Renee Boucher Ferguson

Moving deeper into rival PeopleSoft Inc.s territory, Oracle Corp. announced a new human resources automation tool earlier this week. Oracle Time & Labor is an enterprisewide time collection and management application that covers the time entry needs for an entire work force–from full-time employees to contractors and consultants. A component of the Oracle Human Resources […]

Application integration software, which has until now focused on linking enterprise and online trading applications, is entering a new phase of development with the introduction last week of a specification for integrating systems management software. Open Management Interface, developed by WebMethods Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., lets a company communicate SLAs (service-level agreements) electronically with its […]

Flying in the face of a weak economy and a nearly dead dot-com sector, Oracle Corp. posted respectable financial results for the quarter that ended Aug. 31. But the database and enterprise applications developer faces challenges internally and externally if it is to keep up its rate of development and innovation. Oracle, of Redwood Shores, […]

Ariba Inc. today introduced its Ariba Enterprise Sourcing application that disperses purchasing across an enterprise and moves the business-to-business platform provider into direct procurement. Enterprise Sourcing allows any professional buyer–not just those specifically trained to do so–to access supplier management tools and commodity templates to source suppliers, negotiate contracts, analyze what they are spending, and […]

Oracle Corp. posted a profit for its most recent quarter but with the economic outlook even more uncertain after last weeks terrorist attacks in the United States, officials of the huge database and enterprise software developer are not painting a particularly rosy picture of the future. “We have pretty good data about what people are […]

Enterprise application integration vendor webMethods Inc. Wednesday unveiled its Global Business Visibility initiative, a two-pronged approach to bringing critical business functions together under one umbrella. The first component to the Visibility initiative is a specification, Open Management Interface, which essentially allows an enterprise to communicate service-level agreements electronically with its partners and suppliers. Co-authored by […]

With a focus on integration and collaboration, IBM Tuesday announced new software for the business-to-business market sector. The software, WebSphere Commerce Business Edition 5.1, focuses primarily on facilitating transactions that require functions such as request for quotes, trading partner agreements and complex order handling. Working with an independent company, IBM conducted a survey with tens […]

Microsoft Corp. last week introduced a BizTalk business-to-business integration software development kit for the chemicals industry. The Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 CIDX Software Development Kit is designed to help chemicals companies rapidly integrate applications, platforms and business processes inside and outside their firewalls. The SDK uses the core XML (Extensible Markup Language) protocols developed by […]

Business-to-business collaboration is getting a shot in the arm from new software. Camstar Systems Inc., Syncra Systems Inc. and Venetica Corp. are each coming out with new collaboration software. But even with these milestones, integration problems may still limit B2B collaboration in many companies. Camstar, of Campbell, Calif., last week announced its vision for “live […]

Oracle Corp. late Thursday quietly issued a marginally successful earnings report for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2002. In a press release posted on the Oracle Web site, Larry Ellison, Oracles normally brash CEO, said that in the wake of Tuesdays terrorist attack on the United States, the Redwood Shores, Calif., company has […]