Enterprise IT

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...

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...

As the U.S. federal government moves ahead with its cloud computing strategy, it may find that the real bugbear won't be technology but politics. What else would expect on the Hill? Other problems could pop up in the government's approach to security and a lack of adequately qualified staff. Can the...

After strenuous deliberations, the European Union's antitrust regulatory authority is giving Oracle's proposed $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems a green light. The EU's approval is the culmination of a months-long dispute between Oracle and Europe that threatened the deal's survival until...

C-level executives and IT departments may be pleasantly surprised to find that there's a source of hidden gold that may potentially net your organization much needed licenses and other already-negotiated extras. While there are no guarantees, the chances are good that your organization's existing li...

With the plethora of available technology tools promising to improve the customer experience, it's safe to assume that many of you have deployed more than one of them to increase your chances of success. The implementation of myriad technology applications can provide significant benefits if they ar...

SaaS and cloud vendors face some critical challenges in 2010: They must deliver strategic value, avoid competing on price alone, convince enterprises to move core business operations, and fend off escalating security threats, to name a few. However, the year also holds the promise of ripe opportunit...

Coverity cut its startup teeth seven years ago trying to figure out how to commercialize static analysis and software code integrity. The company, whose software developer tools are used by some of the biggest firms in the industry, released in November Coverity 5, a completely reengineered software...

Carbon accounting outsourcing could be the next big thing in the $80 billion business process outsourcing industry. Early out of the gate is FirstCarbon, a carbon data management subsidiary of global outsourcing services provider ADEC Solutions. Launched in June 2009, FirstCarbon is touted as the f...

SaaS has become an increasingly popular model for cloud computing adoption, with 68 percent of U.S. respondents in a recent study reporting adoption of SaaS at some level, and 62 percent of global respondents reporting plans to move toward SaaS in the next year. SaaS and cloud computing represent a ...

Hope was a slogan and a sentiment that played a major role in the U.S. presidential election of 2008, and hope continues to be the mindset of technology advocates pushing for cloud computing in the public sector. As a former government employee with a long history in the intelligence field, I can ea...

HP has significantly elevated its efforts to become an indispensable full-service supplier to cloud computing aspirants, especially telecommunications, mobile and Internet service providers. At Software Universe in Hamburg, Germany, HP this month announced three new offerings designed to enable clou...

Oracle has pledged it will not assert copyright claims over MySQL and that it will extend terms and conditions of existing commercial licenses of the database for five years in the hope that the European Commission will approve its $7.4 billion pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The EC has ind...

Plenty of industry observers are already issuing their predictions for 2010, but I think it is worth taking a look back at the past year's events to see how quickly the Software as a Service and cloud computing marketplace is evolving. So, following are 10 events that I consider bellwethers of the r...

Despite plunging revenues due to the resistance of European regulators to its pending acquisition by Oracle, Sun Microsystems has rolled out enhancements to three key products in its Java platform. The upgrades focus on providing more flexibility to developers. Much of the new functionality has like...