IN THE PAPERS
In the papers 3 July
03-07-2007
by Sylvia Leatham
SAP admits to 'inappropriate downloads' | NTT plans to diversify
The Irish Times reports that Eircom plans to further develop its business presence in Northern Ireland with an investment of EUR5 million in its network. Read the full story on ENN.
The Irish Independent says that holidaymakers will still be hit with high roaming charges this summer, despite a new EU price cap which came into force on Monday. The problem arises because operators have until the end of August to start charging the new tariffs. Under the new 'Eurotariffs', all mobile phone customers will pay a maximum of EUR0.49 a minute in roaming charges to make calls abroad and EUR0.24 a minute to receive them.
The Financial Times says that Japanese telecoms giant NTT (Nippon Telegraph & Telephone) plans to stop a long-term decline in its profit by building up non-core businesses such as real estate and intellectual property, a move that challenges the international trend against diversified conglomerates. Satoshi Miura, president of NTT, told the newspaper that he needed to bring the telecoms businesses "back on track." But "only doing such things is not enough to create a growth trend. That's why we would like to expand our operations in non-telecoms businesses," he said.
The paper also says that SAP's chief executive has admitted that "inappropriate downloads" of documents from rival Oracle were made by SAP's TomorrowNow unit, but it said that SAP itself did not have access to that material. Henning Kagermann said the German software company was open to all options, including a settlement with its US rival, but expected no big developments in the intellectual property case before the next US court hearing, scheduled for September. "Even a single inappropriate download is unacceptable from my perspective. We regret very much that this occurred," said Kagermann in a statement, responding to Oracle's charges of intellectual property theft.
According to the Wall Street Journal, NetSuite, a start-up backed by Oracle's Larry Ellison, has filed plans for an initial public offering (IPO). NetSuite offers web-based services that let SMEs handle tasks such as accounting and keeping track of customers. While Oracle doesn't view NetSuite as a rival, NetSuite's filing calls Oracle "a potential competitor of ours." Ellison owns about 74 percent of NetSuite's common stock, and his holdings could pose tricky corporate-governance issues.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 