Stories by James Niccolai

Florist firm sends EnterpriseDB a bouquet

EnterpriseDB has signed up FTD Group, a florist, as a customer. The move seems to be a vote of confidence for the fledgling database company, which is trying to poach customers from Oracle with the promise of lower licence fees and compatibility with Oracle applications.

Developer Day shows Google's software side

Google Inc. is hosting events for software developers in 10 cities around the world on Thursday, promoting the use of its tools and services to build Web-based applications.

Bank merger will move 10,800 jobs to India

UK bank Barclays will move 10,800 jobs to India following the recently-announced merger with ABN Amro. The offshoring move is part of an effort to generate billions of euros in annual savings.

Google updates desktop search tool

Google has released a new version of its desktop search tool, adding a preview feature to help find information more quickly and making some improvements to the interface design.

Oracle to buy Hyperion

Oracle has agreed to acquire business intelligence software vendor Hyperion for US$3.3 billion (NZ$4.76 billion) in cash.

Microsoft steps up SAAS efforts

Businesses could soon have more hosted applications to choose from following a new program from Microsoft being launched initially in Europe this week.

Samba team slams Novell-Microsoft deal

Another open-source software group has criticized the collaborative agreement between Microsoft and Novell, accusing Novell of betraying the principles of open source and urging it to reconsider the deal.

Business Objects buying ALG

Business Objects has agreed to buy Armstrong Laing, which makes profitability management software, for about £30 million (NZ$85 million). It expects to close the deal by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions.

Red Hat's beta finally released

Red Hat has pushed out the first public beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, an upgrade to its operating system that includes virtualisation technologies intended to help companies get more use from their hardware.

Silicon laser could replace copper wiring in PCs

Researchers from Intel and the University of California at Santa Barbara have found a way to build low-cost "laser chips" that could eventually shuttle data around PCs at much higher speeds than today's copper wire interconnects.

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