Software Licensing & Master Service Agreements : Chicago Software Licensing Lawyer & Attorney : Sam Conforti Law Firm : Master Service Agreements, Negotiations, Outsourcing : Cook County, Illinois

It’s too early to go through all the possible iterations. Robin Wauters posted an announcement in Techcrunch on August 15^th entitled “Google Buys Motorola Mobility For $12.5B, Says “Android Will Stay Open”. I’ll try to give you a brief synopsis and to put things into perspective; however, stay tuned as this mega-deal unfolds and as the players shakeout.

Google was sitting on $39 Billion in cash. Google owns Android and Motorola Mobility is a dedicated partner. Motorola Mobility is sitting on 14,600 patents and another 6700 patent pending apps. So the leading search engine and online advertising goliath is combining with not only a strong Android smartphone manufacturer but also the “market leader in the home devices and video solutions business”.

Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page stated that Motorola Mobility will “enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies”. It remains an open question how HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Acer, Lenovo and other Android device makers will handle this acquisition. Wauters gives us a link in his announcement to reaction already from some of these vendors.

Here’s the Full press release:

“Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility

Combination will Supercharge Android, Enhance Competition, and Offer Wonderful User Experiences

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. & LIBERTYVILLE, Ill.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Google will acquire Motorola Mobility for $40.00 per share in cash, or a total of about $12.5 billion, a premium of 63% to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday, August 12, 2011. The transaction was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies.

“Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing. Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business.

Larry Page, CEO of Google, said, “Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.”

Sanjay Jha, CEO of Motorola Mobility, said, “This transaction offers significant value for Motorola Mobility’s stockholders and provides compelling new opportunities for our employees, customers, and partners around the world. We have shared a productive partnership with Google to advance the Android platform, and now through this combination we will be able to do even more to innovate and deliver outstanding mobility solutions across our mobile devices and home businesses.”

Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile at Google, said, “We expect that this combination will enable us to break new ground for the Android ecosystem. However, our vision for Android is unchanged and Google remains firmly committed to Android as an open platform and a vibrant open source community. We will continue to work with all of our valued Android partners to develop and distribute innovative Android-powered devices.”

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of regulatory approvals in the US, the European Union and other jurisdictions, and the approval of Motorola Mobility’s stockholders. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2011 or early 2012.”

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Well it looks as though we may be entering the doldrums of a long hot summer with no exciting news to spark our interest. And then Stuart J. Johnston’s article in Small Business Computing.com entitled “Microsoft Launches Office 365 for SMB Markets” and its companion article in Small Business Computing.com entitled “Is a Low-cost Calling Plan in the Works for Office 365” comes to save the day. Actually, I think we have to give Microsoft a bit of the credit as well, because after all it was their recent announcement that the cloud applications suite known as “Office 365” was ready for GA (“General Availability”) to the SMB market place.

The enterprise suite will contain the following applications in the CLOUD:

·         Exchange Online for email

·         SharePoint Online for collaboration

·         Lync Online for unified communications

·         Web versions of its Office applications -- called the Office Web Apps

The price is right. Microsoft will be offering an optional monthly subscription fee for those SMB’s without a full-time or even part-time IT department. A Microsoft Spokesman stated:

“With Office 365 for small businesses, customers can be up and running with Office Web Apps, Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Lync Online and an external website in minutes, for $6 per user, per month. These tools put enterprise-grade email, shared documents, instant messaging, video and Web conferencing, portals and more at everyone’s fingertips.”

Microsoft is building an infrastructure of service providers to help service the SMB market place which include: AppRiver, Intuit, Premier Global Services, CDW, Bell Canada, Telefonica, Telstra, and Vodafone. Microsoft Spokesman stated:

“These companies will package Office 365 with their own services -- from Web hosting and broadband to finance solutions and mobile services -- and bring those new offerings to millions of small and midsize businesses globally"

Is Skype Next?

Back in May 2011 Microsoft announced its purchase of the low-cost calling service Skype for $8.5 billion. Microsoft’s purchase has obtained US Regulatory approval. What remains is obtaining such approval globally. Sharon Pian Chen, technology reporter for the Seattle Times, quotes Kurt Delbene, president of Microsoft’s Business Division:

“Office 365 will be the first place Skype will be added to a Microsoft product when Microsoft closes its purchase of Skype"

The cloud version of Lync 2010, Lync Online, a key component of Office 365, provides instant messaging, voice, and video calling. Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, envisions huge benefits to be obtained by combining the Lync’s unified communications server and Skype.

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In my research of items concerning the latest in the software industry, I came across three short articles of interest. I’ll give you a brief synopsis of each and a link to the article if you wish to explore further.  I’ve added a bonus “Quote of the Week” at the end. Sorry but I just couldn’t resist.

1.       Gartner Reports on the Surge in SaaS

Larry Barrett’s article on Gartner’s SaaS Market Report entitled SaaS Market Growing by Leaps and Bounds: Gartner states the latest report from Gartner shows no indication on any slowing in the demand for on-demand software applications. Gartner defines “SaaS as software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers”. Gartner expects 2010 SaaS sales to top $8.5 billion, an increase of over 14% of 2009 sales.

Advantages to SaaS:

·         Lower start-up costs compared to on premises deployments

·         Lower maintenance costs compared to on premises deployments

·         Ease in sharing applications and documents through the cloud

Gartner analyst Sharon Mertz stated, "As tighter capital budgets demand leaner alternatives, familiarity with the model increases, and interest in platform as a service and cloud computing grows.”  Further Mertz noted, "Greater market competition and increased focus by the mega-vendors reinforces the legitimacy of on-demand, mitigating initial objections about security and availability for many, as acceptance of SaaS as a viable model for enterprise computing services grows."

2.       Microsoft Claims Top Spot in Cloud Computing

Stuart J. Johnston’s article on Microsoft’s claim to be #1 in Cloud Computing entitled Microsoft: We’re No. 1 in the Cloud reports that Kevin Turner, Microsoft COO, proclaimed at their annual meeting for financial analysts in Redmond, Washington that Microsoft is “number one” in cloud computing. The company claims 40 million cloud computing users globally and Turner reported that "Seventy percent of the wins in the cloud that we had in [the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010]… were new Microsoft customers." He touted three of their new customers:

·         Dow Chemical Co.

·         Hyatt Hotels & Resorts

·         University of Georgia

Additionally, Turner made sure that his audience was aware of the company’s record year due in large part to a total of over 175 million licenses sold for their new Windows 7 operating system in the short nine months since its release.

3.       Public Cloud Storage Services the New Choice for Enterprises

David Needle has a new article on Public Cloud Storage entitled New Public Cloud Storage Services Target IT. In it he discusses the latest report from research firm Ovum regarding public cloud storage services. Ovum senior analyst Timothy Stammers stated:

"Not only do they relieve the burden of storing data on customers' premises, but they also have the multiplying effect of transferring to the cloud provider the responsibility of backing up that data"

Initially companies poured vast sums of cash into online storage services to no avail. Economies of scale could not be reached due to the fact that the vendors were using the same storage systems of the enterprises they wished to sell. Huge network bandwidth costs along with their customer’s refusal to accept to the unknown contributed to the collapse of this new emerging venture.

The solution and/or opportunity was as follows:

·         Slowing economy put CIO’s on the hunt for cost cutting measures

·         Cost of network bandwidth plunges

·         The unknown becomes known due to success of certain vendors, most notably Amazon and Salesforce

·         New object-oriented storage technology, i.e. much more bang for the buck

New start-ups offering these services include Nirvanix, Nasumi, and Ctera. Stammers revealed that these vendors often leverage the storage clouds from such mega-providers as Amazon, Microsoft, and RackSpace. He stated,

“To the customer it still looks like ordinary storage and there's caching to alleviate latency issues. Typically these systems also provide their own backup, but companies may also choose to do that on their own for an extra level of protection.”

4.       Quote of the Week

And finally, I just couldn’t resist this one. To paraphrase a line from a well-known cable news network, I’ll Report, You Decide. Here is my pick from David Needle’s article entitled Say What? The Week’s Top Five IT Quotes:

"First of all, moving to the cloud is not the right way to think about anything. There will be new things in the cloud -- redoing something doesn't make a lot of sense. If you want to argue we've been somewhat slow in expanding to the cloud -- fair enough -- but customers have a lot of interest in seeing that our applications maintain their core value, the data integrity and consistency. Taking that to the cloud takes a lot of work."

Kaj Van de Loo, an executive in the office of the CTO at SAP, defending his company's cloud computing strategy.

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In May of this year Microsoft sued Salesforce for infringement of nine Microsoft patents. Last week Salesforce counter-sued Microsoft claiming Microsoft has infringed on five of its patents. Salesforce has asked for treble damages (i.e. three ‘3’ times the amount of harm caused), an injunction of Microsoft’s use of the patents in question, and attorneys’ fees and court costs. Hanging in the balance is the future of cloud computing for enterprises and consumers alike. For more on this matter see Stuart J. Johnston’s article in eCRM Guide.com entitled Salesforce Suit Clouds Microsoft’s Patent Attack.

The Microsoft products affected by the Salesforce claim of patent infringement are as follows:

·         SharePoint Server and related products

·         Windows Server AppFabric

·         Windows 7 error reporting system

·         Windows Server 2008 R2

·         Microsoft’s .NET development platform

·         Windows Live delegated authentication system

The outcome of this law suit could have a tremendous consequence on Microsoft’s cloud computing initiatives.

So what are the chances that young upstart Salesforce can defeat the mighty Goliath Microsoft in any legal action? Well I would not count my chickens before they are hatched. Salesforce has hired David Boies as legal counsel for this litigation. For those of you not familiar with Mr. Boies or any of his notable cases you can find a brief synopsis of his career here. Just to whet your appetite here is a list of some of his more notable cases:

Notable cases

• At Cravath, Boies assisted top litigator Thomas D. Barr in defending IBM in the 13-year antitrust cases brought by the Justice Department and many private competitors.
• Also at Cravath, he represented the Justice Department in the United States v. Microsoft case. Boies won at trial and the verdict was upheld on appeal. The appellate court overturned the relief ordered (breakup of the company) back to the trial court for further proceedings. Thereafter, the George W. Bush administration settled the case. Bill Gates said Boies was "out to destroy Microsoft."
• Boies represented New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in a suit against Major League Baseball. This involved an action against all the teams. The Atlanta Braves were owned by Time Warner, a longtime Cravath client, who objected to his representation of the Yankees.
• He defended CBS in the action brought by General William Westmoreland. The general abandoned his case during the trial.
• Following the 2000 U.S. presidential election, he represented Vice President Al Gore in Bush v. Gore.
• Boies defended Napster when the company was sued by the RIAA for facilitating copyright infringement.
• In November 2003, he represented Andrew Fastow, deposed Chief Financial Officer of Enron.
• Boies has been retained by the SCO Group in their pursuit of alleged infringement of their rights to the Unix intellectual properties.
• He negotiated on behalf of American Express two of the highest civil antitrust settlements ever for an individual company: $2.25 billion from Visa, and $1.8 billion from MasterCard.

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Did somebody famous ever say “We won’t know where we are going until we know where we’ve been”? I did a quick Google search and could not come up with this quote being attributed to any person. If somebody did say this, then I’m borrowing the line for this posting. If not, then feel free to use it (but mention my name please). As my regular readers can imagine, I’ve been gone for about 3 weeks simply due to a very busy fourth quarter/year-end close. While scanning the internet recently for interesting and important information to bring to your attention, I stumbled upon a very interesting and thought provoking article in Internetnews.com by Kenneth Corbin entitled The 10 Most Important Social and Digital Media Developments of 2009. As I have stated in the past, I am a bit of a History Buff (What’s a Buff? See definition 2; enthusiastic, yes; knowledgeable, maybe). So I like to know the background of why things are as they are; and so I think it is nice to know what has happened in the past relating to technology in order to get a better understanding of where we may end up in the technological future. Corbin’s article is a gem. It informed me more fully of things I might have heard but should know more about. It reminded me of things that happened and how society dealt with it. It made me laugh (e.g. someone threatened to kill their cat if Miley Cyrus did not reinstate her Twitter account – really). And it made me wonder about the future. Here is a brief synopsis of Corbin’s Top Ten List peppered with my editorial comments. I hope I can do it justice:

#10.       Amazon.com’s Kindle will change the world: I read somewhere that the Invention that changed the world was the printing press. Well move over Gutenberg, the Kindle has arrived. In 2009 Amazon sold more digital books than printed editions. This e-reader will change the world. For an interesting take and a more in-depth analysis see Don Reisinger article entitled The Most Important Tech Product Is the Kindle, Not the iPhone.

#9.          Craigslist Killer: Some med student solicited an escort off of Craigslist and murdered her. The story was sensationalized due to the use of this new technology. As Corbin correctly points out, this story would have not garnered the attention that it did if the escort was solicited from the many personal ads or from the too numerous to mention yellow page advertisements.

#8.          Social Networking Sites Made Money: Facebook and Twitter, both a free service to their customer base of MILLIONS (yes I’m shouting MILLIONS) managed to figure out a way to make money. Facebook does it through advertising and the sale of virtual products; and Twitter did it by licensing the ability to add real-time content to Search Engines Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

#7.          Social Media in the Government: Is this a good thing? I don’t know. The Obama Administration seems to think so. They’ve done weekly addresses to the nation on YouTube and hosted online town hall meetings. There are numerous government websites and blogs.

#6.          The slow death of the Newspaper: Is this really happening? Are we really getting more (or most) of our news from the internet? What will the new business model turn out to be? Dare I say, do we need yet another industry bailed out?

#5.          Miley Cyrus deletes Twitter account: I honestly do not understand this phenomenon. Apparently there are millions of fans of all sorts of celebrities and Star Athletes that are interested in knowing and these Celebs/Sport Stars are interested in tweeting what they may be doing most hours of the day. Is this the downfall of our society? Well, it is at least another reason for it. Oh how I long for much calmer days and “Home Tweet Home”.

#4.          Social Web becomes target for hackers: Why do they do it? I don’t know. Some do it for the thrill of the “hack” and some are out to steal our identity. We put too much personal stuff on these social sites. Regulators and privacy advocates have fertile ground for their causes and activities.

#3.          The Twitter revolution in Iran: In June of the last year as Iranian authorities were cracking down on protestors, these same protestors began to twitter their cause, and when the foreign correspondents were thrown out, became the only source of hard data on what was really happening in the country. Corbin reports that the US State Department convinced the people at Twitter to postpone a planned power outage for scheduled maintenance just so they would keep the twitter lines of communication open.

#2.          The growing sense of urgency about information:  It seems that everything is about immediacy. We’ve got to have it real-time. 

And the #1 important issue that materialized last year relating to Social and Digital Media was VIDEO: The web is free and on-demand. How does one derive a business model out of that? TV Everywhere offers paying subscribers the option to watch content on the web. Hulu pulls content from sites, and its owner News Corp is thinking about making it a paid site. So is free TV over the air waves supported by its advertising (i.e. commercials) a thing of the past?

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As some of my readers may recall I posted an article to this Blog on October 12, 2009 entitled Microsoft Buys Core Technology to Boost Its ERP Offering. The article mainly commented on Microsoft’s most recent purchasing strategy to boost its Dynamic ERP product offerings. After reading my article, Houston Neal, Website Content Manager for Software Advice for Manufacturing contacted me and asked me to read and comment on his article entitled Microsoft Dynamics for Manufacturing – Understanding the Difference Between GP, NAV, SL and AX. Neal’s take on the current situation is that although Microsoft has tried to establish itself as a player in the ERP market space, enterprises may still be confused as to what product(s) would be suitable to which industry.

I have read Neal’s article and was quite impressed. I’m a person that likes to understand the history behind the product and/or company. Neal does a nice job of detailing the 8 year evolution of Microsoft’s foray into the ERP industry. He starts off with a sort of Gantt Chart that breaks down the different target markets for each of the Microsoft Dynamic products.  From the enterprise size, based on number of employees, it looks as though Microsoft has taken a comprehensive approach to the SME market space and taken aim on competing directly with SAP and Oracle in this space.

I particularly liked the section where Neal describes Microsoft’s initial purchases and the making of the Dynamics portfolio of products. First there was the Great Plains acquisition in 2001 which netted the Great Plains accounting application and the Solomon business management applications. Then there was the Navision purchase in 2002 which garnered not only the human resources and CRM applications, but also the Axapta product line from a recent acquisition by Navision.

So what is Microsoft to do with four different enterprise products (Great Plains, Solomon, Navision, Axapta) each written in a different language, running in different development environments, and using different databases? Neal takes us on a tour of the daunting task that Microsoft laid out for itself to convert all four products to a single code base, Project Green.

Neal includes an evolutionary chart of which Dynamic products have become the product of choice for which industry. He reminds us that over 9000 ISV’s are out there providing customization services and support for these products. He concludes his article by stating that growth in the Dynamic Product line appears evident.

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First I would like to apologize to my readers for the delay in posting this article. My goal is to post something of interest every 1 to 2 weeks, more often if events warrant it. Unfortunately, my schedule went a little haywire during the closing of the 3^rd quarter and so it has been difficult to meet my self-imposed deadlines. I think I’ve turned the corner.

Barbara Darrow, Senior News Editor for SearchITChannel.com, reports in her article entitled “Microsoft rolls partner technology into Dynamics AX ERP” that Microsoft has embarked on a purchasing strategy to build up its core technology of its Dynamic ERP offerings. The series of purchases (provisos not disclosed) included the following:

·         Fullscope Inc. – process manufacturing technology

·         Computer Generated Solutions Inc. – professional services solution

·         LS retail EHF – retail technology

·         To-Increase Denmark A/S – retail technology

Axapta, now called Dynamics AX, is one of the Dynamics ERP lines from Microsoft that competes directly with SAP’s SME offerings.   This mid market space, what Darrow identifies as the “white space”, is more often than not where VARs and ISVs do a lot of customization. This current round of technology purchases is seen as Microsoft’s attempt to add functionality while at the same time reducing the need for customization. It is probably safe to assume that SAP might not welcome this intrusion into the mid market, but the jury is still out on other VARs that perform application work in the space as to whether the additional functionality will be viewed as a help or a hindrance. Dan Fine, President of Fine Solutions, a Dynamics AX partner, stated:

"They've bought some key functionality for professional services and are putting it into the plumbing. That will let us extend our products more easily into various verticals"

He also remarked that time sheets and billing will be part of the offering.

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Stuart J. Johnston reports in his article in Internetnews.com for August 12, 2009 entitled Microsoft, Nokia Team to Make Office Mobile that these mobile operating system competitors have signed an alliance whereby Microsoft’s Office Mobile applications will run on Nokia’s Symbian operating system. The Microsoft Office Mobile applications will be ported over to the Nokia Eseries Enterprise devices. The plan begins with porting Office Mobile to the Nokia devices, which then will lead to allowing access to Microsoft enterprise products such as SharePoint and Office Communicator. Next year Microsoft will bundle other apps onto the Symbian operating system such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. As RIM’s Blackberry hold’s the lead in the enterprise market-space, the Microsoft/Nokia alliance could provide some significant inroads into that market. With Nokia’s market share for smartphones worldwide at 45%, it is easy to understand Microsoft’s willingness to join forces, at least in this arena.

For some more interesting reading which could help lay a foundation to understanding an alliance such as discussed above see the April 30, 2009 posting in this Blog entitled The Mobile Revolution Is Upon Us.

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If you read Mike Elgan’s article in InternetNews.com, Get Ready for Microsoft’s Big Comeback, you will see that the answer is yes. If the Tech Industry doesn’t have any bailout money foisted upon it, much unlike our banking industry, then this market will do what all markets do in a capitalistic system, i.e. only the strong will survive. That is really what an efficient marketplace does with its competitors. But enough about me griping about the impending fascist state of this administration and in particular the all powerful Timothy Geithner. Let’s get back to Microsoft. Read Elgan’s article. He foresees the impending shakeout in the Tech industry and recognizes that the weak players will fade away and some marginal players will be swallowed up by bigger players. He also takes note of the past miscues in Microsoft’s marketing, the ever unpopular VISTA operating system, and its’ much ballyhooed legal struggles.

Although he mentions it in the subtitle to his article, it takes Elgan a while to get to the pile of cash that Microsoft has been hording. So let’s deal with the 800 pound gorilla in the room first before we get to the nuances of Windows 7 and Microsoft’s plan to leverage it and reclaim its’ reputation and continue to dominate the marketplace. Cash is King. Microsoft has an estimated $20 billion in cash on hand just waiting to exploit a downturn in the market. As for survival and emerging as the dominate player after the current economic struggle, see paragraph one above regarding “only the strong will survive”. Elgan posits that Microsoft could buy Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, and Hulu all in the same year. He doesn’t predict such a sweeping acquisition scheme, but he does recognize the coming consolidation in the industry and that the cash-rich enterprises will act in their best interests and flourish.

And now for the nuances to their reemergence, Elgan sees Windows 7 as the vehicle Microsoft will use to recapture the glory days of the pre-1990’s debacles. It is not so much a four-step approach; but rather Elgan sees four categories where Windows 7 will dominate:

1.       Netbooks: Mobile computing will kick into high gear. As Windows XP eventually will fade into the sunset, Windows 7 Operating System will be the operating system of choice and not the much beleaguered VISTA.

2.       Touch Screens: The transition from mouse, icon, and menu to the mouseless touch will be slow, but Windows 7 is poised to take advantage when the switch gets into high gear.

3.       Gaming: Growth in this sector will be exponential. Four categories to watch are i) console, ii) cell phones, iii) internet, and iv) desk top. Microsoft will dominate in 3 of the 4 categories, bowing only to Apple in the cell phone arena.

4.       64-bit Computing: Office 11 will ship next year in a 64 bit version and Windows 7 will provide the power boost needed for fast business computing.

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Let’s start with full disclosure – I own a BlackBerry Curve. It provides me the freedom I require. I am not tied to the office. I can be out of the office and still receive my emails and determine if the email or document promised to be sent to me has indeed arrived. I can also get a quick note out and/or be responsive to a client’s email and simply state “Not in office. Call U later.” Instead of waiting to the end of this article for the “Moral of the Story”, let me state upfront in my opinion that the secret to high-tech (and especially wireless) should be to make the technology work for you and not the other way around. As of late, there has been a flurry of news surrounding 3G and RIM’s BlackBerry and so I am not quite sure that making the technology work for you instead of you being tied to the technology can remain as my mantra, but I will try. I do not intend for the following to sound like a commercial, but I confess that it might.

RIM announced its latest handheld device, the BlackBerry Bold. We can expect to see this new smartphone this summer. While the corporate customer is RIM’s target market for now, the added features to the BlackBerry Bold may help extend RIM’s reach into the consumer market as well. The new BlackBerry Bold will have “the most vivid display ever on a BlackBerry, a 2-megapixel camera with video recording capability and a media player for watching movies and managing music collections.” To be more descriptive, “the enhanced display” will be “twice the resolution of the Curve. The half-VGA color LCD is ‘fused’ to the undersurface of the device lens, which RIM says, improves definition and clarity.” Further the new BlackBerry Bold is “Sleek, shiny and sharp in design” and comes with “a newly designed full QWERTY keyboard, integrated GPS and 802.11 Wi-Fi. In addition, the unit has a 624MHz mobile processor for faster document downloading and support for triband HSDPA networks.” The more consumer-friendly features of this new device puts Apple’s iPhone squarely in its crosshairs. Read all about these new features in the article as reported by Reuters in the Internetnews.com post A Bold New BlackBerry for Business and also Judy Mottl’s article BlackBerry Goes Bold for Market Gold.

Continuing with this flurry of announcements, as I explained in my post of May 8, 2008, SAP Sapphire 2008, SAP will be integrating its CRM functionality into the BlackBerry with an aim at integrating all the functionality of the SAP software suite in the near future. This announcement was quickly followed by Microsoft announcing that it will make available Windows Live service on the RIM device as well. Users will now have available Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail. If this wasn’t enough, IBM announced that it is making the BlackBerry the only handheld enterprise device to have full mobile access to all Lotus collaboration solutions which includes Lotus Notes and Sametime. Users will now be able to collaborate across documents. “With the Lotus Collaboration Software suite, enterprises also gain access to IBM WebSphere Portal technology. The IBM dashboards software lets businesses build Web sites and single screen dashboard views that deliver information, applications and processes personalized to the individual BlackBerry user.” Judy Mottl reports this and more in her article IBM Lotus Goes Mobile Via The BlackBerry.

And if you aren’t out of breath yet from all these announcements, I’ve got one more. Mottl reports further that the BlackBerry will carry the RSA software in her article BlackBerry Becomes Security Token Device. With this new technology from RSA, the BlackBerry will be able to function much like a key fab security token. “The software generates a one-time passcode that users copy and paste to log in to corporate VPNs, enterprise wireless networks or network applications.” This technology will give greater security for network connectivity. As Mottl points out, such a need for this type of security for our mobile devices was magnified when several White House staffers’ Blackberries went missing during a recent visit from the President of Mexico.

That’s all I have for you now. But ask yourselves, with all this new functionality will we really be making the technology work for us or will we be working more because of the technology. At this point I am not certain.

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My stated purpose for this Blog is to discuss current developments in the software industry and other nuances that may affect the industry. I do not intend to become a daily reporter, but when something big happens in the industry I believe I should include it in this Blog as a service to my readers. I did such a post yesterday, January 31^st ,regarding the cut undersea cables affecting the bandwidth in India see post on 1/31/08. And now this:

MSNBC has picked up an Associated Press story regarding Microsoft’s bid to purchase Yahoo, the search engine pioneer. The complete story follows:

BREAKING NEWS

REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp. is offering $44.6 billion in cash and stock for search engine operator Yahoo Inc. in a move to boost its competitive position in the online services market.

The unexpected announcement Friday comes as Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, seeks new ways to compete more effectively against the search and online advertising powerhouse Google Inc.

In a letter to Yahoo's board of directors, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the company will bid $31 per share, representing a 62 percent premium to Yahoo's closing stock price Thursday, and emphasized that the deal isn't subject to financing.

"In February 2007, I received a letter from your chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo board that "now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction," Ballmer wrote.

"According to that letter, the principal reason for this view was the Yahoo board's confidence in the ‘potential upside’ if management successfully executed on a reformulated strategy based on certain operational initiatives, such as Project Panama, and a significant organizational realignment."

"A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved," Ballmer added.

Under terms of the proposed deal, Yahoo shareholders could choose to receive cash or Microsoft common shares, with the total purchase consisting of 50 percent each cash and stock.

Microsoft said it sees at least $1 billion cost savings generated by the merger and intends to offer significant retention packages to Yahoo engineers, key leaders and employees. The software giant said it believes the takeover would receive regulatory clearance and close in the second half of 2008.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Soon users of Lotus Notes will have the same access to SAP’s business applications as Microsoft Outlook and Exchange users have today. The jointly developed cross-platform application, announced at IBM’s Lotusphere in Orlando, is in answer to customer’s demands. With over 135 million users of Lotus Notes and a majority of its top customers using SAP, what seemed inevitable will finally come to fruition. Both companies will offer this application in the 4^th quarter. 

SAP's CTO, Vishal Sikka, stated in a press release:

Lotus has been an innovator in collaboration for 20 years. This agreement is a great example of how SAP enables our customers to empower their users by providing easy access to SAP business processes and data through productivity tools and user interfaces of their choice.

The new application is entitled “Atlantic”. Larry Barrett reports in his article IBM Teams Up With SAP on ‘Atlantic’:

While Atlantic will first provide support for SAP workflows, reporting and analytics, the two companies plan to include other tools in future releases to extend and adapt these collaboration capabilities and leverage additional offline features found in the Notes and Domino product lines.

In August, IBM began shipping Lotus Notes and Domino 8, the company's latest refresh of its flagship communications suite. Along with a snazzier user interface, Lotus Notes and Domino 8 included custom applications and Web 2.0 features such as mash-ups in the hopes of providing a more interactive user experience.

The integration of SAP’s business suite coupled with the new function-packed Lotus Notes 8, which allows independent software vendors the ability to develop new applications from their Notes dashboard, will further IBM’s quest to overtake Microsoft’s competitive advantage in unified communications and collaboration.

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