Renee Boucher Ferguson

Levi strauss, one of the nations largest clothing manufacturers, confirmed April 28 its testing of RFID “hang tags” on clothing shipped to two retail outlets in Mexico and one in the United States—a move that many consumer advocates point to as an outright invasion of privacy rights, given that the tags will be attached to […]

After years of wrangling, business-to-business software companies are still working toward a key goal: to connect smaller suppliers with their global, often much larger, supply chain partners. The issue? While most big buyers—think Toyota or Honda—have massive IT departments to facilitate backend integrations to suppliers, smaller “mom and pop” shops are lacking in those facilities. […]

Oracle announced May 8 a new twist on its namesake Daily Business Intelligence software, which calculates where a business is at during any given moment during a day using a dashboard interface. The latest iteration, Daily Business Intelligence for Compliance, is an embedded compliance management system for Oracle E-Business Suite users—or prospective users—that offers prebuilt […]

AUSTIN, Texas—Microsoft and UGS announced at the World Congress on Information Technology May 1-5 here a deeper alliance that will result in UGS product lifecycle management infrastructure being built completely on Microsofts Web services-based .Net platform. The companies goal is to bring PLM out of the dark cubbies of product design engineers and into the […]

The news coming out of this years RFID Journal Live conference in Las Vegas has a collective focus on hardware: RFID tags and readers, and their expanding capabilities, emerging from vendors. OATSystems, IBM and Alien Technology, for example, announced May 2 the availability of a “smart reader”—a handheld device that has radio frequency identification applications […]

The courtship between Microsoft and SAP is growing more amorous by the day. The two companies announced May 2 that they will offer almost double the functionality initially outlined for Mendocino 1.0—before the joint development project even hits the streets. The companies also detailed their road map for the remainder of this year and announced […]

Relieving the very real forced-migration fears of its acquired customer base—particularly PeopleSoft and JD Edwards software users—Oracle announced April 25 it will continue to develop its individual lines of software indefinitely. More important, Oracle has said it will add substantive upgrades beyond the release of Fusion, its next-generation suite of applications, due about 2008. At […]

Radio-frequency identification technology, also known as RFID, has its supporters and detractors. Both groups now have something to talk about. A working group of major companies—IBM is the charter member—and advocacy groups announced May 1 a set of RFID best practices to protect consumer privacy as it relates to item level tagging. The group, led […]

Legacy system-integration software provider AttachmateWRQ, which itself is owned by an investment group, announced April 27 the acquisition of NetIQ for about $495 million, or $12.20 per share. NetIQ develops integrated systems and security management software. In addition to legacy integration, AttachmateWRQ focuses on multihost access, security and desktop management. The companies combined will share […]

The once high-flying supply chain management software provider Manugistics has succumbed to consolidation. Scottsdale, Ariz.-based JDA Software Group announced April 24 that it is acquiring SCM stalwart Manugistics for $211 million in cash, or $2.50 a share. By combining the two companies, JDA plans to establish itself as a leading, vertically focused global supply chain […]