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.

Linux is making huge gains as the platform of choice for developing and deploying enterprise Java applications. Sun has seen more than 1 million downloads of the Linux version of its latest application server release, and all application server vendors uniformly agree that Linux is a fast growing platform.

Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories and IBM will deliver new speech-enabled self-service solutions to link contact centers with enterprise resources and IT infrastructures. IBM will work with Genesys to deliver a suite of WebSphere speech capabilities integrated with the Genesys Voice Platform.

MQSoftware, Inc.'s Q Pasa! middleware management system has increased its platform support for several IBM WebSphere products.

The director of IBM WebSphere was there, along with the president of open-source JBoss and Borland's GM of developer tools. Much of Javaland was there, in fact. The occasion? A press event in San Francisco ushering in version 1.4 of J2EE, being billed by Sun as 'the leading enterprise platform in the world today.'

'GMail created a surprising storm for a product that hasn't yet been released,' writes the chairman of the EFF, Internet pioneer Brad Templeton. 'I come to this problem from two sides,' he continues. 'One, I'm a fan of Google, and have been friends with Google's management since they started the company. ... I'm also a privacy advocate and Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.'

Tim Berners-Lee, who when last we looked was being knighted by the Queen, has been given the very first Millennium Technology Prize by the Finnish Technology Award Foundation for creating the World Wide Web and not making any money off of it or patenting it. To kinda make it up to him the prize includes a purse of one million euros, say, $1.2 million.

ProsoftTraining has reached an agreement with IBM to create a bridge from the CIW certification program to the IBM WebSphere program.

Compuware STROBE will provide application performance analysis for Java applications utilizing the new IBM zAAP execution environment on the zSeries platform.

Wily Technology has unveiled seven new Introscope PowerPack products designed to monitor and manage the performance and availability of critical integration middleware adapters.

Perforce Software has announced the availability of its Fast Software Configuration Management (SCM) system for IBM's WebSphere Studio Application Developer and Eclipse.

A new distance learning course, 'Servlet and JSP Programming Using WebSphere 5 for Domino Developers,' is now available at The Learning Continuum Company Web site.

'Will Sun be using a significant portion of the settlement proceeds to benefit Java developers and strengthen independent, standards-based efforts to advance Java?' That's the question asked by Rick Ross. 'Will Sun prove it has the vision to strengthen Java by recognizing and assisting the independent developer community?' he adds.

Karl Best, Vice President of OASIS, confirmed today that WS-Security is now an OASIS standard.

IBM has completed its acquisition of Trigo Technologies, Inc., four weeks after reaching a definitive agreement to purchase the company.

So was it or wasn't it? No one seems 100% sure one way or another whether Google's 'Gmail' announcement on April 1 was an April Fool or not. We review the various interpretations from around the i-Technology world.

Microsoft is going to pay $1.95 billion to get Sun Microsystems, the company with the sharpest spurs, off its back. The pair said this morning that they had settled all their legal differences. Microsoft will pay Sun $700 million to resolve antitrust issues, $900 million to resolve patent issues and a $350 million up-front down payment on a 10-year cross-license that includes Java and .NET. Sun will pay Microsoft when the technology gets into its servers.

IBM has agreed to acquire Candle Corporation, a privately held company based in El Segundo, California. Financial details were not disclosed.

JRas is a logging and tracing facility built into IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS), which relies on JRas as its internal logging framework. Programmers can also leverage this powerful logging system infrastructure to keep an eye on their enterprise applications powered by WAS.

The Java Specification Request for the Portlet Specification (a.k.a. JSR 168), articulated by the Java Community Process in October 2003, aims to provide a standard for portlets that the portal arena has lacked. Portlets that are written to the JSR 168 spec will be deployable to any JSR 168-compliant portal.

Apogee Software's new Aphelion JDE, derived from IBM WebSphere Studio Device Developer (WSDD), and Aphelion JREs comprised of Apogee's ports of IBM J2ME-compatible WebSphere Micro Environment (WME), are available for embedded systems running Wind River's VxWorks or LynuxWorks' LynxOS or BlueCat Linux.

Salesforce.com, a provider of on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) services, has announced the sforce Toolkit for IBM WebSphere. sforce, the world's first on-demand application platform, allows enterprises and solution developers to customize, integrate, and extend salesforce.com to create custom-tailored CRM solutions.

MQSoftware's Q Pasa! middleware management system now supports the enterprise management console solution HP OpenView.

QUALCOMM has announced the completion and results of a successful CDMA2000 1xEV-DO pilot program with IBM.

Candle Corporation has announced two new PathWAI solutions that provide the first management support for all IBM WebSphere integration brokers, including the new WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker V5.0.

A new distance learning course, Servlet and JSP Programming using WebSphere 5 for Domino Developers, is now available at TLCC's website.

B&Q plc, Europe's leading do-it-yourself home improvement retailer, plans to use a new Web-based service from IBM and DemandTec, Inc., to more effectively manage its product pricing strategy.

IBM, the University of Oregon and Electrical Geodesics Inc have implemented a grid using Linux and IBM supercomputing technology to speed and improve the diagnosis of brain conditions such as epilepsy, stroke, and depression.

At the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2004, NetIQ Corp. announced NetIQ Extended Management Pack (XMP) Modules v1.5 for Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM).

To help developers build Transaction Processing Facility (TPF) applications faster and easier, IBM is introducing the TPF Toolkit for WebSphere Studio V2.0.

In a series of extensive scalability tests conducted at the IBM Solution Partner Center lab in San Mateo, CA. Cognos ReportNet demonstrated massive scalability in a truly concurrent user environment.

MQSoftware, Inc., is debuting a new training course by MQSoftware University for IBM WebSphere MQ Workflow integration specialists called 'WebSphere MQ Workflow API and Web Client.'

IBM today announced it has agreed to acquire all the shares of Trigo Technologies, Inc., a provider of product information management middleware.

MQSoftware, Inc., will host a new Web seminar, 'Real-time Monitoring for a Healthy Business' along with a supporting white paper that will help IT management understand the necessity of monitoring their business services in real-time around the WebSphere Business Integration family.

Candle Corporation has released new performance optimization solutions for the entire IBM WebSphere Application Server environment.

IBM and Dassault Systemes have announced plans to further integrate Dassault Systemes Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions with IBM middleware.

NetIQ Corp. has announced beta availability of NetIQ AppManager 6.0, the platform for NetIQ's Systems Management solutions.

IBM has announced two new certification exams to help J2EE developers to easily update their skills on WebSphere Portal v5.

MQSoftware is hosting several Web Seminars focusing on the latest products and solutions for real-time monitoring, managing and integrating systems around the WebSphere Business Integration family.