Robert J. Mullins

At first glance it might seem unusual that former Secretary of State and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Colin Powell would be a keynoter at a tech conference. But onstage at the Dreamforce 2012 conference hosted by Salesforce.com, Powell declared his tech bona fides. “I’m proud to say that it was the American […]

Two of the IT industry’s biggest companies were singled out for criticism for shielding profits from U.S. corporate income taxes by transferring the funds to offshore accounts. Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard were identified by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations as companies that use offshore units to shield billions of dollars from U.S. taxes by […]

Salesforce.com spent much of the time at its Dreamforce 2012 user conference in San Francisco presenting customer case studies showing how enterprises large and small are being successful implementing social media applications. Most of the presentations came from household name companies such as General Electric, Ford Motor Co. and Men’s Warehouse showing how they are […]

SAN FRANCISCO – On-premise enterprise software companies such as Microsoft and Oracle are scrambling to match Salesforce.com’s strategy of delivering enterprise social networking applications in a software as a service (SaaS) model but have been too tentative in their execution, CEO Marc Benioff told reporters during a post-keynote news conference at the Dreamforce user conference […]

Nitro, which has positioned itself as an alternative to PDF software industry leader Adobe, is introducing Nitro Pro 8 with new features and a new market win as the default PDF reader installed on Lenovo PCs. “It’s testament to how robust the product is now,” that Lenovo chose Nitro over Adobe, said Sam Chandler, founder […]

Salesforce.com is continuing to extend its software as a service business by adding new applications that businesses can use to mine social Web information and use it to keep in touch with current and prospective customers. Salesforce is facing increasing competition from long-established enterprise application software giants, such as Microsoft, SAP and Oracle, and has […]

Microsoft is urging users of its Internet Explorer Web browser to download a temporary patch to prevent hackers from possibly taking control of their PCs. The company posted a security advisory late in the day Sept. 17 advising users to download the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) if their browser is Internet Explorer versions 6 […]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave the strongest indication yet what the company’s new Surface tablet computer would sell for when it comes on the market Oct. 26-between $300 and $800. In an interview with the Seattle Times, Ballmer addressed the pricing issue in only a roundabout way: “If you look at the bulk of the […]

Zuora and companies like it are riding the trend of people and enterprises increasingly procuring products and services on a subscription basis rather than buying them. As a result, companies such as Zuora are emerging to help businesses manage those subscriptions efficiently. At a user conference Sept. 17 in San Francisco, four-year-old Zuora will unveil […]

SelectMinds is a provider of social media-based talent sourcing, alumni management and recruiting software applications delivered in a cloud environment. SelectMinds will be integrated with existing Oracle Cloud Recruiting, Performance Management and Human Capital Management applications. Oracle noted that organizations are looking for new ways to control the cost of hiring qualified candidates for jobs […]