business software maker

Xerox Corp. said Monday it will buy Affiliated Computer Services Inc. for $6.4 billion in cash and stock, joining the expensive race among technology companies to broaden their offerings.

Xerox said the deal will create a $22 billion business that combines Xerox's copiers, printers and document management services with the "business process outsourcing" of Dallas-based ACS. Outsourcers like ACS take on tasks for other companies, such as helping to manage payroll or run health care plans.

Sun Microsystems Inc. recorded a $147 million loss while sales eroded 31 percent in the April-June period, likely the server and software maker's last full quarter as an independent company.

Sun's latest numbers, reported Friday in a regulatory filing without the usual news release and conference call with analysts, highlight the uneven financial performance that forced the Santa Clara-based company to put itself up for sale.

Oracle Corp.'s billionaire CEO Larry Ellison padded his fortune with a fiscal 2009 pay package the company valued at $84.5 million, down about $100,000 from the year before and made up mostly of stock options that haven't vested yet.

On top of that, Ellison made $124.2 million by exercising 10 million stock options during the latest fiscal year, which ended May 31, according to the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company's annual proxy filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

LinkedIn Corp. has raised an additional $22.7 million to help insulate the steadily growing online business network from the economic storm and provide more financial flexibility.

The investment announced Thursday was made by one of LinkedIn's long-time backers, Bessemer Venture Partners, and three newcomers -- business software maker SAP Ventures, banker Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., which publishes Business Week.

Even after IBM Corp. surprised Wall Street with a healthy profit in the third quarter and a reaffirmation of its earnings outlook for the rest of the year, the broader technology sector dived again Thursday. There's just not enough of what lifted IBM to go around.

Tech stocks were pummeled Thursday, and IBM ended the day down as well. Analysts expressed fears that Armonk, New York-based IBM could see trouble in the fourth quarter and into 2009 if the lending and spending climate worsens as expected.

Chaos in the money markets gave Microsoft Corp. an opening Monday to announce it would take on debt for the first time, launch a new $40 billion stock buyback plan and raise its dividend.

The moves indicate that for all the credit problems plaguing the financial sector, cash-laden technology companies with good credit ratings are still borrowing money on favorable terms and otherwise enjoying flexibility.

Escalating its rancor with German rival SAP AG, business software maker Oracle Corp. accused SAP on Monday of knowingly buying and then embracing an illegal operation set up to steal Oracle's products and customers.

The allegations emerged in the latest documents filed in a fraud case that Oracle brought against SAP last year in San Francisco federal court. Oracle fired its volley the day before Germany-based SAP is scheduled to report its second-quarter earnings.

VMware Inc. abruptly replaced co-founder Diane Greene as chief executive Tuesday and lowered its sales outlook, triggering alarms that pounded the business software maker's shares to their lowest depths since the company's lucrative public offering 11 months ago.

Former Microsoft Corp. executive Paul Maritz took over as VMware's new leader. In the past few months, Maritz had been running a division of VMware's controlling shareholder, data storage specialist EMC Corp.