Business Tech

Salesforce.com rolls out Service Cloud

This was originally published at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Salesforce.com has unveiled its Service Cloud, a customer service application that's designed for cloud computing and plugged into conversations that occur on Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

The effort is built on the Force.com platform. In a statement, Salesforce.com said that "two-thirds of all service conversations will take place in the cloud."

It appears that the Service Cloud is a part of the InStranet integration. While the details of the Service Cloud seem a bit fuzzy -- Dennis Howlett will dissect later -- the main … Read more

PC shipment growth drops to virtually zero in Q4

After several years of seemingly tireless 15 percent quarterly growth, the PC industry hit a wall at the end of 2008.

Overall PC shipments worldwide dropped 0.4 percent to 77.3 million units during the fourth quarter, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker study released Wednesday. The results are more alarming for the embattled industry considering that the quarter--the worst in several years--wasn't helped out more by the holiday shopping season. There hasn't been an overall drop in shipments since the second quarter of 2001, after the last recession.

"We had projected growth of … Read more

Report: Oracle cuts workforce by 500

Oracle has sliced approximately 500 positions from its sales and consulting staff businesses in North America, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The positions, which would account for less than 2 percent of Oracle's North American workforce as of November, were cut on Friday, according to the Journal.

Oracle's reported layoffs come at a time when a number of companies across all industry sectors are slashing their workforce by double digits as the economy languishes in a recession.

And while other companies are making staff cuts amid steep declines in their revenues and earnings, Oracle'… Read more

Google to launch reseller program for Apps

Updated January 14, 6:08 a.m. PST, to reflect Google's official announcement.

Google on Wednesday launched a new authorized reseller program for Google Apps. It will let partnered businesses wrap up Google Apps with their own services in special bundles that can be resold. This includes things like localized customer service, hardware installation, file migration, and special hosting for things that fall outside of Google's built-in Sites service.

Google has been pilot-testing the reseller program with 50 companies since last summer. Now it's open to anyone, and will be available everywhere in the world. As a … Read more

Adobe downgraded; ex-Yahoo added to board

Shares of Adobe Systems fell 7 percent Tuesday after a market analyst downgraded the company's stock from "market perform" to "underperform."

Share closed at $22.10, down $1.66, after FBR Research analyst David Hilal said in a research note that he cut his rating on Adobe's stock because the "shares have risen to a point where the risk-reward profile is unfavorable." Hilal also said Adobe depends too much on new unit sales and lacks recurring revenue from existing customers.

In other news, Adobe announced that former Yahoo executive Dan Rosensweig had … Read more

New Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is tech veteran

Former Autodesk Chief Executive Carol Bartz, 60, will be the new CEO at Yahoo. Here is more information on who she is and what she faces in her new role.

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison

Resume

Executive chairman of the board, Autodesk

CEO, Autodesk, 1992-2006

VP of worldwide field operations, at Sun Microsystems, 1983-1992

Product Line and Sales Management positions at Digital Equipment and 3M

Director on boards of Cisco Systems, Intel, NetApp

Awards

President George W. Bush's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology

50 Most Powerful Women in … Read more

Nvidia slashes revenue guidance up to 50 percent

Updated at 12:15 p.m. PST with information from iSuppli.

Nvidia is slashing fourth-quarter revenue guidance 40 percent to 50 percent. This comes on the heels of Intel's revision last week. Both companies are citing collapsing demand from customers.

"Total revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 is now expected to decline 40 percent to 50 percent sequentially as a result of further weakness in end-user demand and inventory reductions by Nvidia's channel partners in the global PC supply chain," the largest graphics chip supplier said in a statement Tuesday.

This revises the fourth-quarter … Read more

Global IT spending expected to fall 3 percent in '09

IT spending worldwide is expected to slip 3 percent this year, with computer makers taking the brunt of the decline, according to a Forrester Research report released Tuesday.

Global IT spending is predicted to drop to $1.66 trillion this year, marking the first time in seven years the industry has not grown, according to the report, which used U.S. dollars as its form of measurement.

"Our forecast for 2009 rests on the assumptions that the economic recession in the U.S. and other major economies will start to end in the second half of 2009," Andrew … Read more

Patent wars: RealNetworks wins; Global Crossing pays up

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

RealNetworks defeated a patent infringement suit that was trying to come back from the dead. Meanwhile, Global Crossing licensed a portfolio of call center patents from Ronald A. Katz Technology Licensing, an outfit that collects dough from a who's who of corporate America.

First, RealNetworks said Tuesday that it defeated an attempt by Friskit to revive a patent infringement suit that sought damages of $70 million. In a statement, RealNetworks outlined:

The Federal Circuit in Washington D.C. upheld a 2007 ruling in which Judge William W. Schwarzer of … Read more