(Source: Tibco) The development of analytics-based models for business productivity improvement or optimization has always relied on the analysts understanding of both the data and the tools used for model development. Analytics are the product of a series of iterations in developing theories based on the available variables, seeking correlation or even causality, and then refining the variable set. This iterative nature of the analytic process is too often impacted by the production cycle time for model development, and when the lions share of time is spent wrestling with the tool, it decreases the time spent in analyzing and building effective models.

Sun Microsystems reported a $34 million loss for its third quarter and said that it plans to cut up to 2,500 jobs, after adding 1,100 workers through its acquisitions of MySQL and Innotek.

Microsoft is launching a program to promote the use of its Windows OS in ultra low-cost PCs, one effect of whic...

Oracle will release patches for a slew of products next week, including fixes for two nasty vulnerabilities for its database software.

A $10 million cash infusion from companies such as IBM is expected to give EnterpriseDB a new toehold on the market. In particular, IBM's stake is symbolically laden, since Sun, previously a strong supporter of PostgreSQL, purchased competitor MySQL back in January.

IBM has opened its Jazz.net community to anyone who wants to provide feedback on its Jazz technology. And it disclosed long-range plans to open the Jazz source code, as it did with Eclipse.

A survey sponsored by the Oracle Applications User group finds that most users of the vendor's acquired products expect to be forced to migrate to Oracle-built products

Microsoft delayed its planned release of SQL Server 2008 from the second quarter to the third, saying it needs more time to "meet the high bar" that users have set on software quality.

A survey of Oracle user group members found that a majority of PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards users fear that the vendor will force them to migrate to Oracle-developed products.

Oracle said today it will release 27 security fixes for its products on Tuesday when it pushes out the first Critical Patch Update of the year.