Computer Associates (CA) this week announced it is continuing its aggressive acquisition strategy in the services arena with the purchase of LDA Systems, an information management consulting company that specialises in client/server, mainframe, midrange and Internet technologies. LDA, with 1997 revenues of $US25 million, has sustained an annual growth rate of 35 per cent over the last three years, according to CA. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Installing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is daunting, but IBM Corp. is trying to take some of the worry out of the task by offering, through reseller partners, a "performance guarantee" for Baan Co.'s software running on IBM RS/6000 machines.
Microsoft this week finally announced that it is rechristening the upcoming and long-awaited Windows NT 5.0, which will now be called Windows 2000, in order to more clearly pitch the operating system to mainstream business users. The name change means that what has been referred to as Windows NT Workstation 5.0 will now be called Windows 2000 Professional, while Windows NT Server 5.0 becomes Windows 2000 Server. The vendor also said it will attach a "Built on Windows NT technology" label on products that work with Windows 2000.
Oracle chairman and CEO Larry Ellison recently said the company is betting its future on the Internet, aiming to tap an explosion in business-to-business software services that the Internet will spark. Ellison reiterated the selling points of Oracle8i, due out at the end of the year, and outlined plans for upcoming Internet-based applications and the new Oracle Business Online service that it is launching.
File this in the "can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" category. Sun Microsystems this week declared that its vision of enterprise computing includes integration of its own Solaris servers with arch-rival Microsoft's Windows NT operating system.
To avoid a million-dollar software implementation mistake, Data Warehouse World was the place to be recently.
The expected listing of SAP's American subsidiary on the New York Stock Exchange this week marks a new era of growth for the company and caps a year-long effort to rewrite the core code for its flagship R/3 package.
Attempting to appeal to high-end workstation users, Intel this week is making a series of announcements regarding investments and systems specifications designed to boost computing and graphics processing power for machines based on its chip designs.
Apple Computer and Microsoft executives here at MacWorld are playing up the accomplishments that their partnership has brought forth over the past year
Digital shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favour of the company's acquisition by Compaq at a special meeting held last week, according to a Digital spokesperson.
Sun Microsystems last week asked a US court to prevent Microsoft from shipping a version of Windows 98, which Sun says contains a version of Java that is incompatible with Sun's own version.
Compaq Computer CEO and president Eckhard Pfeiffer made a pitch for his company's ascendancy from PC supplier to global enterprise systems provider yesterday to thousands of users attending CA-World.
IBM under fire from all sides
Cheap PCs are helping to maintain the growth rate for the number of machines sold worldwide, but the dollar value of revenue growth is expected to slow down this year, according to a Dataquest report.
Growth in sales to medium sized companies will fuel worldwide packaged accounting software revenue, which is expected to grow at a 15 per cent compound annual growth rate, to $US10.4 billion by the year 2002, according to new research from IDC.
