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Oracle intends to release a free version of its database, a reaction to the growing competitive pressure from low-end open-source databases. The database heavyweight on Tuesday is expected to announce the beta release of Oracle 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE), which will be generally available by the end of the year. It is targeted at students, small organizations and software vendors that could embed the Oracle database with an application. The latest edition is the same as other databases in Oracle's lineup but is limited in usage. It can only run servers with one processor, with 4GB of disk...

Salesforce.com Inc., which has posted strong growth in offering customer relationship management software over the Internet, said Monday that investors of rival Siebel Systems Inc. were put "out of their misery" with Oracle's planned acquisition of the software maker. Salesforce.com, which is holding its Dreamforce user conference in San Francisco this week, has reported strong revenue growth as the CRM market shifts from in-house deployment to offering the sofware as a web service. For the second fiscal quarter ended July 31, Salesforce.com reported a fourfold increase in profits and a 75 percent jump in revenue. The number of subscribers topped...

SEPTEMBER 12, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Users are unsure of just how the Oracle Corp's $5.85 billion buyout of ailing Siebel Systems Inc. will play out for them, but some IT shops were openly optimistic about the deal announced this morning (see ”Update: Oracle to buy Siebel Systems for $5.85B”). Siebel’s CRM products are seen as feature-rich and highly mature, something Oracle believes it can exploit as it crafts its next generation set of best-of-breed applications, which it has dubbed Fusion.

update: Software maker Oracle said Monday it will acquire rival Siebel Systems in a deal worth $5.8 billion, marking the second major competitor the company has targeted since mid-2004. Oracle executives said the mega-deal is intended as a "major beachhead" against archrival SAP, which is the world's largest business-applications seller. Siebel specializes in customer relationship management (CRM) software. Oracle said the Siebel acquisition will add 4,000 customers and 3.4 million CRM users. Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison said the deal was in part fueled by requests from partners and customers, such as General Electric, that wanted to hold a single...

Oracle is to invest nearly $1bn to gain control of I-Flex Solutions, the Mumbai-based manufacturer of the world's best-selling software for banks, in the largest cross-border takeover of an Indian technology company. Oracle will acquire Citigroup's 41 per cent stake in I-Flex for $593m and invest $316m in a mandatory open offer to gain up to 20 per cent more of the equity of the company, which was set up by the US bank nearly two decades ago. The transaction is the latest in a trend that has seen global technology companies, such as IBM, or US private equity funds...

PeopleSoft Inc. founder Dave Duffield choked back tears in December as he told his employees that the company had agreed to sell to Oracle Corp. after a bitter takeover battle. Now he is reaching out to those who got hit hardest by his team's failure to fend off the Oracle bid. Duffield is giving grants of up to $10,000 to ex-PeopleSoft workers who were laid off by Oracle and have had a difficult time finding work. The grants will be given through Safety Net, a fund that he endowed and that became operational Friday. "The shock we all felt late...

11:14am 03/05/05 Warren Buffett confesses he 'struck out' in 2004 (BRKA, BRKB) By Thomas Middleton NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Warren Buffett, renowned investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA) , said he "struck out" in 2004 by failing to make acquisitions that would have increased earnings. In his company's 40th annual report Saturday, the 74-year-old CEO said Berkshire Hathaway increased its net worth by $8.3 billion last year. That increased the company's per-share book value by 10.5%, which fell short of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, which posted a 10.9% return for 2004. Buffett said he found "very...

Oracle Corp. said that 90 percent of the job offers made to PeopleSoft Inc.'s employees have been accepted as of today. Oracle, which is holding an analyst meeting today in New York, had said it plans to retain 90 percent of PeopleSoft's software development and support teams to keep PeopleSoft customers happy after its $10.3 billion acquisition. In order to do that, it had to cut from its own ranks, Oracle senior vice president John Wookey said. He did not reveal the number of cuts from Oracle's end, but Oracle has said that combined it has laid off about 5,000...

Andrew Damico wants to be Larry Ellison's hit man -- uh, mergers and acquisitions hit man, to be exact. After all, the highly competitive software industry is a kind of warfare. And Ellison, chief executive of software giant Oracle, has just completed his own conquest, taking over software rival PeopleSoft.Damico placed a billboard pitch on Highway 101 just south of Woodside Road in Redwood City that reads, ``Larry . . . Get Bill.'' It refers Ellison to a Web site, http://ellison.

A number of high-risk vulnerabilities in Oracle's database products were announced today by Next Generation Security Software [NGSS] in what is likely the first news in Oracle Corp.'s new quarterly patching schedule. Surrey, U.K.-based NGSS said all versions of the Oracle Database 10g and Oracle 9i Database Server are vulnerable to the flaws, which include a buffer overflow vulnerability and PL/SQL injection vulnerabilities that allow low-privileged users to gain DBA privileges. The latter flaws can be exploited via the Web through the Oracle Application Server, NGSS said. Oracle has released a patch set [18/01/2005] to address these vulnerabilities. NGSS said...

Oracle Corp. could slash as many as 4,800 jobs today as part of its $10.3 billion takeover of PeopleSoft Inc., analysts said. Based on preliminary calculations -- and a bit of guesswork -- Wall Street analysts predict that Oracle will have to cut 2,000 to 4,800 positions to make the deal financially worthwhile, yet at the same time fulfill the commitments it has made to the Pleasanton software maker's customers. Most are expected to come from PeopleSoft's 11,225-employee base, but a substantial number of Oracle employees could also face the ax, sources in the software industry said. Though it may...

(12/09/04)—Oracle CEO Larry Ellison feels strongly about unified data hubs. In fact, he thinks the biggest terrorist attack in the United States could have been prevented if intelligence officials had been using a unified database from Oracle. “Had there been a hub … there would never have been a September 11,” Ellison said in his keynote speech at Oracle’s OpenWorld in San Francisco on Wednesday. “Mohammed Atta passed through international customs, saying he was on holiday, while the police in Broward County (Fla.) had an outstanding warrant for his arrest,” he continued. Ellison’s example of a “terrorist hub” was one...

SAN FRANCISCO - Ending 18 months of bad blood, Oracle Corp. raised its takeover bid for bitter rival PeopleSoft Inc. by 10 percent to seal a $10.3 billion deal that will create the world's second largest maker of business applications software. The agreement, announced Monday, caps a rancorous Silicon Valley feud marked by churlish exchanges between the companies' management teams and colorful courtroom battles. Redwood Shores-based Oracle brought an end to the hostilities by sweetening its all-cash offer to $26.50 per share, up from a $24 bid that PeopleSoft's board had rejected as inadequate. The final offer represents a...

SAN FRANCISCO - Ending 18 months of bad blood, Oracle Corp. raised its takeover bid for bitter rival PeopleSoft Inc. by 10 percent to seal a $10.3 billion deal that will create the world's second largest maker of business applications software. The agreement, announced Monday, caps a rancorous Silicon Valley feud marked by churlish exchanges between the companies' management teams and colorful courtroom battles. Redwood Shores-based Oracle brought an end to the hostilities by sweetening its all-cash offer to $26.50 per share, up from a $24 bid that PeopleSoft's board had rejected as inadequate. The final offer represents a 75...

Apple Computer's rack-mounted storage system received a vote of confidence Monday, with database giant Oracle endorsing the Xserve RAID as part of an initiative to cut storage costs. Oracle has identified the Apple product as one of several storage systems that would make a good low-cost alternative to the types of high-end monolithic storage systems that have traditionally been used to store Oracle databases. Additionally, Oracle is using the Xserve RAID in its own technology department to store e-mail, voice mail and calendar information. Oracle is using the Xserve RAID for a task once reserved for pricier Fibre Channel-based disk...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Oracle Corp. CEO Larry Ellison aimed his famously barbed tongue outside the technology industry Wednesday, taunting the owners of the San Francisco 49ers for refusing to sell the "worst team in football." Ellison, renowned for ridiculing Oracle's rivals, made the off-the-cuff remarks in response to a question from a 49ers fan attending Oracle's annual customer conference in San Francisco. The fan, wearing a 49ers cap, asked Ellison -- one of the world's richest man -- to consider buying the NFL team. Echoing remarks he made at Oracle's annual shareholder meeting in October, Ellison lamented that he can't...

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Oracle prevails in PeopleSoft tender Stage set for potential proxy battle in the spring LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) -- Oracle Corp. cleared a crucial hurdle Friday night in its $9.2 billion bid to take over PeopleSoft Inc., winning a clear majority of shares in its smaller rival following a direct appeal to investors. More than 60 percent of PeopleSoft (PSFT: news, chart, profile) shares were tendered in favor of the $24-per-share offer, Oracle (ORCL: news, chart, profile) said in a statement released less than an hour after the deadline for accepting the bid expired. In a letter to PeopleSoft seeking to...

The deadline for shares to be tendered is midnight tonight NOVEMBER 19, 2004 - The California Employees' Retirement System (Calpers) is tendering its 1.5 million PeopleSoft Inc. shares to Oracle Corp., giving the hostile suitor a boost in the final days of its takeover bid. Calpers' board voted on Wednesday afternoon to tender the shares, said spokesman Brad Pacheco. "Generally speaking, we just felt it made economic sense and it was a fair price," he said of Calpers' decision and Oracle's bid for PeopleSoft. Oracle's final offer stands at $24 per share for all outstanding shares of its rival. That...

MUMBAI: Business software maker Oracle is gung-ho about growth in India and expects the market to be among the top three in Asia-Pacific in next two to three years. "In the last two years, Indian market has grown from number 10 in Asia-Pacific to number five. Maybe in next two to three years, it could be number three in the region," executive vice president of Oracle Corporation (Asia-Pacific) Derek Willims told newspersons a day before the opening of Oracle Open World conference here. India and China are the fastest growing markets for Oracle in the world and in some quarters,...