News

• Wall Street Beat: Software results temper bad news on PC front

  Disappointing earnings reports this week from Hewlett-Packard and Dell were offset by more encouraging results from software makers, confirming forecasts for general trends in IT spending this year.

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  Wall Street Beat: IPOs, M&A, chip news stir tech optimism

  Zynga's initial public offering Friday, a raft of acquisition announcements this week from IBM, Salesforce and others, and some upbeat reports on the chip and hardware sector are putting a positive spin on year-end news for the tech sector.

• Wall Street Beat: Tech lags in wake of mixed results

  Computer stocks sagged Friday morning in the wake of continuing economic worries and mixed financial news from hardware and software vendors this week.

• Salesforce.com set to build Australian data centre

  Cloud services provider, Salesforce.com, has confirmed reports that it is planning to build an Australian data centre.

• New community marketplace seeks cloud developers

  Developers interested in coding projects for public cloud services have a new avenue to find work in the form of CloudSpokes, a community marketplace announced Monday by Appirio.

• Microsoft turns up the heat on Salesforce.com, Oracle

  Microsoft announced Monday that its Dynamics CRM Online software is now available in 40 markets around the world, bringing it in closer competition with Salesforce.com and Oracle's CRM on Demand.

• Telstra uses Salesforce for crowd sourcing

  The use of the Salesforce Ideas internal forum has created more than 300 company initiatives for Telstra since it began using the application in March 2010.

• Salesforce launches Chatter Mobile as social media grows in enterprise

  In a sign of the growing influence of social media in the enterprise, Salesforce has launched Chatter Mobile, a mobile collaboration platform.

• Alpha Autism backs Salesforce's Chatter

  A Melbourne-based not-for-profit organisation has backed Salesforce's new cloud-based social networking platform, Chatter.

• Oracle takes aim at Salesforce with on-demand CRM update

  Oracle on Tuesday stepped up its assault on rival Salesforce with a new version of its on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) application.

• In a down economy, SaaS revenues rise

  The economic downturn has been punishing to many IT vendors, but not software-as-a-service vendors. SaaS providers are seeing double-digit growth in their subscription revenue, according to a new study by Forrester Research Inc.

• Salesforce launches Service Cloud

  Salesforce has repurposed the customer-service software acquired through its August 2008 purchase of InstraNet into a new offering called the Service Cloud, the company announced Thursday.

• Salesforce.com makes US$31.5 million acquisition

  Salesforce.com has beefed up its Salesforce CRM customer service and support offering, following the company's US$31.5 million acquisition of InStranet.

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  Dell links up with Salesforce's development platform

  Dell has reached a three-year deal with Salesforce to use the latter's Force.com development platform to build software for its "entire global workforce," according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.