Robert J. Mullins

Microsoft’s acquisition of the Internet voice and video calling service Skype was completed in October 2011 and lately some market observers said they have seen little evidence that Microsoft is making much profitable use of Skype. However, news broke on May 29 that Microsoft is going to enable PC manufacturers to preinstall a Skype application […]

Cisco Systems, citing industry forecasts that up to 90 percent of network traffic will be video by 2015, is placing more of its eggs in the video networking basket, executives said, with an emphasis on video conferencing and collaboration in the enterprise space and delivering multiple entertainment streams to consumers. “Cisco is in the video […]

Cisco Systems’ chief technology officer gave a hint as to what new software technology for routers that the company will unveil at its user’s conference next month in San Diego, but she and other execs remained tight lipped about exactly how Cisco will deliver Software-Defined Networking to bring greater intelligence to network traffic management. CTO […]

Rumors and reports are circulating that sometime in November the Microsoft Office application software suite will be available on the Apple iOS-powered iPad and the multiple tablet brands running Google Android. If it happens, it could be both good news and bad news for Microsoft. The latest report about versions of Office for tablets was […]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is known for his hyperbole and bombast. He once bounded onstage at an employee event, jumping around and screaming, “I LOVE this company,” which helped him earn the nickname “Monkey Boy.” This time, the hyperbole seems to have been a case of lack of clarification of his remarks earlier about Windows […]

When SAP America announced on May 22 its plans to acquire Ariba for $4.3 billion, much was made about how SAP, whose business was originally built around on-premise software, was making another cloud-computing play. But the real significance is in the software Ariba distributes and the network it operates to complete procurement transactions, analysts say. […]

Oracle is acquiring Vitrue, a cloud-based social media marketing campaign creator that enables customers to create, manage and measure social media marketing campaigns on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and Google+. Oracle said that Vitrue, combined with Oracle’s existing sales, service, commerce, social data management and analytics capabilities, will create “the most advanced […]

SAP announced it is going to acquire Ariba, the provider of a cloud-based buyer-seller collaboration network for $4.3 billion, giving SAP an entrée into the fast-growing collaboration technology market. SAP America, the U.S. subsidiary of the German enterprise software giant SAP AG, made the deal to acquire Ariba at $45 a share, which is a […]

SAN FRANCISCO – Open source has become the dominant choice for mobile device operating systems because it’s the best way to bring innovation to this growing market and because wide community support delivers the highest quality software, said the president of Funambol, an open-source mobile software company. “On mobile, we won. There’s just no other […]

Device security startup NetAuthority emerged from stealth mode on May 22 with a beta product it says protects access to Websites, Web-based applications and software as a service apps with a layer of security that basic username and password technology doesn’t provide. The NetAuthority security application installs a lightweight software client on each registered device, […]