Enterprise IT

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," as the old saying goes, and this week Oracle took steps to do just that. Specifically, the database giant inked partnership deals with longtime competitors Microsoft and Salesforce.com in a bid to expand its reach in cloud computing. Announced on Mo...

U.S. residential broadband Internet penetration has grown more than 400 percent since 2002, when just 16.5 million U.S. households had fast Internet service. The increased presence of these high-speed connections has implications for a variety of devices, which increasingly are arriving in the home ...

Oracle's stock slumped Friday in response to a disappointing fourth-quarter earnings report. Shares closed the day at $30.14, down 9.26 percent. Oracle reported its fiscal 2013 Q4 GAAP total revenue as unchanged at $10.9 billion; however, analysts had been expecting about $11.12 billion. New softwar...

After announcing last month that all of its Creative Suite apps would soon move to the cloud, Adobe on Tuesday made good on its promise and delivered the resulting subscription-based software. Now included under the umbrella name Creative Cloud, the latest versions of apps including Photoshop, Illus...

The GAO earlier this month found two key deficiencies in a cloud contract that the CIA intended to award to AWS. The GAO decision was prompted by a protest against the contract filed by IBM. GAO is the designated federal agency for handling challenges to federal contracts. The proposed contract prov...

In the wake of recent revelations that the government has been tapping their networks to monitor users, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft in recent days have all published more information about those monitoring requests. Facebook, for example, on Friday reported that for the six months ending December ...

With nearly every market forecast and growing anecdotal evidence pointing to escalating demand for cloud-based alternatives to traditional on-premises systems and software, the challenges of integrating the new on-demand solutions with existing applications and data sources are becoming even more cr...

Microsoft is the latest product manufacturer to follow the retail trend of setting up shop within a big box store. Best Buy and Microsoft on Thursday announced plans to open the Windows Store only at Best Buy in 500 retail locations in the U.S. and more than 100 in Canada. The stores will range in s...

Verizon is on the hot seat. It is at the center of the story about releasing customer information to the U.S. National Security Agency. While Verizon does make information about every call available to the NSA, the actual conversation is still private -- for now, at least. To date, Verizon has been ...

Comcast this week announced new software for its set-top boxes, opening a window into how cable TV companies hope to retain customers tempted to move their eyeballs to online-only alternatives. Comcast X2 blends cable offerings like on-demand movies, program guides and digital video recording with o...

Major IT companies are hoping to seize the moment in an effort to restrain what they consider to be an abuse of intellectual property rights by so-called patent trolls. In a recent flurry of activity, lawmakers and the Obama administration have taken steps to support large IT companies seeking paten...

Private companies that do business with the U.S. government have a big stake in how federal agencies regulate the cybersecurity elements of federal contracts. As cyberthreats increase, the government is attempting to keep pace by upgrading cyber-requirements. The government has now launched a progra...

The Obama administration on Tuesday targeted patent trolls with a number of initiatives aimed at curbing activity it blames for stymieing innovation in America. The initiatives include five executive orders and seven legislative recommendations. Patent trolls have been accused of abusing the system ...

Making money from accessing the vast amounts of information collected by the U.S. government has been the basis for many commercial enterprises. The widespread use of Census Bureau data alone has been a great business resource for decades -- with a relatively new twist as a component of Google Maps....

Yahoo hasn't been playing around when it comes to acquisitions. Its latest, announced Tuesday, is PlayerScale, which makes software infrastructure for cross-platform gaming. Four-year-old PlayerScale has built a sizable audience, and it could fit well with Yahoo's new direction. "This deal is intrig...