business issues - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• IBM acquires BigFix for data centers

  IBM announced Thursday that it plans to buy systems management software vendor BigFix. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, were not provided.

• Gartner rolls back 2010 IT spending forecast

  Gartner has dropped its 2010 IT spending forecast, citing currency fluctuations caused by the ongoing European debt crisis.

• HP closes Palm deal, confirms WebOS tablet

  Hewlett-Packard on Thursday finalized its acquisition of Palm and confirmed it will use the company's WebOS in future tablets and netbooks.

• IT résumés: Think twice about the advice you've been given

  Recruiters, professional résumé writers and other career experts give out tons of advice on how best to write a résumé that will stand out from the competition. Their intentions are noble - they want to help people land jobs - but the problem with their advice is that it doesn't always apply to IT professionals and the nature of the work they do, says Shana Westerman, a recruiting manager with IT staffing firm Sapphire Technologies.

• Amazon.com to acquire shopping site Woot

  Amazon.com plans to acquire online discount retailer Woot.com, the smaller site announced Wednesday.

• Alcatel-Lucent acquires Web mashup API directory

  Alcatel-Lucent has acquired ProgrammableWeb, which hosts an on-line directory of over 2,000 open web APIs (application programming interfaces) that developers can use to build 'mashups' of Web services.

• VMware co-founder tackles virtualization at Cisco

  The five visionary tech executives who created VMware and launched the x86 virtualization market have kept low public profiles in recent years, with four leaving VMware as the company gets remade by owner EMC.

• SAP readies 'River' cloud platform for public debut

  SAP is segmenting its emerging cloud-computing strategy across multiple development platforms, including one code-named "River," which will support lightweight extensions to its on-premises ERP (enterprise resource planning) software.

• Oracle Q4 profit jumps 24 percent

  The company sold $1.2 billion in Sun hardware during the period

• Salesforce.com sues Microsoft for patent infringement

  Salesforce.com has sued Microsoft for patent infringement, making a move in response to an intellectual property suit Redmond filed against the on-demand CRM (customer relationship management) vendor last month.

• How IT Sourcing Group Can Win Influence with Business

  How do you secure a good deal with a large software vendor when you only have four weeks to raise the purchase order (PO)? The answer: By not letting your colleagues put you in that position. IT sourcing can only do its job effectively if it is involved much earlier in the selection process. However, many sourcing executives are struggling to properly negotiate contracts with little notice or support from the ultimate contract owners.

• HP buys Melodeo

  Hewlett-Packard confirmed on Wednesday that it had acquired Melodeo, its second recent acquisition in the mobile market.

• Infor buddies up with Microsoft

  Infor will be relying on Microsoft technology for the next generation of its line of ERP (enterprise resource planning) products, in the wake of a deal the companies announced Wednesday.

• A 'fat-free' programming framework for the cloud

  Researchers in the U.K. are developing a lean-and-mean programming framework called Mirage that is designed specifically to support applications running on cloud infrastructure platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine.

• SAP earnings rise as revenue continues to slip

  SAP's revenue fell in the third quarter, but earnings rose -- although neither figure was as high as analysts had hoped. The company said it expected the decline in software and software-related service revenue to continue.