SAP AG must pay $1.3 billion to rival Oracle Corp. for copyright infringement, a federal jury ruled Tuesday, following a high-profile court battle between the business-software makers.

The eight-person jury reached the verdict a day after it adjourned to deliberate. The companies presented closing arguments Monday in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif.

 

(Reuters) - Business software maker NetSuite could overtake market leader SAP within a decade as cloud computing becomes popular with bigger and bigger companies, Chief Executive Zach Nelson told Reuters.

NetSuite and other software-as-a-service companies allow businesses to save on their own hardware, space and electricity bills by having their software hosted in remote data centers -- the "cloud" -- and accessing it over the Web.

Software as a service was initially embraced by small companies, who lacked the resources to manage their own IT and liked the fact they paid for it by monthly subscriptions instead of the traditional large, upfront license fees.

Lawson Takes Its Own Approach to Cloud Computing by Jeff Moad

Lawson Software Inc. recently became the latest vendor of ERP applications to jump into the cloud computing fray, rolling out versions of its M3, S3, and talent management applications running in Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) environment as well as an option for customers to run bundled versions of some of its applications on their internal cloud platforms.

But don’t expect Lawson to turn itself overnight into a Salesforce.com or NetSuite. For one thing, Lawson’s architectural approach to cloud computing is markedly different from those of such software-as-a-service-only (SaaS) vendors. And, for another, Lawson foresees its customers embracing its cloud-based applications only gradually. Officials said Lawson expects only 5% of its revenue to come from cloud-based services in the first year, growing to 15% over the next few years.

 

IBM today announced it has acquired Cast Iron Systems to broaden the delivery of cloud computing services for clients. Cast Iron Systems, a privately held company based in Mountain View, CA, delivers industry-leading cloud integration software, appliances and services. Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition expands IBM’s industry-leading business process and integration software portfolio, which grew more than 20 percent in the first quarter of 2010.

Cast Iron Systems has completed thousands of cloud integrations around the world for financial institutions, media and entertainment companies and retail organizations. The company's clients include Allianz, NEC, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Dow Jones, Schumacher Group, ShoreTel, Sports Authority, Time Warner, Westmont University and many others.

Software as a Service (SaaS) presents a classic “disruptive innovation.” Of course, in 2010 that’s not new news.

What is remarkable is how closely the SaaS market’s evolution matches the definition of a disruptive technology that was described by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma (he later replaced the term with “disruptive innovation” in his subsequent book, The Innovator’s Solution). In fact, the SaaS dilemma that incumbent software vendors currently face is playing out almost page-for-page from Christensen’s books. As a result, we can use the disruptive innovation framework to gain insight into what’s to come in enterprise software.

After a decade of deriding SaaS technology as too simple, functionally incomplete and insecure, vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and thousands of incumbent “on-premise” software vendors are now embracing SaaS. It’s an awkward embrace – one that threatens to cannibalize existing revenue steams, divert resources and eat up profits.

Of course, the innovator’s dilemma doesn’t destroy every incumbent. These incumbent market leaders are powerful, resilient innovators themselves. But for armchair quarterbacks like us, this the next five years will present a fascinating game to watch.

Fujitsu Limited and SAP AG today announced they are jointly developing a Japanese-language version of the recently launched SAP BusinessObjects(TM) BI OnDemand solution, which will be made available to the Japanese market using the cloud environment of Fujitsu.

SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business intelligence (BI) solution addressing the previously unmet market need for a single product that equips users with a complete, integrated BI toolset. SAP started SaaS BI solution in 2006 and currently has more than 260,000 subscribers. With this solution, people can easily access all of their on-demand and on-premise data with little to no prior experience or training. Since SAP BusinessObjects Explorer software capabilities are included, users can quickly access and navigate business data from any source. A Japanese version of SAP BusinessObjects BI OnDemand, currently in development by Fujitsu and SAP, is scheduled to be released in the Japanese market in May 2010 using the cloud environment of Fujitsu.

The solution will enable customers to use on-demand offerings from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio without having to build their own systems, realizing comprehensive information usage quickly, at a low-scaling cost. Additionally, in combination with other SaaS services, new forms of information usage in the cloud will be made possible.