After Oracle and Hewlett-Packard enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership in enterprise IT, it's hard to find anything that hasn't gone wrong with their relationship over the past two years.

June is off to a rocky in the markets for technology companies as shares slump in the wake of troubling economic reports, though cooler heads appear to have confidence in the sector for the long term.

Ann Livermore, a member of Hewlett-Packard's board of directors and a longtime head of the company's enterprise business, will be the first witness called when a court in San Jose, California, hears HP's lawsuit against Oracle for ending future development on the Itanium platform.

A watchdog group has slammed Apple and its supplier Foxconn for failing to take corrective action on the plight of factory workers in China, saying the companies continue to abuse employees while providing poor working conditions.

Since taking over HP last year, CEO Meg Whitman has continued to help Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. That stance may carry risks ranging from public perception of the company to closer scrutiny by the government.

A fresh crop of ultrabooks sporting Intel's latest "Ivy Bridge" Core processors will start to go on sale next month, including 30 models with touchscreens, Intel said Thursday.

Following through on promises to shuffle the ranks of upper management, Hewlett-Packard has hired George Kadifa to head up the company's software division and promoted Bill Veghte, who formerly led the division, to the role of chief operating officer.

During the upcoming retrial of Oracle's corporate-theft lawsuit against SAP, the companies plan to call a star-studded array of tech executives as witnesses including CEO Larry Ellison, former Oracle co-president and current Infor CEO Charles Phillips and SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott, according to court documents filed Thursday.

After a crazy year for HP that included a failed tablet, a hasty decision to abandon the PC business (a decision now abandoned), and a CEO shakeup, the company seems eager to get back to business as usual.

IBM's Steve Mills has long been known for his leadership of the company's software division, but last year he added hardware and systems to his responsibilities as well. That move put Mills in charge of 100,000 employees and products that generate US$40 billion in revenue for IBM, according to its website.

It's been more than three years since HP acquired IT services provider EDS, and the long-term direction of its bigger - if not better - outsourcing business is no more clear than it was on the day the deal closed.

It may seem like 2010 was the year of the tablet, but the reality is that 2010 was really just the year of the iPad with 15 million units sold and no real competitors for the Apple tablet. However, 2011 will be very different with a diverse variety of tablet options emerging--including some particularly relevant entries from major players.

The leaked details on HP and Palm's WebOS tablet keep on coming, though HP has said we haven't seen everything yet.

With so much chatter about tablets this year, you might think that the handheld, rectangular devices being unveiled represent a significant innovation. The reality is that so much of what we're seeing is not a whole lot different than what we saw in previous years; these products offer only a few new twists. But those new twists could make the difference between tablets' remaining a niche item and their finally busting out to the mass market in a meaningful way.

We haven't seen HP hype a tablet since last year's flirtation with Windows 7, but that could change after February 9, when the company has all but confirmed that it will introduce its first WebOS tablet.

By now everyone knows that HP CEO Mark Hurd was forced to resign following an investigation into an alleged sexual harassment scandal.

Hewlett-Packard unveiled its Mini 2140 netbook at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this week, and it's cool.