Michael Hickins

UPDATED: Oracle continued its torrid shopping spree today, agreeing to buy Portal Software for $220 million in cash. Portal makes a billing and revenue management system, built on Oracle’s database software, that can manage wireline, wireless, broadband, cable, Voice over IP, IPTV, music and video services. The company’s average annual revenue ran in the $120 […]

Given the limitations of most wireless devices on the market, the relative dearth of business applications running on wireless devices could be moot. But Salesforce.com has made a $15 million bet on that market, with its acquisition of wireless applications provider Sendia, announced today. San Francisco-based Salesforce says it has 399,000 paying subscribers on its […]

The much-ballyhooed world of on-demand software has arrived, and the question is not if, but when and where software-as-a-service (SaaS) will replace on-premise as the dominant application software model. Ever since the emergence of salesforce.com

Business Objects took the first steps in providing its business intelligence solutions via the Web. The company just announced that users of its on-premise Crystal Reports solution can now upload reports to a dedicated site, set user preferences and permissions, and share business intelligence with users who typically don’t have access to this type of […]

Like older siblings in a family, business intelligence gets all the attention, while companies tend to neglect the needs of IT intelligence. According to Gerry Smith, president and CEO of CiRBA, companies lack a holistic view of their IT infrastructures. “The data center is to the CIO what business intelligence is to the CEO,” he […]

Seventy percent of bank accounts opened online never get a dollar’s worth of deposits. Yodlee, which makes technology solutions aimed at the financial services industry, thinks it can help improve that metric. Yodlee today rolled out AccountOpenings, a service that verifies a new customer’s identity; figures out how the customer wants to fund the new […]

Microsoft is about to announce a suite of products allowing users to access their data anytime from any device, internetnews.com has learned. The updates, as well as a scaled-down, free version of SQL Server called SQL Everywhere for mobile devices, are part of a new product roadmap the company is rolling out today. The free […]

3VR Security unveiled enhancements to an intelligent video management and security tool that makes it easier for security experts to identify faces, as well as capture events that take place on their property. The enhancements include the application of biometrics and motion and object analytics to video and the ability to capture and search video […]

On-demand supply chain management (SCM) company Mitrix has launched a new partnership program with supply-chain integrators and consultants in order to reach more deeply into the small and medium-sized business market. George Mulling, vice president of business development at Mitrix, told internetnews.com that the Irvine, Calif.-based company is “relying heavily upon [the new partners] to […]

Most companies view regulatory compliance as a burden. SAP wishes companies would see it as an opportunity. The ERP  giant acquired its compliance software partner Virsa for an undisclosed sum and is taking some of its budding product plans for compliance in-house. The idea is to help customers improve compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), the Health […]

Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) is the fastest-growing, albeit the smallest, business in the software behemoth’s arsenal at $784 million. Dynamic NAV, the re-branded Navision unveiled at Microsoft’s Convergence conference in Dallas this week, is one of the final pieces in the company’s MBS suite, which has been cobbled together from a series of acquisitions and […]

Microsoft finally unveiled Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services (EHS) today, giving the market a better look at the types of hosted services and prices it intends to offer going forward. EHS is also making good on Microsoft’s promise to enter the software as a service (SaaS) market. A Microsoft spokesperson told internetnews.com that EHS is, “a […]