enterprise

SAP's business user organization to move to Business Objects

SAP on Tuesday sent out a notice to employees that the deck chairs will be realigned following its megamerger with Business Objects, according to sources close to the company.

SAP's business user organization, which is responsible for information worker and organizational performance applications, will be moved over to Business Objects, the sources said.

In some ways, that should come as no surprise.

SAP, as part of its $6.8 billion Business Objects merger announcement in October, said Doug Merritt, the head of its Business User Development and a corporate officer, would join the Business Objects group and report to … Read more

Car rental firms join carbon-offset bandwagon

With green issues dominating the headlines at this week's Detroit auto show, you may find yourself wondering how much it costs to assuage the gas-guzzling guilt you feel when picking up your next rental car. The convenient answer is $1.25 (plus applicable taxes). That is the price at which Enterprise, National, and Alamo are selling carbon offsets to their customers in a carbon-offset program launching today. According to the companies, the $1.25 offset charge represents the cost of offsetting the CO2 impact of the average rental vehicle operating in the company's fleet. TerraPass, the company responsible … Read more

SAP deadline for TomorrowNow buyers to weigh in draws near

Ever want to own a third-party enterprise applications software maintenance and support company?

Better hurry. Tuesday's the deadline to declare your interest to its owner SAP, as the deadline draws near, according to sources.

SAP, back in November, said it was considering putting TomorrowNow on the auction block, and apparently it's headed in that direction. But whether the software applications vendor ultimately selects a buyer from among TomorrowNow's competitors and new parties interested in entering the market has yet to be seen, sources said.

SAP could also just wind down the operations and let it go at … Read more

Microsoft offers $1.2 billion for Fast

Well, now we know what Microsoft had originally planned to announce on Monday.

Overnight, Microsoft announced it is offering $1.2 billion to buy Fast Search & Transfer, a leader in enterprise search. Microsoft had been working on the deal, which went by the code name "Ferrari" for a while now, but discussions had heated up in recent days.

The move shows the importance of business search as part of the overall search war with Google and other competitors.

Microsoft has previously made moves in business search, largely at the lower end of the market, using its SharePoint … Read more

Ellison's NetSuite raises IPO price range again

NetSuite's IPO auction has apparently attracted strong interest from investors, as the company prepares to set the final IPO price after market close Wednesday.

The on-demand enterprise applications company, backed by Oracle's Larry Ellison, has raised its pricing range by 46 percent from its initial pricing range of $13 to $16 a share that was announced on December 5.

The range was raised Tuesday to $16 to $19 per share. And it was raised a second time Wednesday to $19 to $22 a share, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

NetSuite could begin trading as early … Read more

Ellison's NetSuite launches IPO auction

Get those bidder paddles ready. NetSuite launched on Monday its long-anticipated IPO auction, with hopes of raising in excess of $99 million.

The auction, the first of NetSuite's four-step IPO process, is expected to close as early as December 19 at the market's close.

NetSuite, the on-demand applications company backed by Larry Ellison of Oracle fame, will then use the bid information to set a final IPO price, which will help it determine who should receive an allocation of shares.

For example, if a bidder wants 100 shares at $8 a share, another 100 shares at $10 a … Read more

Salesforce to tout growth, charity at NYC event Wednesday

Enterprise Web software company Salesforce says it will be a holiday season worth celebrating: the company announced Wednesday that it is set to surpass a milestone of one million paid customers by the end of 2007.

"It took seven years to reach the first 500,000 paying subscribers and only another 16 months for the second 500,000," Salesforce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement. "That's incredible global momentum and adoption for businesses of all sizes."

Benioff is set to be present at a New York press event on Wednesday afternoon that … Read more

Google and a beginning to a new era of enterprise software innovation

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google will definitely be bidding for US wireless spectrum in January.

If it wins a wireless license, Google would be in a position to become a provider of mobile phone and Internet services, to partner with others interested in doing so or to lease the spectrum to them. The company has said it wants to make mobile networks more open, so that consumers can use any Internet service and application and move their handsets between carriers without onerous restrictions.

Let's hope it wins. I've been critical of Google in the past, but one thing is clear: Google is an innovative company that builds useful things. Google continues to push the envelope on what we can do with our computers and with our phones. Look around and count how many truly innovative companies there are among the big software and telco companies. Not many.

In fact, Google may be the first of the next generation of software companies.… Read more

Public beta now open for Red Hat in the Cloud

Want to take Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a test drive without having to install anything? Today the public beta for RHEL on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud went live. It's not perfect, says Red Hat, but that's part of the plan:

We have certified and tested the released AMIs [Amazon Machine Images] within the Amazon EC2 environment and will be providing email-based support for the public beta. While the software is well-proven, we anticipate modifications to the deployment models and use-cases during the beta period and will refine the delivery of our services throughout the beta period. … Read more