Stacy Cowley

PeopleSoft Inc. will kick off its Connect user show on Tuesday determined to focus attendees' attention on its progress in the past year and product plans for the coming one -- and away from the Jaws-like specter of Oracle Corp.

As companies work to develop more-stringent corporate controls, an increasing number of them are adding chief compliance officers to their executive suite.

One year ago at PeopleSoft Inc.'s Connect user conference, chief executive officer Craig Conway took the stage to assure several thousand PeopleSoft customers that Oracle Corp.'s then three-month-old bid for control of PeopleSoft had failed. When he stands before the crowd at this year's Connect gathering later this month, he'll have a harder time making the case that Oracle's lingering campaign isn't harming PeopleSoft.

In a bid to expand the customer base for its database software, Sybase Inc. released on Wednesday a free, limited version of its software for deployment on Linux systems.

The IT planners began working 18 months ago, evaluating the buildings that would contain 4,800 delegates and twice as many journalists at this week's Republican National Convention in New York. From the start, they agreed on one major infrastructure issue: No wireless.

Oracle Corp.'s hostile bid to acquire rival enterprise software maker PeopleSoft Inc. for US$7.7 billion is set to continue for a bit longer.

IBM Corp. has agreed to acquire content integration software maker Venetica Corp., a move that continues IBM's pattern of snapping up its business partners to augment its software portfolio.

Best Software Inc. launched this week an overhaul of its Act contact management software, adding to the product line a second version with more scalability and advanced functionality.