Software

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If you're like most enterprises, you have data everywhere. It's in line-of-business applications. It's in directories. It's in various departmental servers. It's in your e-commerce platform. To manage all this, most shops use databases of all sizes running on a variety of operating systems and database applications, often from different vendors and editions. Chances are, they're not consistent.

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.

Google promised radical technology proposals would be a part of its Solve for X project, and its initial offerings so far haven't disappointed.

The shakeup at Yahoo continues.

The transformation of IT through new delivery models like cloud computing raises questions about the role CIOs and IT managers will play in a more business-oriented, on-demand world.

Selling technology for technology’s sake simply doesn’t cut it anymore. ARN recently brought together a panel of industry representatives to look at why selling business productivity, ROI and innovation are critical to the channel’s success and how these elements will be the force behind cloud computing take-up.

Microsoft’s Gianpaolo Carraro challenged the fact that everything should be paid for by usage.

A critical question posed by Microsoft’s Gianpaolo Carraro was whether the channel was innovating from a business model perspective to meet new demand for more accountability, ROI and solutions success.

While there are sure to be a lot of new networking and IT companies that emerge in 2012, these nine stood out for their potential to deliver game-changing innovations in a wide array of fields, including Cloud computing, enterprise search, and mobile application development. (These are in addition to seven hot Cloud companies and seven storage companies to watch that we highlighted last year.)

For many of us, the Cloud has changed the way we work and play. Thanks to well-known services like Gmail, Dropbox, Facebook and Instapaper, practically our whole lives - photos, documents, contacts and more - are online. So isn't it time to take control?

Google's Android 4.0 operating system is more than just another upgrade.

Microsoft released a video in 2008 and another one this week that together predict the sleek, wireless, connected gadgets we'll all enjoy by the year 2019.

Automobile technology has become so advanced that today's cars are essentially computers with wheels. So why aren't we using them to surf the Web, communicate with other cars or order food at nearby restaurants?

IT management software vendor, SolarWinds, is about to introduce its latest Synthetic End User Monitor (SEUM) which supports Real User Monitors (RUM) to monitor networks. The company also most recently opened up a new head office, based in Brisbane. SolarWinds senior vice-president and general manager of the Asia-Pacific, Doug Hibberd, spoke to ARN about the company’s achievements, latest product release and future plans.

With the rapid evolution of technology and the gradual expansion of Australia’s NBN, significant developments are taking place in areas such as the digital delivery of medical service. Hot on the heels of CSC’s acquisition of iSoft, ARN spoke to CSC Australia national director for health services, Lisa Pettigrew, on what lies ahead for eHealth in Australia.

TrackITOnline's Phil Lancaster, talks about running a niche distribution company and its future plans

Google shook the search market last week with the launch of Instant, a new feature that lets the company's search engine refresh results on the fly as people type their queries.

To some, 13 is an unlucky number. In fact, there are people are so frightened by it that the fear of 13 has been given a name – Triskaidekaphobia. Express Data is not Triskaidekaphobic. Now in its 13th year of trading under its current name, the company has sailed itself through the global financial crisis with a steady hand, and emerged on the other side as ARN’s Software Distributor of the Year for 2009.

Windows XP is 10 years old, yet a substantial number of businesses are still using it. They’re not really at fault. Upgrading to Windows Vista was considered too much work for too little payoff, and for many businesses upgrading to Windows 7 has for a long time seemed unnecessary.

Last week, Facebook announced that it had amassed 500 million users, a formable portion of the global Internet audience. But even as Mark Zuckerberg and company celebrates, others are busy trying to uproot Facebook's popularity by establishing a set of open standards to share Facebook-like features across the Internet.

So Google finally made good on its promise to uncensor its Chinese search engine and/or leave the Chinese market. And China is now making good on its promise to make Google very sorry for ever bringing it up.

Google prides itself on releasing products early and improving on them quickly, but this philosophy sometimes does a disservice to the company and to its users, as illustrated by this week's ballyhooed release of Buzz in Gmail.

The following is a reader-written article from David Pinkus, a former high-level Google employee who is now senior vice president of information technology for Universal Technical Institute. 

I just finished watching the PayPal Platform Preview, which was PayPal's official announcement of their new open development platform (it was previously leaked on TechCrunch). Officially called "PayPal X," the platform was presented by Osama Bedier (VP of platform and emerging technology) in broad, almost utopian terms, as something that would unleash waves of innovation transforming the way goods and services are delivered. Maybe.

The just-released version 3.5 of Firefox is a winner, offering significantly faster Web browsing, better tab handling, a host of interface tweaks and, like just about every other browser on the planet, a "porn mode." If you already use Firefox you'll want to upgrade right away. If you're not a Firefox user, this version represents a very good opportunity to give the browser a test run.

Microsoft NAP is an effective network gatekeeper for Windows endpoints, but initial configuration is complex, policies are basic, and reporting is absent. NAP is best used as a core technology deployed in combination with others for a more complete, manageable, and scalable solution.

Amid increasing pressure from competing products from the likes of Google, Mozilla and Apple, Microsoft has released the biggest upgrade to its flagship Web browser in two years with Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8). TechWorld takes the most popular browser on the Internet for a spin and the result is a more extensible and powerful Web experience.

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