Stories by: Chris Kanaracus

A massive Oracle ERP (enterprise-resource-planning) software project being conducted by the U.S. Air Force continues to experience difficulties, with the defense agency deciding to toss out some completed work as part of a restructuring plan that will be announced soon, according to an official communication released last week.

Oracle is buying cloud-based talent management and employee recruitment software vendor Taleo for roughly US$1.9 billion, the company announced Thursday. The move comes shortly after SAP's move to acquire SuccessFactors, a close competitor of Taleo, for US$3.4 billion in a deal that has yet to close.

Salesforce.com has made a series of changes to its support services that include the removal of certain features from the Standard tier, but which the company says overall will provide a better experience for customers.

Oracle is hoping to carve out a prominent place in the world of R, the open-source statistical modeling language with roots in academia but an increasingly high profile in enterprise IT shops. It announced a new Advanced Analytics product on Wednesday that ties R to its database and family of software-hardware appliances.

SAP on Tuesday announced the first products based on its HANA in-memory database aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, including a new Edge edition of the software as well as HANA-powered analytics for the Business One ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite.

Google has failed in its latest attempt to keep a potentially damaging email out of the lawsuit Oracle filed against it over alleged Java intellectual-property violations in the Android mobile OS.

Serious technical problems that have delayed the rollout of an upgrade to SAP's community portal are persisting, to the point where the company is no longer specifying a launch date.

Microsoft is gearing up to release a phalanx of native mobile applications for its CRM software, with clients aimed at BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, iOS, and Android 2.2 and higher devices, the company announced Monday.

Dell's formation of a new software group, which was announced Thursday, could be the forerunner to a string of acquisitions by the vendor, with some observers predicting a focus on systems management and cloud services provisioning.

SAP's US$3.4 billion purchase of cloud software vendor SuccessFactors has been delayed indefinitely while a U.S. regulatory body investigates the deal, an SAP spokesman confirmed Wednesday.