China Martens

The U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) will deploy IBM Corp.'s speech-to-speech translation software to help U.S. forces serving in Iraq better communicate with local security forces and Iraqi citizens.

IBM Corp. has shifted its global procurement headquarters from Somers, New York, to Shenzhen, China, a move that initially is more symbolic than any kind of upheaval in the company's purchasing operations. For now, the move involves the relocation of one person.

EMC Corp. and Microsoft Corp. are substantially stepping up their existing enterprise content management (ECM) relationship to provide tighter integration between EMC's Documentum ECM software and Microsoft's Office, Outlook and SharePoint products.

Business performance management (BPM) is the next big thing. It's sort of what BI is growing up to become, says Howard Dresner, chief strategy officer at Hyperion Solutions Corp.

IBM Corp. is taking the first step toward a major overhaul of how it packages and sells global services. The vendor is due to begin rolling out the first two of what it terms "service products" worldwide. The standardized offerings are designed to be used by any IBM customer anywhere, a very different approach from the company's previous focus on providing customized, one-off services to individual users.

Oracle Corp. is making content and records management tools available to users of its database in a bid to gain share in the base-level content management software market.

The Open Grid Forum (OGF) standards body has officially opened for business, delivering on its commitment made back in June to detail its aims and organizational setup to coincide with the start of the GridWorld conference taking place this week in Washington, D.C.

All's still not well in the higher echelons of Hewlett-Packard Co. as revealed in a filing the company made to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). The brouhaha relates to the sudden and unexpected resignation of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Thomas Perkins from HP's board of directors in May.