Stories by Patrick Thibodeau

Sun Microsystems Inc. CEO Jonathan Schwartz called it "one of the toughest e-mails I've ever had to write" when he told Sun's employees that Oracle was buying the company.

IBM last week filed a patent application for an offshore outsourcing methodology that's intended to help companies minimize the financial risks associated with sending work overseas.

Shortly after Donnie Reynolds, the chief operating officer at Automated HealthCare Solutions, learned that Microsoft planned to cut 5,000 workers over the next 18 months, he and another employee of the medical services provider flew to the software vendor's home city.

IBM's not-so-secret layoffs may have reached 4200 Tuesday, according to Alliance@IBM, which believes that thousands of other employees will be loosing their jobs as well before the cuts end.

Microsoft and Sun Microsystems aren't the only top IT vendors laying off employees. IBM may have quietly let more than 2800 workers go, according to the Alliance@IBM union, which expects even more job cuts at the company.

For more than a year, an @TheWhiteHouse account on Twitter's microblogging site was used to dutifully send out more than 1,500 alerts about speeches, press briefings and other Bush administration news. The Twitter account's claim that it was officially sanctioned by the White House appeared believable, if only because it was so earnest — and boring.

President Barack Obama's stated plan to create a "Google for government" began Tuesday with a WhiteHouse.gov makeover that was announced via a blog entry on the redesigned Web site and a Twitter post.

The United Nations may be on the verge of installing an ERP system from SAP AG, potentially resulting in one of the largest public-sector deployments to date for the Walldorf, Germany-based software vendor.

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.

Julius Genachowski, who is expected to be <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=search&amp;searchTerms=Barack+Obama"> President-elect Barack Obama </a>'s choice to head the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=search&amp;searchTerms=U.S.+Federal+Communications+Commission"> Federal Communications Commission </a>, has a Washington insider's resume and a Silicon Valley attitude.

Nearly 1500 CEOs left their jobs last year, including 221 in the technology and telecommunications sector, according to US recruitment firm.

A US federal economic stimulus package expected early this year from the administration of President-elect Barack Obama should boost the job prospects of IT professionals.

In filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, companies that use H-1B and L-1 visas are alerting investors that it may become more difficult to obtain them in the future. Some firms are also noting that they don't know whether President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress will help them get adequate numbers of visas.

Hewlett-Packard has a deal for you: zero-percent financing for up to 36 months on leases of many of its enterprise software products. The offer, announced last week, applies to software contracts worth more than US$100,000 and will be in place through January 31.

If the US president-elect moves quickly to boost basic research funding, the visa issue will be part of the debate.