News to know: SAP-Sybase, HTC-Apple, Office 2010, Cisco earnings
SAP's acquisition of Sybase, HTC's patent infringement suit against Apple, the launch of Office 2010 and a solid quarter for tech bellweather Cisco Systems top the day's headlines. Get the day's rolling posts via Twitter, RSSemail. or
Here are the key themes for Thursday, May 13:
SAP is back in the race. The company is dropping nearly $6 billion in cash to buy Sybase, a move that will turn SAP into a big time player in the mobile enterprise software market and put it on a more level playing field against rival Oracle. And Wall Street seemed to like it, too.
- Dennis Howlett: SAP acquires Sybase for $5.8 billion, but why?
- >SAP to acquire again?
HTC, which has been gaining groundthanks to its small army of Android devices, came back at Apple with a patent lawsuit of its own - Apple sued HTC for patent infringement in March - and asked the ITC to block sales of iPads, iPhones and iPods. The HTC complaint focused on five of patents that go to core functionalities like dialing directly from a contacts directory or preserving data when powering down a device.
As Office 2010 rolls out, Christopher Dawson tweets his thoughts from the live event in NYC while Mary Jo Foley looks at the "better together" concept of packaging Office, SharePoint and SQL Server. Meanwhile, Forrester's Sheri McLeish offers up some info on what you need to know about Office 2010 while Rob Koplowitz asks if SharePoint 2010 is social ready? And let's not forget about the Outlook Web App, too.
Finally, technology bellweather Cisco Systems reported a solid third quarter and said that the company positioned itself well during the recovery, witnessed a return to strong balanced growth, is "chugging on all cylinders" and ready to face challenge such as turmoil in Europe.
Zack Whittaker, who chimed in earlier on the Outlook Web App, has posted some screenshots in a gallery. That's him in the picture holding the cup of... well, since he's a Brit, I'll bet it's tea. Visit him at his iGeneration blog.