News

• CIOs bemoan lock-in and the 'false flexibility' of the Cloud

  Despite the promise of portability from service providers, the reality of the Cloud for big customers is a similar type of lock-in as they experience with on-premise apps vendors such as Oracle and SAP, two CIOs said Tuesday.

• Many companies are negligent about SAP security, researchers say

  SAP has significantly improved the security of its products over the past few years but many of its customers are negligent with their deployments, which exposes them to potential attacks that could cripple their businesses, according to security researchers.

• Microsoft Dynamics ERP software now available on the Azure cloud

  Microsoft is upping the stakes in the growing market for cloud-based ERP, with its Dynamics GP 2013 and NAV 2013 products now available for deployment on its Azure service.

• Open Data Center Alliance tackles Big Data analysis

  The Open Data Center Alliance, a customer group that shares tips about Cloud deployments and tries to nudge vendors into supplying the products they want, has added Big Data to the list of IT topics it covers.

• SAP wins key ruling in long-running patent battle with Versata

  SAP has received a ruling that sets a legal landmark in patent law and could also prove favorable to its defense in a long-running intellectual-property dispute with Versata.

• SAP at work on Sentinel, an 'Amazon for Stocks'

  SAP is at work on a new product called Sentinel that is supposed to be "nothing less than the Amazon for Stocks and the Facebook for Investors," according to a job posting associated with the project.

• Gartner: BI software market growth rate slowed in 2012

  The BI (business intelligence) software market cooled off a bit in 2012 after "a few historic banner years" of spending growth, due to difficult economic conditions and even confusion over industry buzzwords such as "big data," according to a report from analyst firm Gartner.

• SAP buys e-commerce vendor Hybris in strike back at Oracle, Salesforce.com

  SAP is buying privately held Hybris in a bid to build out an e-commerce software offering that connects with customers across multiple "channels, devices and touch points."

• Oracle, managed services provider to settle suit over third-party support

  Oracle and managed services provider ServiceKey have come to a proposed settlement of an intellectual-property lawsuit Oracle filed against the company last year.

• SAP shakes up development organization

  SAP has abruptly reorganized its development strategy, with SuccessFactors CEO and cloud strategy chief Lars Dalgaard leaving the company and executive board member Vishal Sikka now tapped to lead a single software development unit.

• CIOs need to rethink their roles, MIT symposium panelists say

  By now, it's become a tired old tech industry bromide: CIOs need to be business-savvy.

• SAP to crunch and sell carriers' data on mobile use

  Mobile operators collect huge amounts of data about how their subscribers use mobile data, and that information is starting to go on sale as targeted intelligence that enterprises can use to better reach consumers.

• SAP builds out HANA platform and ecosystem

  Anyone remotely within the orbit of SAP lately knows that its number-one focus is the HANA in-memory database and development platform. At this week's Sapphire conference in Orlando, the vendor sought to show the progress it is making in both building out HANA's capabilities as well as attracting developers and partners to HANA.

• SAP updates line-of-business cloud apps

  Selling SaaS (software as a service) applications aimed at specific lines of business is one way that SAP has tried to stake a claim in the world of cloud computing and during the Sapphire conference it unveiled a broad series of updates to the portfolio.

• SAP unveils 'consumer-friendly' Fiori app suite

  SAP's software is known for its role running many of the world's largest companies, but not necessarily for its user-friendliness. As part of an ongoing effort to change this perception, SAP unveiled Fiori, a set of 25 lightweight "consumer-friendly" applications that can run on desktops, tablets and mobile devices, on Wednesday at the Sapphire conference in Orlando.