Business services provider Winholesale chose Bowstreet Portlet Factory, and IBM WebSphere Portal, to provide portlet development providing role-based access to the company's financial information.

Atlanta-based MAPICS, Inc. and IBM are teaming up to provide mid-size manufacturers with the solutions to help them improve business performance, increase competitive advantage and deliver increased value for their customers and shareholders, say the companies in an announcement today.

Wily Technology, which has already established strategic partnerships with industry leaders such as BEA, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and Sun, is now extending its technology momentum within the IBM WebSphere customer base.

Adobe is encouraging WebSphere users to see how its new Intelligent Document Platform software works. By blending together the data integration power of XML with the presentation capabilities of PDF, says the company, Adobe's Intelligent Document Platform 'extends the WebSphere environment to enable you to streamline the development and maintenance of data capture and document generation processes.'

Whether you're a tool developer building new commercial products, or a user customizing your environment, every experienced developer interested in extending Eclipse or WebSphere Studio Workbench will possibly find a new book interesting - it's the first definitive, start-to-finish guide to building commercial-quality extensions for both Eclipse and IBM's WebSphere Studio Workbench.

METRO Group, the world's fourth largest retailer, has chosen IBM to provide the software to integrate the rollout of RFID throughout their supply chain. Using IBM RFID systems integration to help guarantee that goods are delivered on demand when they are needed, METRO Group is automating its goods receiving process, with the aim of eliminating stock counting errors and keeping customers happy by avoiding 'out of stock' situations.

IBM Rational will standardize its suite of automated software quality (ASQ) tools on the Hyades open source platform. By making its software-ality tools Hyades compliant, Rational will provide third-party testing tool vendors and IT organizations with a standardized platform on which to build products, reducing the need to re-create baseline capabilities such as HTTP load testing and runtime analysis.

IBM Japan will cooperate with Uchida Yoko Co., Ltd; SSJ Co., Ltd; and Nippon Aitechs as part of its ISV Advantage program launched worldwide for small and medium businesses (SMBs) targeted at independent software vendors (ISVs). The agreement will increase the total participants in this program to 13 companies in Japan.

BM has released an integrated set of products and services, based on open standards, to help telecommunications companies provide faster and more economical telecom services for their customers. The new IBM eServer Integrated Platform for Telecommunications (IP-T), provides customers with proven hardware solutions based on the eServer BladeCenter and eServer BladeCenter T running carrier grade Linux and supported by IBM Global Services.

IBM has expanded its 'on demand' resources for developers by making available dedicated educational materials on service-oriented architecture (SOA) available on its developerWorks site (www. ibm.com/developerWorks).

Should Java be open sourced? What would the verb 'open-source' actually mean if it were? What would be lost, if anything, in terms of safeguarding the compatability of Java, if Sun moved toward more of an open-source model? What innovation and energy might be lost to Java if it doesn't? These questions were asked and - in part - answered this morning, from multiple perspectives, at 'The Big Question' keynote debate at JavaOne in San Francisco.

OpenDemand Systems has released OpenLoad v4.0, which is a browser-based load and functional testing solution to ensure the performance, availability, and reliability of enterprise Web applications and services. It has been developed to address a need in the market for simple, powerful, and affordable automated test tools.

IBM today unveiled new WebSphere software that automatically optimizes the performance of companies' software and hardware, on demand, particularly during unexpected spikes in usage or changing market conditions.

The management team of Comdex, which they are 'postponing' this year, says not to worry, that the show will be back in 2005. 'Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?' muses Roger Strukhoff. Meantime, he mourns today's announcement and looks back at the ups and downs of 'the one event that described the arc of the personal computer business, from its informal, hippiefied beginnings in Atlantic City in the 70s, through an exuberant decade running from the late 80s through the late 90s, to some alarming wretched excess in 2000, to its swift and apparently fatal downfall in the 21st century.'

IBM has just announced new Java-based technologies that simplify the creation, testing, and evaluation of applications and help enable the rapid deployment of reliable Java software and services.

IBM has announced an integrated set of products and services, based on open standards, to help telecommunications companies provide faster and more economical telecom services for their customers.

QNX Software Systems today announced a strengthened relationship with IBM as an authorized global reseller of selected IBM WebSphere embedded technologies. In addition, QNX announced updated support for IBM WebSphere Studio Device Developer (WSDD) v5.6.

Itemfield, the provider of a new generation of data transformation software for high performance enterprise applications, is now shipping Itemfield ContentMaster version 3.2 data transformation software with enhanced ease-of-use, improved performance and new support for multiple components of the IBM WebSphere Business Integration platform.

Bowstreet's newly released Bowstreet Portlet Factory version 5.8.2 features the PeopleSoft Extension, allowing companies to rapidly integrate PeopleSoft data and business processes with their portals. Bowstreet's latest release also enhances the value of WebSphere Portal to the PeopleSoft customer base, according to Bill Swatling, product manager, WebSphere Portal, IBM.

Sana Security, Inc., a provider of host-based intrusion prevention software (HIPS), has formed a strategic alliance with Service Integrity, Inc., a developer of XML/Web Services monitoring, analysis and visibility software.

Java has spread in enterprise computing, James Gosling pointed out recently to a conference audience in India, 'and people prefer Java in mobile devices - nobody likes it if a mobile device looks like a desktop with Windows-like features.' The father of Java remains as proud of his growing child as ever.

Many businesses today are facing tighter economic controls while being asked to improve the bottom line. IBM WebSphere Portal helps answer this challenge by putting in place an infrastructure to dynamically increase and decrease server capacity based on changing workload demands.

Adobe Systems Incorporated has extended the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform with new software, optimized for WebSphere, that delivers document services technologies to help automate business processes. The new server software, named Adobe LiveCycle, delivers document services to integrate manual processes into enterprise applications.

LogicLibrary's Logidex Plug-in for IBM WebSphere Studio has received IBM's prestigious Ready for IBM WebSphere Studio software program certification. This recognition ensures that the Logidex Plug-in integrates seamlessly into WebSphere Studio.

The new IBM eServer i5 Model 520 has achieved the record result in the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark on a 2-way POWER5 processor-based system.

Bowstreet has announced its support for the IBM eServer iSeries platform with the release of Bowstreet Portlet Factory for WebSphere version 5.8.2. The IBM eServer i5, the newest generation of the iSeries server family, is the industry's first server based on advanced IBM POWER5 microprocessor technology.

DataPower announced today the availability of firmware release 3.0 for its XML-aware networking hardware: DataPower XS40 XML Security Gateway and DataPower XA35 XML Accelerator.

Will they, won't they? Yesterday, Sun's own Java technology evangelist was being reported as having said they would; now Java co-creator James Gosling - and almost everyone else in Santa Clara who came in contact with the media - says Sun won't be open-sourcing Java. Not yet anyway - though it's under fierce and continuing debate within the company.

IBM has introduced two new validation programs to make it easier for customers to implement IBM Business Partners' solutions.

Instantiations has begun shipping WindowBuilder, a new line of GUI construction tools for Java. This Java-based development suite is the first enterprise development product to support both the Eclipse-based standard widget toolkit (SWT) and Sun's Swing component technology in a single solution.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was in fine form at the 13th annual World Wide Web Conference, running this week in New York. He gave a keynote address yesterday devoted to the successor to the WWW, namely the 'Semantic Web.'

Three IBM Business Partners will integrate autonomic computing technologies into upcoming products available this month.

As predicted in the May issue of JDJ the proprietary application server market is being dominated more than ever before by IBM, with BEA's share slipping for the second successive year.

MQSoftware, Inc.'s Q Pasa! middleware management system is the first solution to provide monitoring support for WebSphere MQ for TPF (Transaction Processing Facility) used by airlines, hotels, and financial institutions worldwide.

IBM and Openwave Systems Inc. are working together to offer WebSphere Everyplace Micro Environment as a pre-integrated component of Openwave Phone Suite Version 7 (V7).

IBM and SAP AG have expanded their global strategic alliance to enable retailers to strategically transform their businesses to meet rapidly changing consumer demands and global competition.

IBM has outlined a new middleware software-based model that brings together the unique qualities of Web-based computing and traditional PC desktop environments.

Recognizing the needs of small and medium businesses (SMBs) to improve their operational efficiencies and their interaction with customers and partners, IBM has introduced WebSphere Business Integration Server Express.

IBM has posted the long-awaited Stinger open beta of its next DB2 rev, which, thinking of ISVs, is supposed to be wizard embedded technology.