Stories about: NCR

Oracle's annual OpenWorld show is usually a showcase for its enterprise software. This year, however, it was all about hardware, as CEO Larry Ellison introduced a new family of database/storage products last week that it had been working on with partner Hewlett-Packard for three years.

The day Randy Mott left Dell for Hewlett-Packard in 2005 it caused a stir in the IT world. At the time, HP was a company in transition. Its CEO Carly Fiorina had been ousted following the most tempestuous period in the company's history, and the new CEO Mark Hurd recognized immediately that a major change was necessary to stabilize the company.

Oracle and SAP AG may still be bigger in enterprise applications, and Oracle in databases. Both IBM and Hewlett-Packard may reap more IT dollars overall. But in the ways that really count, Microsoft remains the king of the IT industry.

There's a fine line between commitment and focus on one hand, and obstinance and myopia on the other. Or perhaps there's no line at all. Maybe they only differ when the context differs.

The petabyte is the new petaflop.

IBM is facing a US$6 million patent-related lawsuit from Harry & David, an Internet retailer that was sued because it used an IBM e-commerce system that allegedly contained technology patented by two other companies.

Online retailer Harry and David has filed a US$6 million fraud and breach of contract lawsuit against IBM, claiming it was sold e-commerce software that IBM knew violated patents held by Charles Hill & Associates and NCR, according to court documents.

Visa this week privately issued an updated list of payment applications that store all of the magnetic-stripe data taken from credit and debit cards, as part of its ongoing effort to get retailers and other merchants to stop using such software.

It was with some degree of sadness that I saw 3Com sold to Bain Capital and Huawei. But it got me wondering why we see so many one-generation companies.

Patrick Byrne has biked across the U.S. four times. On a recent journey, he pedaled a recumbent bicycle. It's better than a road bike, he says, because "unlike a road bike, where your head is down and you're looking eight feet in front of you, you're sitting up on a recumbent, and you can see everything."

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