Enterprise software

Standards body OASIS on Monday announced a project to create technical "blueprints" designed to accelerate creation of business applications around a services-oriented architecture.

The first meeting of the SOA Adoption Blueprints Technical Committee is slated for September 1, said Mike Matsumura, the proposed chair of the committee who is vice president of technology at Infravio.

The idea behind blueprints, or patterns, is to give application architects and developers a head start: rather than build common application types from scratch, a company could procure generic designs, or "recipes," and even sample code to jump start the process. … Read more

Microsoft said that it will introduce its Small Business Accounting software at the mid-sized business summit it is holding in Redmond, Wash. on September 7.

Company representatives said that Chairman Bill Gates and Steven Guggenheimer, vice president of small business for Microsoft, will preside over the event.

Microsoft is building the accounting tools as part of its new Office product set for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), code-named Magellan, which is also expected to offer upgraded contact management applications. The company introduced a beta version of the accounting product last November.

Magellan will represent Microsoft's second edition of its … Read more

Industry watchers were unsurprised by SSA Global's acquisition of struggling CRM specialists Epiphany last week, as the deal had been rumored for some time and the company was known to be seeking a buyer.

What's more interesting about the deal, at least to one market expert, is SSA's overall growth strategy, which has been built around a long series of acquisitions over the last several years. Scott Nelson, analyst with Gartner, said that while SSA hasn't yet gone to great lengths to integrate many of the technologies it has purchased, it is becoming what he calls … Read more

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently said that Lotus customers were "ripe to be plucked." Some fellow Microsofties apparently think the same of Lotus employees.

Microsoft has hired two more former Lotus executives, according to an article in CRN.

One of them, Bob Congdon states in his blog that he is leaving the Boston area, where Lotus is based, to work for Microsoft.

Julio Estrada, who worked at Lotus and then moved on to launch collaboration start-up Kubi Software, is said to heading to Redmond as well. Kubi Software no longer lists Estrada on its company mast head .

Barry Briggs , … Read more

A recent study from Evans Data Corp. casts doubt on enterprise software vendors' moves to warm up to scripting development languages.

The study, published on Thursday, found that the number of people using PHP for development in Europe, Middle East and Africa fell by over 25% last year and that the number of developers who would not evaluate PHP for future product grew by almost 40 percent. Similarly, Perl and Python also saw significant drop-offs in usage and planned usage.

"PHP, Perl and Python use on a global basis peaked one to two years ago and has started to … Read more

In a show of literary creativity not frequently seen in the business software market, one Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) partner has dedicated a nine stanza poem to its frustrations with the software giant.

Mark Rockwell, chief executive of Rockton Software, a Microsoft partner based in Puyallup, Washington, first delivered the elegy to company executives last month at the software maker's partner conference in Minneapolis. Rockton has since posted the tribute to its Web site in the name of spreading its CEO's message.

Some sections of the poem praise Microsoft for doing a better job than in years past … Read more

Industry watchers are confirming that Oracle is ready to pounce again and planning to buy a significant stake in I-Flex Solutions, a maker of applications for the financial services market.

Forrester Research Analyst Ray Wang said that Oracle is laying plans to buy out the 44% majority stake in I-Flex currently controlled by financial services giant Citigroup. Based in New York, but with considerable operations in India, the analyst said that I-Flex would likely lend immediate value to Oracle in the company's core banking applications business, while also increasing its outsourcing support footprint worldwide.

"Oracle is currently targeting … Read more

Receiving poor customer service remains the number one reason why consumers abandon one service provider and move on to another, according to a new study from Accenture.

Proving once again that the most forward-thinking customer relationship management (CRM) strategy in the world can't help companies that don't improve their direct interactions with living, breathing people, the study found that some 49 percent of the 2000 individuals it surveyed in the U.S. and U.K. dumped at least one services vendor for providing sub-par support in the last year.

Digging deeper, Accenture contends that some 61 percent of … Read more

It appears that enterprise software maker SAP has changed its tune on the topic of launching hosted business applications.

While SAP has offered little insight to this point on its strategy around so-call on-demand software, and previously denied that it had immediate plans to launch a set of hosted applications, Chief Executive Henning Kagermann hinted recently that the company may indeed by creating such a product.

In a call with financial analysts last week, Kagermann revealed that SAP is now building a product to be delivered under the "software as a service" model.

"We are in preparation … Read more