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Apple sued over abilities to use iPhone as e-book reader and for users to browse content and download it to an iPhone; Tom Tom joins patent coalition as tool in litigation with Microsoft; NVIDIA countersues Intel over technology sharing agreement, and Charter Communications files for bankruptcy.
Back in February, I wrote about an Accenture study finding that telecom carriers were out of touch with customers and losing money as a result. The consulting firm also did a much broader study and -- surprise, surprise -- high tech firms are often having their enterprise lunch handed to them -- by themselves.
SAP is fighting its own legacy and is, in some ways, running away from its strengths as it tries to increase revenues during difficult economic times. SAP's legacy is mixed. Known for selling enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, comprehensive, industry-specific suites that produce reports...
Dell, HP, Lenovo and other hardware vendors could be looking at the end of their PC businesses within four years, as enterprises start implementing a more network-based approach to delivering computing power and applications. The threat comes from a technology known as hosted virtual desktops, ba...
Smell the hint of smoke in the air? It actually started when Microsoft announced that a full multi-touch interface would be built into Windows 7. But it's now getting thick as the company posted a fuller description of the new interface, which includes not only single-touch, but multi-touch features. Providing the other half of the friction is Apple's recently-granted broad patent on multi-touch UI technology. But although Apple has indicated its readiness to enforce the patent, facing off against Microsoft could prove the business equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot with a howitzer. Particularly when Microsoft has a multi-touch patent application that predates any of Apple's filings.
Microsoft is stuck with an intractable issue that no amount of rationalization will remedy. Through a series of ill-considered acquisitions in the early years of this decade, the company finds itself stuck with four software products that essentially perform the same functions, but which it can't wh...
When outsourcing consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas released its figures on job cuts in January and February, the numbers were depressing, with the two months figure almost double the same period in 2008 and close to the number of job cuts in the first six months of last year. But the picture is much worse for high tech, with layoffs in January and February almost quadruple those in the full first quarter of 2008 and far in excess of the portion of the economy that the sector represents.
The next item on the list for Salesforce.com is marketing automation, an executive told me yesterday. The company currently makes on-demand software that lets salespeople manage leads, and recently set its sights on call center technology, as I reported yesterday. But while Salesforce sees huge g...
If your name isn't Google or Yahoo, being a search vendor is something like being a pro wrestler in the 1960s, with fervent but tiny crowds following you to dilapidated arenas in third-tier cities. Devotees of enterprise search insist that the technology will pay for itself, but the vendors are hard...
Intel threatens to pull AMD patent cross-licensing agreement; Nintendo beats patent challenge over analog joysticks; Discovery sues Amazon.com for alleged patent infringement by Kindle; Apple sends cease and desist letter to small company over trademark application; Psystar thumbs nose and releases another Mac clone model; and the SEC dropped its suit against McAfee's former general counsel for alleged illegal stock option backdating.
I've been asked by InformationWeek to put together and host a webcast called Escaping the Rock and Hard Place: Surviving & Thriving in a Time of Turmoil and Tight Budgets. It happens today at 2pm Eastern, 11am Pacific. It's for CIOs and other in-house technical executives. There's no charge.
Gaul may have been divided into three parts, but Salesforce.com sees the call center market as divided in two. However, it may not have territory to itself for long. Alex Dayon, senior vice president of the service & support business at Salesforce.com, told me the company sees the same dearth...
Last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave a one word answer, no, to the question of whether his company would buy the New York Times. The answer was as definitive as you can get, but might be as wrong-headed as many other decisions that management there has made over the last few years. But let's ...
Salesforce.com, the $1 billion vanguard of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry, is betting its next $1 billion in revenues will come from disrupting the call center industry. The company that declared death to on-premise software with SFA, its flagship on-demand customer relationship manage...
The industry has been closely monitoring the Tafas v. Doll (formerly Tafas v. Dudas) lawsuit over whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office would be able to make rule changes that would significantly limit patent applications. Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) announced its ruling, and the net result won't leave any of the interested parties in unqualified cheer. That is because a split court agreed that the USPTO had the necessary authority to impose the rules, but that one was in conflict with existing patent law and that a lower court needed to review whether the drafting and review process had been proper.
