SAP announced a broad set of plans to become a player in cloud computing, spanning from a "loosely coupled suite" of business applications to data integration and PaaS (platform as a service) Tuesday during the Sapphire conference in Orlando.

Salesforce.com is set to unveil new products for employee performance management and rapid website development on Thursday during the Cloudforce conference in San Francisco.

Oracle moved quickly on Friday to lay out its plans for the HCM (human capital management) software market, a couple days after rival SAP did the same thing.

An SAP-based human resources software system implemented last year by Kentucky's government suffered from a series of "material weaknesses" that could result in significant financial misstatements, according to a report released this week by the state's auditor.

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.

SAP's US$3.4 billion acquisition of SuccessFactors has passed an important regulatory step, with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission deciding on Friday to grant early termination of the waiting period required by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, SAP announced Wednesday.

Salesforce.com announced Thursday it will acquire cloud-based performance management vendor Rypple in a bid to enter the human resources software market.

SAP America said Saturday that it is paying US$3.4 billion in cash to acquire SuccessFactors, a provider of cloud-based human capital management tools.