SAP has been ordered to pay Oracle a record US$1.3 billion dollars as a result of a verdict in the highly publicized copyright infringement case. Admitting liability for swiping Oracle software, SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow recovered and copied massive amounts of software and confidential data by posing as clients, court documents said. The admission of liability led to the real issue of how much SAP actually owed Oracle for the stolen software. SAP contended no more than $40 million, while Oracle sought at least $1.65 billion. It is unclear if SAP will appeal the decision.

Red Hat has acquired Makara, a developer of deployment and management solutions for applications in the cloud, to accelerate the development of its Platform-as-a-Service solution for application life-cycle management. As part of its Cloud Foundations portfolio, Red Hat PaaS will get a boost from Makara’s technology, which “enable organizations to deploy, manage, monitor and scale their applications on both private and public clouds,” Red Hat said. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Black Duck Software has partnered with credativ, an independent provider of open-source software consulting and services, to add expert open-source support to the services available to its customers. Through the deal, the 50-person consulting company, which has operations in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Canada, will provide Black Duck customers with break and fix support, performance analysis and tuning, architecture consulting, code-level debugging, and enhancements and training, the company said.

Layar, creators of a mobile augmented-reality platform, closed a series B round of funding led by Intel Capital with US$14 million. According to Layar cofounder Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, the new funding will be used for three main plans. “First, we want to upgrade our infrastructure and ensure we have a good organization in place. Second, we’re looking at creating a new interface to the world…[and] we want to add more core capabilities to the Layar platform. ” The Amsterdam-based company also received $3.4 million in series A funding from Sunstone Capital and Prime Technology Ventures this past February.

Talend, a provider of open-source data management software, announced the creation of the application integration division, which combines its products and solutions for data management and application integration. The company appointed Scott Devens as general manager and Pat Walsh as vice president of marketing of the new division. Devens brings over 24 years of experience in the technology industry, including roles held at Progress Software and IONA Technologies, Talend said. Walsh has spent the last 20 years in the infrastructure software industry. He too held roles at Progress Software and IONA Technologies, the company said.

Apprenda, creators of application server for Software-as-a-Service SaaSGrid, unveiled its Board of Advisors, which will help support the strategic direction for SaaSGrid. Made up of cloud and application infrastructure veterans, members include Frank Artale, vice president of business development at Citrix Systems; Simon Crosby, CTO of Data Center and Cloud at Citrix Systems; and Mark Leslie, the founding chairman and CEO of Veritas, Apprenda said. “Working with industry leaders like Frank, Simon and Mark will be important in achieving our mission of ensuring that customers focus on their core competency for writing and selling software, and not on SaaS architecture and operational overhead,” said Sinclair Schuller, CEO of Apprenda.

EARNINGS
Salesforce.com reported US$429 million in revenue, up 30% on a year-over-year basis, for its 2011 fiscal third quarter, which ended Oct. 31. Its operating cash flow increased 108% to $74 million, while the company’s deferred revenue of $695 million increased 27% from the same time last year. Salesforce.com also projected its full fiscal year 2011 revenue in the range of $1.647 billion to  $1.649 billion. Additionally, the company said in its filing, “We believe that our strong growth this year will allow us to deliver approximately $2 billion in revenue in fiscal 2012, making Salesforce.com the first cloud computing company to achieve that milestone,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO.

HP reported a better-than-expected fourth quarter as its net profit rose 5% to US$2.5 billion and its revenue increased 8% to $33.3 billion. The company reported diluted earnings per share of $1.10, up from 99 cents the same period last year. In a conference call with reporters, HP’s CEO Léo Apotheker said he planned to increase emphasis on software. At present, software represents roughly 3% of HP’s revenue, he said. “Doubling it wouldn’t be too bad, tripling it would be even better, but that would be a very, very, very long-term projection,” he added.

Dell reported revenue of US$15.4 billion for its 2011 fiscal third quarter ended Oct. 29, representing a 19% increase from the year before. The company’s net income was $822 million, or 42 cents a share, which is up from $337 million, or 17 cents a share, from the prior year. According to a Thomson Reuters poll, analysts expected the company to earn 32 cents a share. The biggest revenue growth came from Dell’s large enterprise unit, which increased 27% from the year earlier, the company said. In addition, its sales from governments, hospitals and other public entities increased 20%.