Salesforce.com

What will Oracle buy next?

Weighing the odds on how that $70 billion will be spent.

Since Oracle (ORCL) co-President Charles Phillips said in July that the company could spend $70 billion in acquisitions in the next five years -- a statement the company retracted the following day -- I've been curious to see some insightful speculation on what Oracle would buy. One investor I spoke to believes that Oracle looked at 3Par (PAR), which Hewlett-Packard MORE

The end of Microsoft. A door opens to a new cloud.

As apps migrate to the Net, the software giant's old model looks older every day.

By Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO salesforce.com

I have been waiting for something spectacular to happen any day. And it's not the explosion of another volcano in Iceland, but it will be a global event with far reaching ramifications that will be as well known. Apple's market capitalization is about to be worth more than Microsoft's. That MORE

Silicon Valley's most seasoned startup CEO

Dave Duffield is back in a cubicle after building PeopleSoft into a giant, then losing it in a brutal takeover battle with Larry Ellison. How at 70 he's planning his return -- and his IPO.

David Duffield has earned a comfortable retirement; over the course of his nearly 70 years he's started several companies, helped define today's business software market, and become a billionaire. But you won't find him MORE

Salesforce.com gets social

CEO Benioff goes from "cloud" to crowd.

Marc Benioff, the man who invented cloud computing at least as much as Al Gore invented the Internet, is pushing a new idea. It's called Chatter, a mashup of Facebook and Twitter for the workplace that his company, Salesforce.com (CRM), plans to begin selling next year.

Salesforce.com's main product is something most worker bees will never see. It's an online tool that salespeople use to MORE

Big Software has duped us for decades - Part II

Undoing the dupe: A way out of your Big Software contracts

By Roger Burkhardt, CEO, Ingres

(Last month Burkhardt wrote about how Big Software companies lock customers into restrictive software licensing agreements and continue to raise prices, even during tough economic times. Here Burkhardt offers some tips for effectively renegotiating contracts with your current Big Software suppliers.)

For decades now many of us in corporations have been paying loads of money to work MORE

A kinder, gentler cloud

Remember how cloud computing was supposed to kill client/server? Turns out it's more of a wedding than a funeral.

First, some background: The hype surrounding cloud computing in recent years has been nothing short of wild. If you believed the popular wisdom, the traditional computing model was toast. Businesses were going to stop loading specialized programs onto workers' PCs and buying expensive software and servers for data centers.

Instead, we'd have the MORE

Watch out, LinkedIn: Facebook is gaining on you

Social networking site elbows in on LinkedIn's job-finding franchise.

When it comes to finding a new job, they say it's all about who you know. With the rise of online social networks that has never been truer.

Today, 42% of adults in the U.S. with Internet access maintain a profile on a social networking site, up from 20% in 2007, according to Forrester Research. And in an economy where almost one-tenth of MORE

How SAP is facing the cloud challenge

more about "How SAP is facing the cloud challenge", posted with vodpod

On NBC's Press: Here (airing 8/23), Fortune's Jon Fortt, TechCrunch's Sarah Lacy and host Scott McGrew chat with SAP executive board member John Schwarz. For all four video segments online now, check out video on the Press: Here website. (SAP) (IBM) (ORCL) (CRM) (MSFT)

The Cloud: more than a buzzword

Cost-conscious businesses are looking online for IT

By Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder, Box.net

Something is clearly happening in the cloud. Two major juggernauts – the government and Microsoft – have both recently made cloud-related announcements. The government (hardly ever considered an early adopter) is planning to launch a cloud computing 'Storefront' to ease the federal deployment of these online services, with the ultimate goal of streamlining operations and saving money. MORE

Meet the FORTUNE Infotech 40

Roundtable brings together top tech executives

Before there is Brainstorm Tech (the conference) there is Infotech Forty (the forum).

Fortune senior writer Jon Fortt and I are co-chairing an intimate event for a group of high-ranking technology executives whose jobs are becoming increasingly strategic in their corporations. No longer are these chief information officers and chief technology officers the folks who make company computers and software run; they play key roles in MORE