Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-04-19

• IBM Looks For The Bottom
  When Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini called a tentative “bottom” for PC sales in a conference call Tuesday, the chip maker set the theme for the current earnings season: searching for signs of life in a troubled tech market. But when IBM ( IBM – news – people ), another massive bellwether for the tech sector, reports first-quarter earnings Monday, analysts expect a different message for the enterprise tech business: A bottom may be coming, but getting there is going to hurt.
• Innovations in Business Intelligence
  Business intelligence (BI) 2.0 may have been overshadowed by all the excitement around its cooler cousin Web 2.0, but it cannot be ignored. It is time to take a down-to-earth look at a few recent advances that are making BI more accessible, affordable, and relevant to businesses than ever before. The most observable changes in BI over the past two to three years have occurred in the vendor landscape. “Megavendors” (such as Microsoft, SAP, IBM, and Oracle) are rising above independent vendors (Business Objects and Cognos). In addition to IBM’s acquisition of Cognos, Oracle‘s purchase of Hyperion, and SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects, the BI road map of the software giant Microsoft poses a threat to all vendors in the small to medium business (SMB) market. Behind the myriad changes in the BI marketplace, major innovations in BI technologies have been afoot.
• SAP takes familiar yet effective approach to SAP virtualization
  SAP’s “platform agnostic” approach to SAP virtualization has rival enterprise applications vendors like Oracle and IBM playing catch up, according to analysts. The German ERP giant has emerged at the front of the virtualization pack, at least from a public perception standpoint, analysts say, and it’s all thanks to a rather simple and somewhat familiar strategy: Provide customers with the tools, code tweaks and support they need to make sure SAP virtualization projects go smoothly, and let the partner community handle the rest. It’s the same straightforward approach that SAP has always taken with infrastructure issues like database or operating system support. But thus far, according to analysts, the strategy has helped SAP gain a reputation for being on the progressive side of the virtualization movement.
• Microsoft’s ‘Bulldog’ MDM: New test build coming in May
  For close to two years, Microsoft hasn’t said much about its plans for MDM (meaning Master Data Management, rather than Mobile Device Manager, in this case). But it looks like the Softies will have some new MDM technology to show and talk about at its TechEd 2009 conference in mid-May. Last anyone heard, Microsoft had launched a first tech preview of its “Bulldog” MDM technology in the fall of 2007. After that, radio silence. This week, there was new word that the original tech preview was discontinued in preparation for a new Community Tech Preview.
• Organisational rejig at Wipro
  The country’s third largest tech firm, Wipro Ltd, has announced an organisational reshuffle, a week prior to its annual earnings anno uncement. The company is also setting up a new unit for healthcare. As per an official communique , signed by co-CEOs Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe, the restructuring will include over half a dozen top executives; TK Kurien, G K Prasanna, Deepak Jain, Rajiv Shah, P Subhramanyam and Mukesh Gandhi . Wipro also has a new recruit in research scholar, Dr T S Krishnamurthy, a former senior Satyam executive. Some changes are with immediate effect while others that require transition time are effective July 1.
• Satyam Buyer Inherits Bloated Work Force
  Nearly 10% of the work force at Satyam Computer Services Ltd., the Indian outsourcing company at the center of a fraud scandal, could be eliminated by new owner Tech Mahindra Ltd., according to Satyam’s government-appointed chairman. Kiran Karnik said in an interview that the company’s work force is too large for the workload because Satyam founder B. Ramalinga Raju hired more employees than needed as part of his effort to conceal the fraud. Mr. Raju in January said he had been fudging his company’s accounts for years to make it appear more profitable, including the creation of a fictitious bank balance that exceeded $1 billion.