In an attempt to ease cloud deployments for their combined customer base, Microsoft and SAP are configuring some of their software products so that they work more easily together.

SAP is preparing to release a major revamp of its software for EPM (enterprise performance management), a subset of BI (business intelligence) that focuses on areas such as budgeting, planning and compliance, the company announced Monday in conjunction with the annual Sapphire conference in Orlando.

Microsoft will integrate Skype's calling features into many of its key products, including Office, the Xbox and its Windows Phone software, but it will it will also continue to offer Skype for competing platforms, CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday.

BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) and software giant Microsoft on Tuesday announced a new pact under which the two companies will partner to offer a variety of Bing related services to BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook tablet users. Bing is Microsoft's Web search offering, and it's one of the top three search engines along with Google and Yahoo Search, according to Hitwise.

Oracle has subpoenaed the Apache Software Foundation in connection with its ongoing intellectual property suit against Google, the open-source group said Wednesday.

Az Apache Software Foundation képviselőit az Oracle jogászai szeretnék kifaggatni a Google ellen indított Java szabadalmakkal kapcsolatos perben.

Lawson Software has agreed to be purchased by Infor affiliate GGC Software Holdings for roughly US$2 billion, the company announced Tuesday.

SAP executive John Wookey, who was charged with developing a SaaS (software as a service) strategy for large enterprises, is leaving the vendor after about two-and-a-half years, the company said Monday.

Nokia launched an updated version of its Symbian^3 mobile operating system on Tuesday, along with two phones running the software, the X7 and the E6.

Az amerikai igazságügyi minisztérium által javasolt megállapodás-tervezet értelmében a Google csak akkor vásárolhatja fel az ITA Software-t, ha vállalja, hogy saját konkurensei számára is elérhetővé teszi a cég szoftvereit.

The U.S. Department of Justice will require Google to develop and license travel software to competitors as a condition of its US$700 million acquisition of travel software maker ITA Software.

Microsoft and Toyota plan to use Windows Azure, the software giant's cloud offering, to build a telematics service that will initially serve people who have the car maker's electric and plug-in hybrid cars.

SugarCRM has acquired iExtensions, which makes customer relationship management (CRM) software for IBM Lotus Notes users, in a bid to attract more enterprise customers and compete better against bigger rivals like Salesforce.com and Microsoft.

Lawson Software customers still don't know the fate of the company following Infor's roughly US$1.8 billion acquisition offer earlier this month, with just days to go before Lawson's annual CUE conference in Boston.

Oracle customers this week expressed concern about the effort and cost of upgrading IT infrastructures after the software maker said it would stop development for Intel's Itanium chip architecture.

Oracle's net income for the third quarter ended Feb. 28 rose 78 percent to US$2.1 billion over the same period last year, helped by strong software sales and an improving hardware business, the company said Thursday. Revenue for the quarter jumped 37 percent to $8.8 billion.

Microsoft has filed a patent lawsuit against bookseller Barnes & Noble, accusing the company of running infringing software on its Android-based Nook e-reader.

SAP strengthened its eager embrace of in-memory computing on Wednesday, announcing plans for a series of applications that include programs it calls previously "unimaginable" as well as some that overhaul existing software.

VMware said on Tuesday it had acquired WaveMaker, the creator of open-source software that lets non-developers build Java Web applications.

Oracle has introduced a Windows-based mobile client that will allow workers to access its supply chain management software directly from the retail floor or warehouse.