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The article discusses the factors that information technology (IT) and business organizations should consider when evaluating delivery of any business application via the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. The factors include the integration tools and support offered by the software vendor and the analysis options provided by the SaaS application. The questions that organizations should ask when evaluating SaaS vendors are presented.

The article focuses on the challenges facing U.S.-based data storage hardware manufacturer EMC Corp. in its expansion into information management technology. With the acquisition of several software companies since 2000, the company was able to lessen its dependence on hardware sales, having 39 percent of its overall revenue from its software business by the end of June 2006. However, the company faces a challenge in helping customers understand its information infrastructure vision.

The article reports on the efforts exerted by vendors to reform enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and make them more effective. The main challenge facing ERP vendors is to deliver software that supports business process improvements without the usual glitches associated with ERP. The development efforts of the vendors involve moving code and functionality from existing products into applications that are more contemporary in design and appearance.

The article features Microsoft's Windows Vista computer operating system, a bridge between conventional software and online services. The initial applications of the operating system are security and administration. The results of the "InformationWeek" research showed that those who plan to implement the Windows operating system cite improved data security as the top reason.

The article reports on the involvement of several computer and software companies in the stock option manipulation scandal in the U.S. Most cases involve inappropriate "backdating" where executives and sometimes rank-and-file employees exercise stock options based on an earlier, lower stock price than the day of the grant resulting in inflated returns. The scandal is not expected to affect the bottomline but it would certainly distract executives from doing jobs.

Reports on the growth of open-source technology, and its implications for Linux and other open-source software companies. Fast-growing popularity of Linux and other open-source products; Increase in the number of open-source software projects; Red Hat Chief Executive Officer Matthew Szulik's claim that open source will help establish a shared worldwide computing environment.

Focuses on the enterprise software business in China. Move of established companies to buy up ailing North American and European software companies; Projections on software and hardware sales for 2004; Government's plans of imposing software encryption for wireless networks and related devices as of June 1, 2004. INSET: FAIR TRADE: E-trading platforms in China take hold.

The article features DreamFactory Software, a computer software developer under chief technology officer, Bill Appleton. The company's DreamFactory software extends the interactive features of CD-ROM and games into lightweight user front end for Web applications. Appleton claims that the software can produce hard-core applications that could not be written in Ajax, Java or .Net.

This article discusses the future of information technology. The next 25 years of information technology will blur boundaries between previously well-formed and discrete concepts, entities, or states of being. Some people believe the next step is for some of those bits to have value. That is to say, consider a string of bits to be like a virtual cow or shell. All of these requirements are easily achieved in both traceable and anonymous systems of E-cash. In these cases, the money does move. The point can be generalized beyond money. Peer-to-peer is a much deeper concept than people understand today.

Reports on the antitrust trial over Oracle Corp.'s bid to buy PeopleSoft Inc. Decline of prices of computer software; Software discounts offered in the U.S.

Highlights trends in software programming in the U.S. Push toward simplified development and the desire to get software developers working more closely with employees from business units; Extensive use of Unified Modeling Language by business and systems analysts; Growing acceptance of agile development and extreme programming.

Reports on Siebel Systems Inc.'s acquisition of banking software vendor Eontec Ltd. Worth of the deal; Terms of the agreement.

The article presents the author's insights about the evolution of Oracle Corp. and SAP into service companies that sell software. The author states that 29.5% of Oracle's 24.18 billion dollars total revenue are obtained from new software sales while the rest comes from software license updates and product support. The author notes that same occur in SAP whose software revenues contribute 24.4% of the total revenue. The author also cites opportunities where Oracle and SAP can serve customers.

The article reports that U.S.-based Amazon.com Inc. is preparing to release a feature of its Elastic Compute Cloud service that would make cloud applications and services more attractive to business. The so-called elastic block storage has been available since April 2008 in limited beta mode. In the coming weeks, the company will be releasing a persistent storage offering.

The article reports that SAP AG is widening its business intelligence product offerings as it seeks to dispel doubts about how all its newly acquired pieces will work together. SAP also has integrated key software for strategy management, business planning and financial analysis with NetWeaver and the SAN Business Objects BI platform.

The article profiles Alfresco company, an Information Technology (IT) vendor focusing on business collaboration software. The company developed Alfresco Labs 3, employing Microsoft SharePoint. The new product helps companies use SharePoint in an open source environment, using European specifications.

The article profiles Neocleus, a Jersey City, New Jersey-based company that developed a hypervisor that runs on laptops and personal computers. It includes background information on the company and its top executives, as well as a description of the key features of its Desktop Hypervisor Framework and Trusted Edge products.

The article reports on the acquisition of the performance management firm B-Hive Networks by VMWare. VMWare plans to help companies track whether virtual machines are bogging down software that employees or customers need. B-hive's flagship product is Conductor, which monitors an application from the network, measures the time between a user action and an application response. Details about operations and strategies of both companies are cited.

The article announces the plan of Cisco Systems to open its switch and router operating system (IOS) in order to become a software company. Accordingly, the act by Cisco is the same as Apple's, which is to sell more proprietary hardware and not to move awaty from it. Through opening its IOS, the product could now allegedly be able to run third-party applications sometime in the future. Giving away ISO's code or selling it for use on community hardware is reportedly not included in the plan.

The article reports on the combination of the enterprise service bus of Cape Clear Software and the business process management of the Appian. Through the combination of their features, with the utilization of the safe operating area (SOA) it organizes the tasks which involve both humans and machines.

The article reports on developments relevant to the computer software and computer industries in the U.S. as of November 5, 2007. It includes information on the acquisition of software company Securent by Cisco Systems, as well as plans by Lenovo to introduce new consumer laptops and desktops as part of its sponsorship of the Beijing Olympics.

The article reports on U.S.-based Microsoft Corp.'s launch of Titan, a true software-as-a-service product. This is the company's first attempt at a multitenant architecture, where customers access a single instance of the application while their data is partitioned into a secure environment. It is also Microsoft's attempt to roll over Salesforce.com.

The article focuses on the move of software company Oracle Corp. to develop higher-performance databases. It has tightened integration between its in-memory database system, TimesTen Release 7 and its flagship Oracle 10g database. The move was taken in hopes that customers will use TimesTen as a front-end service to 10g.

The article reports that Intuit Inc., a tax preparation and financial software manufacturer, is getting ready to launch lightweight widget-like applications. Chief technical officer Kris Halvorsen is hiring engineers who can develop online applications to augment the company's marque products, including QuickBooks, Quicken, and TurboTax for small businesses and home users, and ProSeries and Lacerte for accountants and tax preparers.

The article reports that Symantec Corp. has launched a consumer identity software that is the core of its Security 2.0 initiative. The program, which will be called the Norton Identity Client, is the initial step in a 12- to 24-month project to tie together services and software, consumers and businesses. The company predicts a $1.1 billion business in online consumer authentication through 2011.

The article reports on developments related to the computer industry. Hewlett-Packard is saying that it is the world's sixth largest software company. Yahoo has launched a beta version of a graphical advertising platform for mobile phones. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo are the 14 of the top 25 U.S. Web properties attracting more visitors from foreign countries other than the U.S.

The article reports on development related to the computer and Internet industry. Five percent of the U.S. Internet visits went to the top twenty social networking Web sites in September 2006, with MySpace having 82 percent of the visits. Skype computer software is featuring a click-to-call allowing users to click on a phone number on Web site in making a call from a computer. Dell will shipping commercial desktop computers with AMD processor.

The article reports on the challenges facing software vendor, Oracle Corp., in terms of integrating its packages. Oracle will combine its E-Business Suite with elements of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel software as part of its Fusion applications line. Fusion is being designed to run on Java 2 Enterprise Edition-based Web servers including WebSphere and WebLogic.

The article reports on the decision of computer software manufacturer, Microsoft Corp., to stop manufacturing Private Folder 1.0. The product is available as a bonus download for Windows XP users as part of the company's Windows Genuine Advantage program. The move is expected to be welcomed by information technology (IT) administrators who demand control over how employees use their computers and other IT equipment.

The article reports on the self-regulation plan of computer software company, Microsoft Corp. According to the company's lawyer, the firm will develop its programs with the aim of making the computer market fairer for makers, programmers and customers. Microsoft is hoping that this plan will satisfy regulators both in the United States and in Europe.

The article focuses on the history of the anti-computer industry in the U.S. The industry was formed in the mid-1980s when the computer revolution was just starting. Most of the early innovators knew each other or knew of each other. They were competitors but almost everyone was cooperative. And most of them were involved the Antivirus Research Organization.

The article reports that Ray Ozzie was named as the new chief software architect of the Microsoft Corp. Ozzie has founded Groove Networks in October 1997 and was previously the founder and president of Iris Associates, where he created and led the development of Lotus Notes, a computer software which was bought by International Business Machines Corp. With Ozzie's leadership, expect Microsoft to begin a massive swing toward software delivered as a service.

The article reports on the competition among suppliers of server virtualization technology. Microsoft has delayed the availability of an update for Microsoft Virtual Server that will support the hardware-enabled virtualization capabilities being built into Intel and Advanced Micro Devices processors. Meanwhile, VMware will open its virtual machine disk format specification to third-party software developers.

The article reports that Microsoft Corp. will deliver several editions of Office 2007 when the updated application software suite ships later in 2006 in which the shipment includes a package that will append tools for routing documents and publishing files to workgroups, while a top-end version include Groove and OneNote for collaboration.

The article focuses on the problems faced by systems administrators in codes of devices. When software is running, it cannot be seen, says Bryan Cantrill, senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, and the force behind a tool called DTrace, a dynamic tracing framework for the Solaris Operating Environment. DTrace mechanisms allow a person to see production software, so administrators can examine the history and inner workings of system code, he says. It is the little things that often cause problems. It is not the well-thought-out parts of the system that are failing.

This article focuses on the computer software industry. It is time to purchase a new technology asset, a new enterprise software application, and new infrastructure systems. Sun Microsystems Inc. is making new moves in open computing with an aggressive open-source strategy. Scott McNealy, who posits that all technology has the shelf life of a banana, argues that the exit-strategy costs often dwarf the barriers to entry and the ongoing operational costs. It's one of the things that gives Sun bragging rights when it comes to its history of open standards-based computing, a strategy that has made it less costly for customers to shift technologies.

This article reports that International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is cannibalizing its own product line with its acquisition of Gluecode Software Inc., a purveyor of an open-source software stack that competes with part of IBM's WebSphere software. IBM said last week it had acquired Gluecode, a small, privately held company that offers software and services around the open-source Apache Geronimo application server, for an undisclosed sum. The software stack that Gluecode offers includes the free Geronimo application server that theoretically could take business away from IBM's WebSphere commercial application-server software.

Reports that Oracle Corp. has acquired retail software provider Retek Inc. in March 2005. Terms and cost of the acquisition; Background on the acquired company.

Reports developments for company progress of several software companies in the U.S. Sale of a customer-relationship-management software as a service by Salesforce.COM Inc.; Launch of the latest model for mobile-computing market by AMD; Plan of Microsoft Corp. on the implementation of enterprise-resource-planning products.

Presents quotes from executives related to the computer industry in the U.S. Detection of a fragmented enterprise software industry without a clear consolidator; Opinion of district judge Dale Kimball on the lawsuit contested by IBM Corp. and SCO Group Inc.; Request of the industry for Congress to establish a unified and rationalized set of laws for all Internet protocol-enabled services.

Reports on Optinuity Inc.'s introduction of software designed to automate manual processes that information technology (IT) departments use to run the systems and networks on which their businesses are built. Documentation, management and execution of IT operations, procedures and scripts by the software called C2O; Design of the C2O on software called SKEmatrix developed to automate scheduled tasks in mainframe batch environments.

Reports on IBM's celebration of the 20th anniversary of Lotus Notes with the emphasis on technologies and capabilities to empower users. Introduction of Notes and Domino 7 featuring a 70 percent improvement in server performance; Debut of the IBM Workplace Collaboration Services which integrates electronic mail, Web-conferencing and content-management applications.

This article reports that Oracle Corp. last week shipped Enterprise Planning and Budgeting, the successor to its aging Financial Analyzer and Sales Analyzer applications. The software will bring Oracle into more direct competition with Cognos Inc. and other suppliers of business-performance-management software. Planning and Budgeting also has new reporting capabilities, presents data in a multidimensional format, and loads data into reports and Excel spreadsheets. Enterprise Planning and Budgeting includes tools to migrate data, reports, personal work, and other items from Financial Analyzer and Sales Analyzer to the new application.

Focuses on Fulcrum Global Partners' use of business continuity software from XOsoft Inc. called WANSyncHa software. Features of the software; Applications; Share of XOsoft in the high-end replication software.

Reports on the status of Microsoft Corp.'s software security updates. Flaws; August security bulletins.

Reports on the expansion of Hewlett-Packard's support for Linux by guaranteeing that the JBoss application server and the MySQL open-source database will work together on its ProLiant blade servers running the operating system. JBoss' certification as Java 2 Enterprise Edition compliant; Hewlett-Packard's decision to certify the Apache Web server and OpenLDAP directory server to run on its servers.

Reports on PeopleSoft's signing of a software and services deal with Mexico's Tax Administration Service. Estimated worth of the contract; Significance of the deal; Summary of the bidding process.

Reports on Oracle's addition of expanded electronic signatures and records capabilities to its Oracle SupplyChain Management 11i.10. Company's efforts to provide better control, information and flexibility for business events.

Reports on IBM's acquisition of software company Cyanea Systems Corp.

Reports the announcement by Metro Group that International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) will provide the integration software for the German retailer's rollout of radio-frequency identification systems within its supply chain. IBM's WebSphere middleware.