnow competition for Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) in various market segments, Microsoft partners see plenty of competitive threats arising from the deal. For example, Oracle’s newly acquired ability to build turnkey appliances shouldn’t be underestimated, according to Andrew Brust, chief of new technology at New York-based IT consultancy twentysix New York.
• Oracle expected to slash thousands of Sun Microsystems jobs
  Oracle, which has reshaped the business technology industry by acquiring and carving up other companies, is sure to shed thousands of Sun workers after its $7.4 billion acquisition of the server and software company, industry observers say. Some figure it will cut from a third to a half of Sun’s work force. “A lot of jobs will be cut,” said Cassatt Software CEO Bill Coleman, a Sun alumnus who also cofounded BEA Systems, which Oracle acquired last year for $8.5 billion.

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-21

• Lawson: ‘Flat out no to maintenance price reduction but’
  Despite Lawson’s hard nosed position, it is good to see that while the company will not negotiate on prices, it will listen to argument where there is genuine hardship. “Of course we will listen, we want to work with customers,” said Hagar. As the session ended, I sensed that my colleagues on the maintenance issue will have follow up. Watch for posts from Frank Scavo, Ray Wang and Vinnie Mirchandani. In the meantime, here’s a link to the Cue09 Twitterstream, providing further insights into the discussion on this and related topics.
• Enterprise 2.0 and the Trough of Disillusionment
  In August 2008, Gartner released Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008. The report analyzed the different stages of 27 different emerging technologies. Included in the report were technologies related to Enterprise 2.0:
• IBM Reports 2009 First-Quarter Results
  * Diluted earnings of $1.70 per share, up 4 percent; * Reiterates full-year 2009 earnings of at least $9.20 per share; * Free cash flow of $1 billion, up $450 million; * Gross profit margin of 43.4 percent, up 1.9 points; * Net income of $2.3 billion, down 1 percent; net margin up 1.1 points; * Revenue of $21.7 billion, impacted by strong U.S. dollar, down 11 percent, down 4 percent adjusting for currency; * Software pre-tax margin up 2.9 points; income up 5 percent; * Global Services pre-tax margin up 1.6 points; income up 4 percent; * Total services signings up 10 percent, longer-term signings up 27 percent, both adjusting for currency; * 16 services deals greater than $100 million; * Growth markets revenue up 4 percent adjusting for currency; * Returned nearly $2.5 billion to shareholders in dividends and share repurchases.
• Why Oracle Won’t Kill MySQL
  Forbes:What’s your initial reaction to the news that Oracle wants to acquire Sun? Marten Mickos: It’s amazing, and not entirely surprising. Oracle has the money and is a long-term, strategic player. They went into applications to compete with SAP and have successfully done this. Now they want to out-compete Microsoft. Microsoft’s database business is the fastest growing. Oracle can use MySQL to achieve a stronger developer community. But doesn’t that risk cannibalizing Oracle’s database business? MySQL is growing like crazy. That hasn’t hurt Oracle. MySQL works for Web-based applications. Oracle is for older, legacy applications. Oracle might as well cannibalize themselves, then have someone else do it. … Will Oracle run MySQL separately, or try to merge it with other groups? They could mess it up. How? By slipping it into the database division. Then you’ll see turf wars. The power of MySQL is its openness. Oracle is different. They don’t have their bug database public, for exa
• How Oracle Will Swallow Sun
  Sun’s Sparc processor business, for instance, has been a major focus of the company’s $1.8 billion in annual research and development spending, but may be axed or sold off by Oracle, which is likely more interested in Sun’s cheaper Intel ( INTC – news – people )- and Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD – news – people )-based servers. The company’s tape storage business, a result of its $4.1 billion acquisition of StorageTek in 2005, has even less synergy with Oracle’s business.
• Oracle And IBM Get Complicated
  Oracle will have a lot of leverage. Snapping up Sun suddenly gives Ellison control over a key technology upon which both companies depend: the Java programming language. “It’s amazing how much value [Java] has created and how little of it Sun has captured,” said Neill Occhiogrosso, a principal at venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners. “Oracle can make efforts to capture more of that, but that’s a dangerous game.”

Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-20

• Tech M&A: The Challenge of Cheap Deals
  “I have to agree that organic growth and R&D are a better approach to success than acquisitions, and Apple versus Microsoft would be a prime example of how the former is better than the latter,” wrote Apple investor Scott Grannis, in an email to TheStreet.com.
• Ballmer, IBM reportedly surprised by Oracle-Sun deal
  Reporters caught up with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Moscow to get his take on Oracle’s deal to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion. But apparently Ballmer, who is rarely at a loss for words, didn’t exactly have a sound byte at the ready. “I need to think about it,” Ballmer told reporters in Moscow, according to Reuters. “I am very surprised.” I’m hearing that Ballmer wasn’t the only one surprised by Monday’s deal. According to a source of mine, IBM hadn’t given up on purchasing Sun and was blindsided by Oracle’s move.
• Microsoft opens mini-mall at Redmond headquarters
  Workers in the entertainment and devices division of Microsoft Corp. no longer have to leave their corporate home for entertainment. Or shopping, banking, massage or a meeting with as many as 1,400 people. As part of the company’s West Campus development in this suburb east of Seattle, Microsoft opened The Commons on Monday with 14 shops and restaurants, as well as a post office, credit union, bicycle repair shop, outdoor soccer field and conference center. It’s open to anyone with a Microsoft badge, from employees to contract workers such as shuttle drivers and gardeners, and their guests. A pub in the complex will serve alcohol after 3 p.m. and by group reservation. There’s also a company store.
• UPDATE:IBM 1Q Net Falls 1% On Global Rev Drop;Affirms FY View
  International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) on Monday said first-quarter net income fell 1% as currency fluctuations and weaker technology spending dragged earnings lower around the world, more than offsetting improvement in the company’s overall margins. The tech bellwether, which has weathered the economic slowdown through aggressive cost management, also dismissed news earlier in the day that rival Oracle Corp. (ORCL) agreed to pay $7.4 billion to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA), which IBM had considered buying only weeks ago. IBM reaffirmed its full-year earnings guidance of $9.20 per share. It also reported revenue below Wall Street expectations. Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM reported net income of $2.3 billion, or $1.70 a share, down from $2.32 billion, or $1.64 a share, a year earlier. Revenue decreased 11% to $21.7 billion. The drop would have been 4% excluding impacts from the stronger dollar.
• Article – WSJ.com
  The $7.4 billion sale of Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA) to Oracle Corp. (ORCL), announced Monday, won’t be the best return ever recorded by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. But in a sign of the times, it is likely quite good enough that it will deliver a timely dollop of cash for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.’s listed affiliate KKR Private Equity Investors LP (KPE.AE) KPE teamed with Citigroup Inc. in January 2007 to buy $700 million worth of convertible notes in Sun. The two evenly split the investment. KPE hasn’t converted or sold any of its notes, according to a person familiar with the situation. In the event of a change of control – such as the Oracle deal – the notes will be “taken out at par,” or repaid at cost plus accrued interest, according to the person. That means KPE should get at least $350 million when the deal closes. That’s a nice turnaround for the firm, considering that in its year-end results it reported that the investment had decreased in value by $167.4 million.
• India’s Tata Consultancy Services Q4 net profit up
  India’s largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services Monday said net profit rose 4.61 percent in the fourth quarter, hit by lower fees and cuts in technology spending due to the global economic slowdown. Net profit was 13.14 billion rupees (268 million dollars) for the quarter ending March, up from 12.56 billion rupees in the same period a year ago, according to US accounting norms. Revenues for the quarter rose 18.6 percent to 71.72 billion rupees, a statement to the Mumbai stock exchange said. For the full year, TCS showed a 4.5 percent rise in consolidated net profit at 52.56 billion rupees (1.07 billion dollars), from 50.26 billion rupees a year earlier.
• Our Full Analysis of the $7.4B Oracle-Sun Deal
  * The deal could mean trouble for Sybase, which has a lot of customers on Solaris. * It could prove challenging for non-database users of Solaris, for it’s not clear how Oracle will treat Solaris. * It’s good news for Java, as two major corporate giants will be supporting it and will be forced to play nice with each other. * Oracle will keep MySQL going mostly because it can act as a funnel for further business opportunities. Miko Matsumura, VP and deputy CTO at Software AG, has a contrarian take on the merger. He predicts it will be a disaster, with thousands of layoffs. He is right about the layoffs; President Safra Catz was pretty explicit in saying that Sun’s hardware business will be profitable, where one could expect the research team to be slashed along with other products.
• Where is the MySQL in Sun’s announcement
  I find it surprising that in the official Sun Announcement there is no mention of MySQL for two reasons. Firstly, this was Sun largest single purchase of $1 billion only 12 months ago. Second, MySQL’s largest competitor is Oracle. While the Sun website shows the news in grandeur, the MySQL website is noticeably absent in any information of it’s owners’ acquisition.
• TBR: Microsoft tops in revenue but Salesforce.com leads in growth
  Despite the economic recession, Microsoft was able to retain the revenue-leading position in TBR’s 4Q08 Software Business Quarterly (SBQ) Benchmark. The company posted double-digit growth in services as customers looked to optimize existing IT infrastructure rather than invest in new software. Microsoft was able to leverage its scale, deep installed base in the Americas and strong maintenance revenue streams to deliver industry-leading performance. TBR believes the company’s continued investment in expanding into the SMB and vertical markets will position it to garner additional maintenance revenue in coming quarters. Customers continued to seek software solutions that help lower costs and increase flexibility, and the top-five revenue growth leaders in TBR’s 4Q08 SBQ Benchmark all specialize in emerging software technologies, including cloud computing and virtualization. Salesforce.com took the top position for growth as its low-cost SaaS models appealed to customers’ price conscious
• Takeovers Complicate Tech-Firm Ties, Unsettle Some Corporate Customers
  Oracle’s $7.38 billion agreement to acquire Sun moves the software company into areas in which it has had a relatively small presence. In acquiring Sun, Oracle gets into selling computer-server systems, which puts it in competition with existing partners such as Hewlett-Packard Co. The deal also expands Oracle’s software offerings in areas like databases and managing back-office computer functions, increasing its rivalry with companies like Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp.
• TIBCO CEO worries about Oracle-Sun deal’s impact on IT industry
  Will there be confusion and even fear in the Java community? Can Microsoft take advantage of that? Will there be disruption in the hardware server business that works to the advantage of Cisco? Vivek Ranadive, CEO of TIBCO Software, sees a lot of question marks around Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems. “I’m sure there’s nervousness in the Java community,” Ranadive said in an exclusive interview with BriefingsDirect. “Can they trust [Oracle Chairman and CEO] Larry Ellison? What’s he going to do with this control? Is he going to manipulate Java so he gets an advantage? Is he going to make it less open? Is he going to find ways to start charging customers for it? There are a lot of question marks.”
• Why the basically good choice of Aneesh Chopra for US CTO scares the bejeesus out of me
  For the record, my top three seemingly-to-be-ignored, utterly critical government IT challenges are, in declining order: * We need a radically new legal structure for privacy and the government use of information. Failure to act in a timely fashion could literally lead to the end of liberty as we know it. * Large-project contracting and technology acquisition are totally broken. We also need a new legal structure for those. * Once contracting is somewhat cleaned up, we need an agency-spanning consolidation project to radically reduce the number of systems and data centers the Federal government operates.