Oracle

Nearly two years ago, Oracle went to court and accused Google's Android team of infringing patents and copyrights related to the Java programming language. After about 900 motions and filings, and legal fees that are undoubtedly mind-boggling, the trial will finally get started this week. Android has faced many legal challenges, but this is easily one of the most significant, and one of the only ones targeting Google itself rather than the company's hardware partners. 

While coverage ahead of Oracle’s fiscal third quarter results yesterday focused on it losing ground to younger cloud rivals Oracle has announced it's Oracle Secure Cloud, which will be available in the next few weeks.

“After a long period of testing … Oracle’s cloud applications will be generally available. We’ve named our cloud the Oracle Secure Cloud,” Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said during yesterday’s analyst call about its Q3 results.

Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) said it will buy web-based recruitment software maker Taleo Corp (TLEO.O) for about $1.9 billion to expand its line of cloud computing products, one of fastest growing areas of the technology market.

The move will allow Oracle to better compete with rivals including SAP AG, which said in December it would buy cloud human-resources software maker SuccessFactors Inc for $3.4 billion to jump start its expansion into cloud computing.

Oracle has released a wave of 78 security updates for its software products all at once, including fixes for a number of vulnerabilities—in products including Oracle Database Server, Solaris, Fusion Middleware, E-Business Suite, and MySQL—that "may be remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password." While the majority of these bugs don't compromise data security, they could be exploited to crash applications.

Oracle’s first batch of critical patch updates for 2012 will be super-sized: 79 new security vulnerability fixes across hundreds of Oracle products.

The security fixes, scheduled for next Tuesday (January 17, 2012), will cover holes in the flagship Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, Oracle Application Server 10g and numerous additional products and components.

The most serious of these vulnerabilities may be remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.

ears ago, Oracle's responses to reports of SQL injection attacks against its database servers literally were focused on media damage control - ensuring that not too many customers get scared by them. (To be fair, Microsoft had the same policy.) The basic concept of SQL injection is all too simple: Feed intentionally malformed instructions into the system in such a way that the server responds with clues that could enable you to obtain unprivileged data - or sometimes, with the data itself.

Oracle Corp's earnings fell short of Wall Street's forecasts for the first time in a decade as software and hardware sales sputtered, sending its shares down more than 10 percent and stoking fears a global recession will hurt tech spending.

The rare slip-up by the world's No. 3 software maker raised questions about the health of the technology sector as many companies in the industry gear up to close deals before the end of 2011.

Oracle has suffered a setback in its lawsuit accusing Google of patent infringement and copyright violation in its Android operating system: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected one of Oracle's Java-related patents -- although it did uphold another.

The PTO's latest determinations, reported in a joint court filing Wednesday, are a mixed bag for both sides. However, at least one legal expert has said the Oracle patent that was rejected could be its most significant in the case.

SAP AG's purchase of Web-based software company SuccessFactors Inc could be the catalyst the old-school German technology giant needs to try to catch up to rivals in the fast-growing cloud computing market.

SAP has struggled for more than five years to create business applications that are hosted on the cloud, or Web, and the company lags behind pioneer Salesforce.com Inc and larger rival Oracle Corp in the so-called software as a service (SaaS) market, analysts say.

The lawsuit between Oracle and third-party support provider Rimini Street has heated up further, with new allegations that Oracle is "abusing" the pre-trial discovery process and using "scare tactics" against customers in order to hurt Rimini Street's business.