The Week in Review: June 13

In the news... J.D. Edwards has filed suit with a California court asking it to block Oracle's unsolicited attempt to acquire PeopleSoft for $5.1 billion, claiming the bid was made solely to block PeopleSoft's friendly acquisition of J.D. Edwards. Earlier in the week J.D. Edwards said it has made a similar filing with a Colorado court, this time seeking from Oracle $1.7 billion in compensatory damages, the announced value of the transaction, if PeopleSoft is unable to acquire J.D. Edwards. On Thursday Oracle reported its sales and earnings for the fourth quarter and full year 2003, ended May 31. Fourth-quarter net income increased 31 percent to $858 million. Total revenues in the quarter increased 2 percent to $2.83 billion, new software license and other revenues rose 1 percent to $1.2 billion, software license updates and product support increased 12 percent to $1.1 billion, and services declined 11 percent to $580 million. For the year, net income increased 4 percent to $2.31 billion, while total revenues declined 2 percent to $9.5 billion. "We had a great applications quarter," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement. "The strength of our applications business is apparent when you compare our results to the results of our competitors. For the quarter our applications new-software license revenues were flat at $246 million. Many of our major competitors showed significant license revenue decline in their most recently reported quarter." In its "Report on Government Web Application Integrity," the Business Internet Group of San Francisco encountered errors at 68 percent of the top-performing government Web sites using tools that track actual user sessions. The 41 sites audited for the study were selected based on their inclusion in the Keynote Government Internet Performance Index for the week of February 9, 2003. Web-application failures generally fell into two distinct categories: technical errors like blank pages and file-not-found errors; and incorrect data errors, or those that involve programming, database, and human error. Web-application management vendor TeaLeaf Technology commissioned the independent study. Executive changes... SSA Global Technologies has named Stephen Earhart executive vice president and CFO. Before joining SSA Earhart was senior vice president of corporate finance at Motorola. Inktel Direct this week announced it has named Kenneth Cross director of operations, contact center services. Prior to joining Inktel Direct Cross was a contact center manager with Sitel, a provider of outsourced call center services. Connextions, a fulfillment, customer interaction, and e-business services outsourcer, announced it has hired Thomas Asp as its new chief technology officer. Asp was previously vice president of IT for Affina, a provider of CRM services. Blue Pumpkin has appointed Paul Bartlett and Raj Jaswa to its board of directors. Bartlett is the CFO and executive vice president of Critical Path, and Jaswa is the managing partner of Jaswa & Company, a management consulting company for technology companies.