During the upcoming retrial of Oracle's corporate-theft lawsuit against SAP, the companies plan to call a star-studded array of tech executives as witnesses including CEO Larry Ellison, former Oracle co-president and current Infor CEO Charles Phillips and SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott, according to court documents filed Thursday.

It's official. Hewlett-Packard will cut 27,000 employees as part of its long-term restructuring plan, the company said when it announced quarterly financial results.

The last time Hewlett-Packard Co. announced a layoff of 25,000 people, it was on the same day that Lehman Brothers collapsed and the stock market nose-dived. That was in September 2008.

Preparing for its entry into the market for IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), Hewlett-Packard has launched a second beta program of Cloud computing services it plans to offer commercially.

A number of parties have submitted bids to acquire Quest Software, which announced in March that it was going private via a US$2 billion stock buyback in partnership with equity firm Insight Venture Partners.

It's been more than three years since HP acquired IT services provider EDS, and the long-term direction of its bigger - if not better - outsourcing business is no more clear than it was on the day the deal closed.

It may seem like 2010 was the year of the tablet, but the reality is that 2010 was really just the year of the iPad with 15 million units sold and no real competitors for the Apple tablet. However, 2011 will be very different with a diverse variety of tablet options emerging--including some particularly relevant entries from major players.

The leaked details on HP and Palm's WebOS tablet keep on coming, though HP has said we haven't seen everything yet.

With so much chatter about tablets this year, you might think that the handheld, rectangular devices being unveiled represent a significant innovation. The reality is that so much of what we're seeing is not a whole lot different than what we saw in previous years; these products offer only a few new twists. But those new twists could make the difference between tablets' remaining a niche item and their finally busting out to the mass market in a meaningful way.

We haven't seen HP hype a tablet since last year's flirtation with Windows 7, but that could change after February 9, when the company has all but confirmed that it will introduce its first WebOS tablet.