Renee Boucher Ferguson

DALLAS—At its Convergence 2006 conference here, Microsoft has made few earth-shattering announcements around Software as a Service—thought by many to be a big topic at this customer-focused, business applications-based event. That said, Microsoft gave a distinct nod to on demand software with the announcement March 27 of the next version of Dynamics CRM 3.0. The […]

DALLAS—At its Convergence conference here this weekend (and through March 28), Microsoft offered a detailed look at the next version of Dynamics AX, formerly known as Axapta, and announced a new partner tool, Rapid Implementation Methodology for Dynamics NAV, formerly Navision. Dynamics AX 4.0, due in June, encompasses the basics of Microsofts moves to create […]

DALLAS—At its annual Microsoft Convergence conference here in Dallas this weekend (and into early next week), Microsoft officials will pound home the message that Microsoft is working to enable the “people ready business” by investing in all kinds of technology, from a unified communications platform that includes a voice infrastructure to composite application development capabilities. […]

Charles Phillips, co-president of Oracle, during a half-day conference on March 22 detailing the companys business intelligence plans, made an obvious but astute observation. “If you think about Oracle,” Phillips said, with his low-key, rapid-fire delivery, “weve been a company in a hurry.” That, in a nutshell, seems to be the case with Oracle BIS […]

Epitome Systems, a company spun out of commercial mortgage brokerage GMAC Commercial Holding, announced March 20 mEPM, its midmarket-slated on-demand platform for business process management. The platform, dubbed Enterprise Productivity Management, or mEPM for the midmarket, was initially developed at GMAC to help the company outsource some of its financial analysis workload. Because GMAC often […]

Oracle may have a cure for the guessing game that ensues every time the company reports its quarterly license revenue: Switch the business model. At a recent conference, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison stoked speculation that the company is looking toward becoming a software subscription business. Ellison said at the Feb. 8 Credit Suisse Software Conference […]

When one software vendor announces that it has converted users from another software vendor—proclamations common among rivals—the question inevitably comes to mind: Is that actual conversions where an IT department decides to rip and replace one system for another, or is that sales wins? In SAP AGs case, its the former, officials said. The company […]

Following the trend in the software industry toward developing business intelligence capabilities that are accessible throughout an organization, Microsoft announced on March 15 its namesake Business Intelligence Optimization application. The BIO for Microsoft Dynamics SL (otherwise known as Solomon) provides users with role-based, personalized (though to what degree its not certain) scorecards to help ascertain […]

Mid-market enterprise resource planning software developer Lawson Software announced March 15 the next iteration of its namesake suite of applications, Release 9—an upgrade thats stacked on IBMs middleware platform to help both Lawson and its users evolve to a service-oriented architecture. Lawson announced at its CUE user conference last year that it would standardize on […]

For a company that vowed it would remain firmly ensconced in the mid-market—until at least 2009—Microsofts March 14 announcement that it has added thousands of enterprise customer relationship management seats to its roster raises some questions. Namely, is Microsoft gearing the next generation of its business software, Dynamics, for the enterprise market? And if so, […]