The Oracle Service Bus 11g helps turn complex architectures into flexible application networks and provides caching and governance.

Web-based apps and infrastructure-as-a-service are a hit for 2010 Census.

CIO Ken Harris believes the cloud can be a good fit for almost any application.

CIO Ken Harris believes the cloud can be a good fit for almost any application.

The best-of-breed vs. integrated suite battle has been ongoing since integrated enterprise resource planning software first came on the scene. In the early days, buyers were forced to choose between stand-alone systems that performed one function very well (e.g., accounting, production planning) or one integrated system that offered modules for each function, but with varying degrees of functional depth.

Some tech industry rumors have an extra-long life, and the one about SAP buying middleware vendor Software AG got an extension this week following public comments by top leaders of both companies.

Bad news CIOs: There's still no integration pixie dust. So keep up the hard and important work, says Forrester.