Renee Boucher Ferguson

SAN DIEGO—Wal-Marts philosophy for its stores is deceptively simple: right product, right place, right time. Rollin Ford, the companys new CIO—he was assigned to the top tech job in April—reiterated that Wal-Mart plans to use RFID, in part, to help the massive retailer achieve its goals. “As I took the helm of CIO I got […]

SAP may have stumbled onto an Oracle killer: in-memory technology that could, in theory, quash the need for a relational database in some cases. eWEEK has learned that SAP has sussed out a way to organize its business intelligence data in columns versus tables, storing and indexing the data in memory and then running it […]

Earlier this week, Oracle announced, finally, that it has inked a deal with IDS Scheer to add the companys business process modeling platform, Aris, to the ever-expanding Fusion Middleware collection. As part of the agreement to include Aris in its Fusion Middleware stack, announced Aug. 2, Oracle introduced new software, the Oracle Business Process Analysis […]

On the heels of second quarter announcement that saw software revenues diluted—to some degree from its recent acquisition of Firstlogic—Business Objects announced July 31 two new offerings that tap, to some degree, Firstlogics technology. Business Objects, which develops software that helps companies extract business intelligence from data, announced a new suite of tools, its namesake […]

Business Objects is in a precarious position. While its overall revenues are up, its software license earnings are down for its second quarter of 2006 while the company waits for key initiatives to pay off, including a build-out of its services sector, customer migration to its new XI platform and mid-market penetration with new on-demand […]

As co-chairs of EPCglobals Electronic Product Code Information Services Working Group, IBM and T3Ci announced July 26 the completion of interoperability testing of a new RFID software standard. The standard is designed to enable the exchange and query of RFID data—a capability that does not exist today. IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y., which develops a […]

As it transitions to an on-demand model from an enterprise one, spend management software developer Ariba is suffering in the earnings department. Yet it fared better than the same year-ago quarter. The companys total revenues for the third quarter 2006 were $73.6 million, compared to $77.7 million for the same year-ago quarter. Software license revenue […]

There is a lot of miscommunication regarding the security and privacy of the U.S. governments new RFID-based e-passports, according to ABI Research Analyst Sarah Shah. ABI Research released a report July 25 that suggests that the Department of Homeland Security, which will issue the e-passports in conjunction with the State Department starting in August, should […]

3M, the makers of Scotch Tape and Post-It Notes, announced July 25 its inked a three-year deal with the U.S. Army to develop and install an RFID-based system to track medical records. The Army, which has forked over $3.76 million dollars to 3M, plans to track a portion of the files at its Fort Hood […]

Alien Technology, a manufacturer of RFID tags, readers and hardware, is looking to raise in the neighborhood of $88.1 million with an IPO scheduled for July 27, according to Nasdaqs July 24 Web site listing. Alien Technology, based in Morgan Hill, Calif., initially filed for an IPO (initial public offering) with the Securities and Exchange […]