And the winner is …. The lawyers. That’s the way I read SAP’s announcement of the terms of the preliminary settlement of a class action suit over its purchase of Sybase last year. That purchase drew the typical litany of plaintiffs claiming the purchaser underpaid and that the disclosures about the process were inadequate. The only money scheduled to change hands is the $1,075,000 million in fees and expenses for the plaintiff’s attorneys. Read more...

NetSuite has released NetSuite Demand Planning which it says enables companies to forecast peaks and troughs in demand. Businesses can use sales forecasts to build an inventory plan and augment a plan with special predictions, such as marketing input on new product launches. Projections can be automatically delivered to upstream providers. The systems is billed as providing the ability to automatically build inventory forecasts from real-time data and to automate inventory replenishment plan and creating the necessary purchase orders and work orders to meet anticipated demand.

Intuit has introduced Intuit Anywhere, which enables developers to build QuickBooks data integration into web and mobile applications. Utilizing the Intuit Partner Platform, Intuit Anywhere offers a set of widgets and data services for connecting applications to QuickBooks. A widget can be incorporated directly into an applications workflow providing for a secure, authenticated connection to a user's QuickBooks or QuickBooks Online data using one Intuit ID. Developers can utilize this system to prepopulate applications QuickBooks data.