Ann Bednarz

Two acquisitions announced last week continue the CRM market consolidation that's been going on the last few years and highlight the importance of adding a personal touch to companies' online customer service efforts.

While the holiday season traditionally provides a key revenue surge for retailers, it's also a prime time for fraud.

Offline specialist BackWeb Technologies Ltd. next week is expected to announce a retooled and renamed version of its flagship software for making Web applications available to disconnected remote and mobile workers.

Companies that want to sell products to the U.S. Department of Defense soon will have to comply with a new condition of doing business with the multibillion-dollar buyer: wireless inventory tagging.

Database maker InterSystems Corp. is expected to unveil integration software next week aimed at making it easier for users to build composite applications that cull data from existing legacy systems.

IBM Corp. sought to advance its US$10 billion on-demand computing initiative on several fronts last week, announcing new grid software for aggregating computing resources and middleware for extending business applications to mobile devices. Chief executive officer Sam Palmisano, too, lent his weight to the cause, reiterating IBM's on-demand vision before a gathering of venture capitalists and software vendors.

IBM Corp. recently announced product upgrades and partnerships in support of its pervasive computing strategy, an ongoing effort to provide end users with on-the-fly access to any content, from any device, on any network.

IBM Corp. Wednesday unveiled grid computing applications tailored to companies in banking and financial industries. At the same time, Big Blue announced ongoing grid projects with a handful of commercial and institutional customers including Morgan Stanley and Hewitt Associates LLC.