The past week has been full of new developments for some very important companies in the tech sector, most notably Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), SAP (NYSE:SAP) and Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL). Almost all tech stocks, along with the broader market, were dragged down by the European debt crisis. Here are some of the key developments related to Microsoft, SAP and Oracle.
Microsoft
Microsoft had a very eventful week. It has launched the next version of the Surface computing platform – the Surface 2 – with Samsung. It will be priced at $8,400 and will be targeted at hotels, restaurants and retail stores. It also acquired VideoSurf, a new video search technology startup, to improve the search and discovery of video content on the Xbox Live network. It may also integrate VideoSurf’s technology with Bing Video Search.
It also announced that it was working on new Kinect hardware specifically for Windows 8, which will be launched in 2012. We expect sales of both Windows 8 and the Kinect add-on to be helped by this move. Microsoft is also working on Office 15, the next version of the Office suite, which will be launched in 2013.
It also revealed that it will be launching new Lync enterprise chat apps for major mobile platforms like iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry. Finally, following weeks of speculation, it has signed an NDA and is now officially in the fray to acquire the troubled Yahoo, which it failed to acquire in 2008.
Check out our complete price analysis for Microsoft.
SAP
SAP’s stock has been consistently pounded due to the European situation as it generates a major portion of its revenues from that region.
It launched a new enterprise mobile app store this week, which will support all major mobile platforms like Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Blackberry. The apps will be developed by SAP and its partners. SAP will take a percentage cut out of every app sale. SAP is trying to focus on mobile, cloud and big data in the coming years to drive sales growth.
It also announced that it would now be using HANA (high performance in-memory database appliance) to power the NetWeaver Business Warehouse, instead of Oracle‘s database offering or IBM‘s DB2 to offer much faster performance and data retrieval.
Check out our complete price analysis for SAP.
Oracle
Oracle, which has been focusing on the cloud since the Oracle Public Cloud launch at the Open World conference, has announced a new version of the WebLogic application server, which will enable enterprise customers to build their own private clouds. It will also add features so that enterprise customers can move their applications to and from the Oracle Public Cloud to their private clouds, to encourage adoption.
Check out our complete price analysis for Oracle.
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