Marc L. Songini

Oracle Corp. appears to be gagging on one of the poison pills introduced by rival PeopleSoft Inc., the company that it's attempting to acquire in a US$7.3 billion hostile takeover bid.

Gerry Cohen, CEO of Information Builders Inc. in New York for the past 27 years, spoke with Computerworld this week about business intelligence software, offshore outsourcing and what's happening at his company.

Hyperion Solutions Corp., which expects to complete a buyout of struggling Brio Software Inc. on Oct. 16, this week said it plans to begin delivering integration hooks between its line of data analysis products and Brio's query and reporting tools by year's end.

More than two years after it chose PeopleSoft Inc.'s software for a massive human resources system, the U.S. Department of Defense is finally ready to start development work on the US$320 million-plus project.

Although there's big buzz among IT managers about creating real-time systems that can consolidate important business information into data warehouses for rapid analysis and reporting, a panel of users in Boston last summer warned that considerable obstacles remain.

Oracle Corp. is adding automated configuration tools to its supply chain management applications and is developing an upgrade of its CRM software that's designed to make it easier for users to exchange customer data with other systems.

Although it has a number of product lines, business applications vendor SSA Global Technologies Inc. said this week that it is committed to supporting them all indefinitely, while offering a migration path that will enable users over the next several years to move easily to the next generation of software from the company.

While a number of users say they have an interest in Oracle Corp.'s grid computing strategy, several claimed that the company still has a way to go before they buy into the concept.