Oracle surprised many tech industry observers by announcing Thursday it would pay US$871 million for marketing automation software vendor Eloqua. The move seemed a bit unlikely given the amount of sales and marketing software Oracle already had.
The end of each year sparks an occasion for rumination on the past, as well as a longing gaze into the future. We shined up our crystal ball, rubbed our chin for a while, and sought opinions from industry analysts on what the future holds for the enterprise software market.
At this time last year, we predicted that 2012 would be the year cloud computing hype ended. We said application development would migrate from offshore to cities stateside. And we forecasted that IT service providers would become more relationship-oriented. Now it's time to see how those predictions panned out.
Social media has changed more than the way companies market and promote themselves. Social networking has also changed the way companies recruit, how they communicate internally and how they handle sensitive data.
Some of the most memorable IT-related quotes were uttered in courtrooms this year, which involved a steady stream of legal challenges about intellectual property. In no particular order, these are some of the comments that stuck with us as 2012 winds to a close.
It's been a busy and transformative year for enterprise software. We dug through our story archives, talked to industry experts and put on our thinking caps to come up with this list of key events and emerging trends from 2012, all of which are set to have a lasting impact on the industry.
A study by Juniper Networks and the Economist Business Unit finds that IT is succeeding at improving the efficiency of business processes, but most IT departments are failing to take the next step in becoming a strategic partner for business.
It wouldn't be a mischaracterization to equate the cloud computing industry to the wild, wild west.
Pradip Sitaram, CIO at Enterprise Business Partners, led a project to modernize the nonprofit housing developer's IT infrastructure, introducing agile development and cloud-based computing along the way.
Inside the enterprise, the biggest obstacle to cloud computing is often the company's own corporate counsel. Here's how IT is getting to yes with legal.
The time for dabbling in cloud computing is over, say industry analysts. 2013 is the year that companies need to implement a hybrid cloud strategy that puts select workloads in the public cloud and keeps others in-house.
Despite calls for Facebook to stop planned changes to the way it makes privacy policy, analysts are divided over how bad the changes would be for users.
You have no doubt watched the rise of Pinterest, the latest social media phenom. But have you switched to the new Pinterest Business Pages? Here's how to do it, plus details on its other exclusive features.
Cloud security has been discussed ad nauseum for years, and it's often cited as the biggest barrier to enterprise cloud adoption. Such conversations are misguided and ignore the larger challenge of cloud adoption: accommodating developers.
Experts in mobile commerce and retail marketing share tips on how you can use mobile apps, QR codes and mobile commerce to boost sales this holiday season.