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Value-Added Tax generates approximately one-third of all public revenue in many of the world's wealthiest countries; in some EU Member States, the VAT contribution to the fiscal mix is close to 40 percent. Electronic invoicing remains one of the most challenging areas of conducting e-business in and...

Amazon has reportedly acquired Touchco, a start up company that focuses on touch-screen technology, according to a report in The New York Times that cites a person briefed on the deal as a source. Amazon will merge Touchco's technology and staff into its Kindle hardware division, according to the Ti...

A well-rounded board is an absolute necessity in these economically trying times. The average board of today usually consists of at least one person who has expertise in the company's business; a high-profile person who brings credibility and gravitas to issues; a financial person who, among other t...

In November 2009, IBM announced its acquisition of Guardium, a privately held company based in Waltham, Mass., and the planned integration of Guardium's Database Activity Monitoring technology into IBM's Information Management and Business Analytics and Optimization initiatives. Financial terms were...

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin wants to know if Google's current dustup with China has the potential to create more cracks in that country's Great Firewall. So late Tuesday, the Illinois Democrat sent letters to 30 top technology companies -- including Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Verizon and Amazon -- asking the...

"Brought to you by ..." Ahhh, the golden age of advertising. The ads themselves were social markers, drivers of our conversation, definers of what was -- and was not -- cool. We took them at face value, we obeyed their siren songs, and we sampled, and we bought, and we sang the jingles. Back in a...

A brief stroll through the Google Solutions Marketplace shows you that the search giant is already working and playing well with others when it comes to the business of specialized business software. Need something to give your Google Calendar a little sharing and productivity boost? What about enha...

What are the top trends for the coming year? Every business process will go through intense compression and digitalization; a new wave of educational programs will sweep the executive corridors; new methodologies will be required to pitch for any serious business game plan; creating solid credibilit...

During a five hour event at its Redwood Shores corporate headquarters, Oracle executives, including CEO Larry Ellison and Co-Presidents Safra Catz and Charles Phillips, applauded the completion of Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems and outlined their strategy for the new acquisition for a media a...

After a brief protest late last week, Amazon now says it will give in and sell e-books from Macmillan at the higher prices the publisher has requested. "Macmillan, one of the 'big six' publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an...

Following a month of testing at no cost to customers, Microsoft's Windows Azure platform will become a paid service on Monday. The Azure platform is a set of cloud computing services that can be used together or independently on a pay-per-use basis. Originally unveiled in October 2008, the service h...

PC users purchased record numbers of Windows licenses in the last three months of 2009, driving big gains for Microsoft over the company's second fiscal quarter, the first quarter in which the company's Windows 7 OS was on retail shelves. For its quarter ended Dec. 31, Microsoft reported net income ...

In this business climate, the road to striking a venture capital deal is difficult for both funder and fundee. Small startups with big ideas obviously have a harder time finding VC firms willing to take a chance on them, but those VC firms themselves are under added pressure to make the correct deci...

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman who was twice found liable for copyright infringement for sharing two dozen songs using an online file-sharing application, has turned down an offer to settle her $54,000 penalty for less than half that amount. The Recording Industry Association of America g...

Oracle says it will focus strongly on customer service and support for customers of both its products and those of Sun Microsystems, whose acquisition it completed on Wednesday. "We believe our customers deserve the best level of support and it's our job to make that extremely compelling," Juergen R...