Enterprise headlines and summaries, 2009-05-11

• SAP buys into carbon management
  The enterprise software giant said on Monday it has acquired 2-year-old, privately held Clear Standards, a Sterling, Va.-based software company with tools for tracking and reporting a corporation’s environmental impact. No financial terms were disclosed. Clear Standards’ Web-based hosted applications are designed to help a company develop a strategy for managing carbon emissions and reducing its environmental impact. The software can create an inventory of a company’s emissions and then give an environmental regulations manager, for example, a way to track efforts to reduce energy and waste. There are no mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., although both the House and the Senate are working on bills that would affect heavy polluters, such as utilities and large manufacturers.
• Rimini Street launches third-party SAP support for SAP ERP, BW releases
  “We have taken over a year to carefully design our new service around the specific technical, functional and support response needs of SAP licensees, and we will deliver that support with only the most experienced engineers, having an average of at least 10 years’ experience implementing, upgrading and supporting global SAP projects,” Shawn du Plessis, Rimini Street’s vice president of SAP Service Delivery, said in a press release. Meanwhile, the cost increases associated with SAP Enterprise Support won’t go into effect until key performance indicators (KPIs) are met, to the satisfaction of a group of 100 customers. SAP also stretched out the increases and will phase them in over seven years, instead of the four years it had originally planned.
• More than 1,200 Resellers Around the Globe Now Transact Business Through Oracle’s VAD Remarketer Program
  # Demonstrating its ongoing momentum in enabling channel partners to more easily serve the midsize businesses, Oracle today announced that the Oracle VAD Remarketer program has signed more than 50 Remarketer Authorized Value Added Distributors (VAD) globally. # Through these Oracle VADs in North America; Latin America; Europe, the Middle East, Africa; and Asia Pacific more than 1,200 resellers worldwide have closed Oracle business on Oracle 1-CLICK Ordering Technology products. # The Oracle VAD Remarketer Program has experienced dramatic growth since its launch in June 2007. In its first year, the program facilitated 500 new resellers and over 650 sales transactions. Today, the program has enabled over 1,200 resellers to conduct over 2000 transactions. # Oracle’s VAD Remarketer program allows authorized Oracle Value Added Distributors to resell Oracle 1-Click Ordering Technology products through new resellers without requiring them to join the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) or the typical
• What IBM thinks about Oracle buying Sun
  Mills: The problem with Sun is that for the past decade it’s had no road map for Sparc, and sales have suffered as a result. Oracle’s not a hardware company, so it doesn’t have the wherewithal to deliver a road map for either design or fabrication. So Sun is exactly where it started. It doesn’t gain anything as a hardware company by being acquired by a non-hardware company. And if you look at Sun’s revenue, it’s a hardware-based business. So Oracle now has something that is not in any way compatible with what they do everyday. And they promised the street $1.5 billion in profit to boot. So what you’re going to do is jack up all the prices in classical Oracle fashion and cut a lot of people in classical Oracle fashion. And all of that’s going to lead to more customer disruption and likely create a lot of opportunity. For every action there’s a reaction.
• Analysts Expect Tough Quarter for NetApp
  NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) will report its quarterly results next week, and one Wall Street firm is already saying it expects the data storage company to disappoint. Stifel Nicolaus analysts Aaron Rakers and Matthew Nahorski wrote in a research note this morning that channel checks and the performance of other storage vendors suggest that “NetApp will miss Street revenue estimates by a far margin,” although cost-cutting could help the company’s bottom line. Still, compared to the rest of the data storage market, NetApp may be faring better than most. Rakers and Nahorski said data points suggest that overall enterprise storage hardware spending fell more than 20 percent sequentially in the first quarter from the fourth quarter. The analysts said they expect a 5 percent sequential decline for NetApp, compared to the Wall Street consensus estimate of a 1 percent decline for the company.
• Sybase Launches New Version of Replication Server That Enhances Data Delivery and Enables Risk Assessment Across Distributed Enterprise
  Sybase, Inc. (NYSE:SY), an industry leader in delivering enterprise and mobile software, today announced the latest version of Sybase® Replication Server®, specifically designed to move and synchronize data across the enterprise. Replication Server 15 enables pervasive data accessibility and real-time data delivery across heterogeneous database environments. Through the use of Replication Server’s high-performance data movement capabilities, customers achieve cost savings by avoiding expensive platform migration while achieving the benefits of simplified management.
• Idiot CEOs
  This alternatively funded CEO describes other CEO’s that seek VC funding as idiots – with a 1 in a 1000 shot at a lousy valuation (52% Round A, 25% Round B and 15% Round C). He continues that many of the serial entrepreneurs trumpeted by VC’s have no money themselves despite “successful” previous exits. He is not alone about the ineffectiveness of Venture Capital, I frequently hear from other successful entrepreneurs about it. And the situation may get worse before it gets better. The economy is offering VCs even more excuses to turn the screws, and control of companies is gained in more ways than a simple equity stake.
• SQL Server To Get Real-Time Boost
  The next release of Microsoft’s SQL Server database, code-named “Kilimanjaro,” will offer master data management (MDM) and support real-time data feeds for business intelligence (BI), reporting and analytics, the company revealed today. … The addition of MDM (which is often described as providing “a single version of the truth”) and complex event processing for providing real-time data feeds are in keeping with Microsoft’s stated goal to make BI more pervasive. Microsoft had already disclosed that SQL Server 2008 R2 would offer self-service BI through a new feature, code-named “Project Gemini,” which allows individuals to pull data from multiple data sources, then manipulate and — though Excel and SharePoint — share that data. Likewise, the company had already said SQL Server 2008 R2 will allow for self-service reporting. Master Data Services and complex event processing (CEP) were key features Microsoft still lacked and are the cornerstone of other enterprise data warehouse prov
• Making sense of Sage’s H1 results
  * Sage sees no real demand for saas/on-demand service offerings Like many other vendors, Sage is seeing weakness for new product sales so while subscriptions (in the UK) were up 7%, sofware and software related services were down 19%. Patterns vary, depending on geography so that Germany for instance grew 3%, France 1% but Spain fell back 4%. The US remains the weakest market with revenues contracting 9% from £335 million to £304 million. The Sage Healthcare division contracted 6% organically but it seems the company has finally started to get this troublesome division under cost control with an EBITA margin increase from 7% to 15%. The really interesting stuff comes in the business outlook analysis where Sage says: Customers relying on established suppliers – Want security of support in the medium term – Not switching suppliers – Limited interest in new delivery methods – “Wait and make do” attitude …and where it also says as regards software and software r
• EnterpriseDB party at PGCon
  A few people have asked me if EnterpriseDB will be hosting a party at PGCon 2009, as we’ve done in previous years, and I’m pleased to announce that yes, we will! As always, the party is open to all PGCon attendees, organisers and speakers and will include a dinner and booze (Mmmmm, beeeer). This year however, due to popular demand we have not booked the dueling pianos again! The party will be at: The Velvet Room 62 York Street Ottawa, ON K1N 5T1 (613) 241-6810
• The MySQL Bible is Here!
  A year ago, the outline was being written. A lot of work was crammed into the intervening months, and I am happy and proud to announce that the MySQL Administrator’s Bible has been published, and is sitting on the shelf at many major booksellers already. The official publication date is today — Monday, May 11th, 2009 — although some stores have had copies for a week, including Amazon.com. The MySQL Administrator’s Bible, published by Wiley Press (available on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/MySQL-Administrators-Bible-Sheeri-Cabral/dp/0470416912/, fully covers how to administer MySQL 5.1. It is suitable for people new to MySQL, although as an experienced MySQL DBA I can say that I learned a lot while researching and writing this book, and I believe that even veteran DBAs can learn from this book.
• Golden Gate Yacht Club: America’s Cup champion Alinghi’s court action frivolous
  San Francisco’s Golden Gate Yacht Club filed a memorandum with a New York court Monday saying that an effort to have it disqualified as Challenger of Record is a frivolous act of retaliation by defending America’s Cup champion Alinghi of Switzerland. The wording of the GGYC’s memorandum suggests the fast, giant trimaran built by its sailing team, BMW Oracle Racing, will either be replaced by a new craft in time for its showdown against Alinghi next year or, more likely, has been dismantled for extensive modifications in a San Diego boatyard. In another America’s Cup development, Alinghi said it received a challenge from an Italian syndicate, Italy’s Circolo di Vela Gargnano. The decision to accept the Italian challenge rests with GGYC and BMW Oracle Racing. The Americans are unlikely to do so based on the time, effort and money they’ve devoted to a bitter court fight against Alinghi that’s lasted almost two years.
• Valley firms to face heightened antitrust scrutiny
  The Obama administration Monday announced a significant shift in antitrust policy that will most likely lead to more scrutiny for Silicon Valley’s tech giants, including Google, Intel and Oracle, according to experts in the field. “As antitrust enforcers we cannot sit on the sidelines any longer,” declared Christine Varney, assistant attorney general for antitrust, as she withdrew controversial guidelines put in place by the Bush administration in 2008 that she said had harmed consumers. In a speech to the Center for American Progress, Varney also made clear that technology companies would be a top focus.
• Oracle Refreshes JD Edwards World, Updates Tools for EnterpriseOne
  Oracle released two new sets of EnterpriseOne tools last week at its conference, including JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools Release 8.98.1, which works with the latest release of EnterpriseOne, and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Tools 24.0 for customers running older EnterpriseOne applications, including releases XE and 8.0. (Like many ERP systems, EnterpriseOne is composed of two components, one that delivers application functionality, and another “tools” layer that provides a technology foundation, thereby allowing Oracle to upgrade its tools layer to support new technologies without affecting the ERP applications or their data.) Many of the enhancements in EnterpriseOne Tools Release 8.98.1 focuses on integration with other Oracle products, including the Oracle Enterprise Manager application pack, which delivers the capability to manage the EnterpriseOne ERP suite, along with other products such as the Oracle database, from a single console. EnterpriseOne Tools Release 8.98.1 also brings