China Martens

For IT managers who have spent many frustrating hours trying to get their disparate systems to work, the new draft specification of SML (service modeling language) by ten leading vendors is great news.

Salesforce.com Inc. unveiled the 20th generation of its hosted CRM (customer relationship management) software, announcing a connector integrating its CRM software-as-a-service with SAP AG's R/3 ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications.

Microsoft Corp. launched its Windows Small Business Server 2003 release 2 (SBS 2003 R2) integrated software bundle Tuesday. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer, will talk up the new version of the software during his keynote address at the opening of the vendor's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Boston Tuesday through Thursday.

Microsoft Corp. is streamlining the pricing of its four Dynamics ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications families from a per-module basis to a per-user basis as a way to make it easier for its partners to sell the software, the company announced Monday.

IBM Corp. is to announce Monday that its Lotus Notes desktop collaboration software will finally fully support the Linux operating system. It's a move users have long been demanding, with those wanting to run the Notes client on the open-source operating system previously having to resort to Web clients or software emulation.

Oracle Corp. finally assumed ownership of Portal Software Inc. Wednesday, having accepted about three-quarters of the billing and revenue-management software vendor's shares. Oracle sees the purchase as highly strategic and plans to integrate Portal's software into its ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications and the CRM (customer relationship management) products it acquired through the purchase of Siebel.

After the recent departure of four of the company's top executives, CA Inc. has engaged in its second round of reshuffling, appointing Al Nugent as the software vendor's new chief technology officer (CTO).

Oracle Corp. Wednesday unveiled two tools to provide users of its database with content and records management capabilities.