Renee Boucher Ferguson

It was rumored SAP would announce at least one acquisition at its recent Sapphire user conference that carried the theme of the CFOs emerging role. While the whispers never amounted to anything during the conference, the speculation later became a reality with the acquisition of OutlookSoft Corp. SAP announced May 8 its intention to acquire […]

Microsoft declared the opening day of its first BI conference, May 9, “a new day” for business intelligence, with the same old goal every BI vendor has had for years: To make BI ubiquitous in the enterprise, used by all relevant workers, not just by executives and IT (who jigger reports for executives). The difference […]

Both Oracle and RightNow Technologies released the next iterations of their respective customer relationship management suites May 8. And both companies, though hoping to attract a similar audience, are taking decidedly different routes to customer information. Oracles new CRM applications are available through the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 and allow users to streamline business […]

Cars in Bermuda are getting chipped. RFID chipped that is. Bermudas Transport Control Department, a division of the tiny string of islands Ministry of Tourism, announced May 7 that it plans to automate vehicle registration, compliance and enforcement with an island-wide deployment of EVR (electronic vehicle registration). The EVR system is made up of RFID […]

Customer relationship management provider Kana Software announced May 7 that it has agreed to acquire systems integrator eVergance Partners LLC. The terms of the deal are undisclosed. eVergance, a management consulting firm as well as an SI, provides services for CRM optimization and Web self-service deployments. Kana offers software for e-mail and e-service, call center […]

Microsoft and SAP previewed new technology at the RFID Journal Live conference in Orlando from April 30 to May 2. While Microsoft took another baby step toward releasing its RFID platform with the first public beta of BizTalk Server 2006 R2, SAP showcased its RFID Product Tracking and Authentication application, the companys first process-based application […]

ATLANTA—In his keynote address here at Sapphire April 24, SAP CEO Henning Kagermann said that SAP has completed the Enterprise Services Architecture road map it embarked on nearly five years ago and laid out the companys path for the next five years—one of innovation on parallel tracks and relying heavily on next-generation concepts, such as […]

Recognizing the potential risks inherent in the use of RFID technology, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a nonregulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has published its guidelines for deploying radio-frequency identification. The Guidelines for Securing Radio Frequency Identification Systems, released April 27, are geared toward retailers, manufacturers, hospitals, federal agencies and […]

ATLANTA—At SAPs Sapphire user conference here April 24, executives from SAP and Microsoft laid out the road map for the next iterations of Duet, a joint development project to expose SAPs business processes and data in Microsofts Office environment. Both companies plan to work together to develop scenarios—processes such as time-off requests—platform capabilities and development […]

ATLANTA—During the second day of Sapphire, SAPs annual user conference being held here April 22-25, SAP outlined its road map for NetWeaver, the integration platform announced several years ago thats been the underpinning for the companys move to a service-oriented architecture. The road map is broken down into four “pillars” outlined by the company: improved […]