IBM is aggressively developing applications for data synchronization. While still a largely underdeveloped technology with few standards, IBM's latest move seeks to establish publishing protocols, before data starts being enter.

A new version of IBM WebSphere is being introduced that uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. This is expected to create tighter integration between enterprises and off-site satellites.

'While the stock market can be unpredictable, the technology running it can't be,' said IBM's software chief Steve Mills - Senior Vice President and Group Executive, IBM Software - this morning as Big Blue announced in New York that it's working with the New York Stock Exchange on a new order management and messaging system in support of the 1.6 billion shares traded daily.

Swainson: 'Let's start by defining 'on demand.' First, on demand reflects what our customers are doing with their businesses - streamlining their business processes to make them more flexible and adaptive to new markets and opportunities. They use information technology as a tool to integrate these processes, so obviously IT is a critical enabler of on demand.'

In an effort to help companies reduce costs associated with the execution of redundant tasks, Bowstreet has released applications offering automation of services, along with enhanced self-service. The application is designed for use with IBM WebSphere Portal and Workplace.

IBM's Workplace Service Express 2.0, is designed to enable SMBs utilizing the Java development platform move onto a single server. In areas that have small market size, this is especially advantageous, letting SMBs streamline their operations by working with one partner.

Akamai is offering customers pay-as-you-play WebSphere and J2EE services. Companies, like Best Buy, can avoid the development lifecycle, and no longer need to worry about licensing agreements with individual vendors.

The PeopleSoft board today recommended to its shareholders that they give Oracle the cold shoulder and reject its $24 per share bid for the company, seriously undervaluing it - says PeopleSoft - at just $8.8BN. Larry Ellison issued a statement saying that the offer is good till midnight on November 19 - after which time, if a majority of shares have not been tendered, Oracle will move on to other prey and the would-be hostile takeover of PeopleSoft will pass into the annals of software business history.

Richard Monson-Haefel, now Burton Group's senior analyst but familiar prior to joining Burton for his well-regarded books and articles about Java and his open source projects like Apache Geronimo, has just published a report - J2EE: A Standard in Jeopardy - which suggests that LAMP technologies (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) and open source middleware may one day help 'unseat' J2EE by offering an alternative framework, in combination with other entetprise-level open source projects like Tomcat, Spring, Hibernate, and Struts.

Web services will continue to play a vital role within enterprises, as companies strive to create cost-effective solutions that can be integrated into existing infrastructures. J2EE and Microsoft's .NET are the two primary platforms used in Web services. And while these two platforms continue to be actively developed, they are still in their infancy. How these platforms are developed is critical for the continued viability of Web services.

Oracle this morning raised its price for PeopleSoft from $21 a share to $24, a total of $8.8 billion, saying $24 represents a 60% premium to where PeopleSoft was trading when Oracle made its first run at the company a year ago June. In a letter to PeopleSoft's board yesterday, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and chairman Jeff Henley gave PeopleSoft shareholders until midnight on Friday, November 19 to tender a majority of the shares.

IBM is helping China's SMBs grow their technological infrastructures. To this end, IBM will open a center in Beijing that will work to adapt current software used by SMBs to applications employed by global corporations.

Ascential has entered into a reseller agreement with IBM that will enable Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite to be sold with IBM DB2 Information Integrator software. This ensures that businesses with extensive investments in IBM infrastructures like WebSphere will remain interoperable when integrated using Ascential's IBM mainframe adapters.

Wily's new management package, Management 360, seeks to bring all the stakeholders within enterprises together, sharing information using a common language. Wily's approach, the company says, enables organizations to act in real-time in a cooperative manner.

After publicly retracting the results of J2EE versus .NET benchmark tests it conducted back in 2002, The Middleware Company (TMC) bravely ventured recently to revisit this minefield. From IBM's point of view, according to an internal document obtained today by WebSphere Journal, TMC has managed to blow itself up all over again!

'SAP is now delighted to be able to participate in the application server shootout and demonstrate the power of SAP Web Application Server as a development and runtime platform for enterprise-scale Java applications,' said SAP's Christopher Hearn as the news was announced.

Which application server will be found to most resilient and flexible? And which most secure? It didn't take long for the enterprise software community to start discussing the 'Application Server Shootout' outlined this week by SYS-CON Media as it tapped Burton Group to stage the shootout between main app server vendors - both proprietary and open source - due to be held at Web Services Edge 2005 East - International Web Services Conference & Expo next February, in Boston.

IBM has no intention of giving up application server market share to open source competitors JBoss, Apache Geronimo, or JOnAS. Accordingly, explains IBM's Bob Sutor - director of WebSphere Foundation Software - the latest WebSphere release contains support for various Java and Web Services standards, such as WS-I Basic Profile 1.1, and J2EE 1.4. Version 6 also contains a number of features that are designed to minimize - using advanced algorithms - the financial toll to businesses when servers crash, Sutor explains.

In an out-of-court settlement reached this morning, pending the signing of a final agreement, Sun has agreed to pay Kodak $92 million cash, bringing to an end the patent infringement proceedings instigated by Kodak last week, in which Java was declared by a federal jury to breach certain Kodak-owned patents, a breach for which Kodak was demanding $1.06 billion in damages and back royalties from Sun.

Making itself the first app server to deliver this type of simultaneous detection and recovery capability together, WebSphere Application Server Version 6, when it becomes available before the end of the year - says IBM - will 'help protect Internet business applications built on it, from a mortgage processing system to an automaker's supply chain application, with advanced autonomic computing capabilities from IBM.'

Aldon has gained IBM Ready for WebSphere Studio V5.1 certification for its suite of Lifecycle Manager plug-ins. Enterprise systems can integrate the plug-ins, says the company, allowing developers to continue working in native WebSphere environments while retaining all Lifecycle Manager functionality.

Red Hat's vice president for open source affairs, Michael Tiemann, has said Sun needs to prove its devotion to the open source community, by releasing Java. According to Tiemann, the move is needed to stop Microsoft's .NET from advancing. Open sourced Java, he believes, will accelerate innovations with Java. And concerns over forking? He dismisses them as 'so last millennium.'

NEON Systems and Cape Clear Software announced they are working together to provide enterprise customers with integration solutions. The integration expertise offered by each company, will enable IT environments to maximize mainframe operability between applications and data throughout networks.

From now on, PeopleSoft's applications will be built on open standards using IBM's middleware platform, primarily the core components of WebSphere. The announcement came today as IBM and PeopleSoft began an expanded strategic alliance to provide customers, as they put it, 'with the most comprehensive offering of pre-integrated business solutions.'

A 2003 initiative between IBM and Art Technology Group (ATG) has been actively developed by ATG. Art Technology provides software used to measure potential reactions by consumers using e-commerce Web sites. ATG created the plug-ins for Java developers to save time with the coding of such scenarios, used primarily by large retailers in marketing items. Applications can be created in WebSphere and Eclipse environments using graphical interfaces enabling developers to design solutions that the program will code.

Neon Systems, a leader in enterprise-class mainframe integration, today announced the availability of Shadow z/Services, a SOAP-based mainframe integration solution that allows organizations to rapidly transform CICS, IMS, and Advantage CA-IDMS applications into Web services.

Software Configuration Management (SCM) solutions provider MKS is providing expanded integration for Eclipse and IBM WebSphere development environments, by adding MKS Integrity Manager onto developers' desktops. This is the first time Change Management functionality will be offered in such an environment.

IBM's director of WebSphere Foundation Software is aghast at rumors that Sun may be planning to merge its JavaOne and Sun Network conferences: 'JavaOne was supposed to be an industry event where any Java vendor or user who wishes to attend can do so and be part of the Java community....but it is not supposed to be a lot of people there to support and further Sun. We're there to support and further Java,' he writes.

Not having kept, or being able to access, the right information at the right time is now a serious offence that puts the CEO and/or the CFO in jail for perjury, regardless of who in the organization may or may not have been to blame. Capgemini Group's Global CTO Andy Millholland reports on why CxO executives are finding the previously boring topic of storage worthy of careful study: it's in part because the latest explosive IT subject is, if something goes awry, 'Who goes to jail?'

As US events such as COMDEX and CeBIT America get canceled, the equivalent IT mega-shows in Europe seem to be going from strength to strength, reports Fuat Kircaali directly from Istanbul, where CeBIT Eurasia opened earlier this week to more exhibitors, more attendees, and more foreign investors than ever before.

Panacya's new Service Center for Enterprise Messaging System was designed to support the messaging requirements of large and mid-sized companies. With the messaging system handling e-mail, IT departments can gain some breathing room.

The current target release date for J2SE 5.0 (Tiger) is September 30th, says Sun's Graham Hamilton, chief technologist of Java Software. 'That is the target,' Hamilton adds. 'As I am sure people understand, we are watching quality and customer feedback closely and will adjust if needed. But right now things are looking good for hitting that date.'

In a new version of its flagship product called FlowBuilder, Trilog has announced that it includes a new Eclipse plug-in that makes the entire framework available as an Eclipse perspective for Java developers. The release also 'tears down the wall between the Domino community and the J2EE community,' the company claims.

Motive's latest software offering uses intelligent application models to enable automated configurations of key IT components. By providing greater visibility over application environments, Motive believes this will close the gap between application development teams and IT operations.

Built on the Eclipse platform and developed as a plug-in to IBM's WebSphere Studio, a technology called 'b+' enables the modeling, generation, migration and deployment of end-to-end, J2EE1.3 applications from UML models, legacy applications and JDBC-compatible databases, with no vendor specific runtime dependencies.

The IBM Linux Speed-start program is providing a free Software Evaluation Kit (SEK) loaded with the latest IBM middleware that has been ported to Linux. The company claims it's 'the easiest way to get access to all of new releases of IBM Linux tools and products including WebSphere Studio application Developer v5.1.2, DB2 Universal Database v8.1.6, Tivoli Access Manager v5.1, and Tivoli Directory Server v5.2.'

Intersperse announced the release of Intersperse Manager 3.0, the first tool developed for J2EE and SOA-based systems applications.

Every now and again, a customer exchange reveals hidden insights into the popularity of SYS-CON's LinuxWorld Magazine. We can't resist sharing this one, if only because of the curious running reference to a certain other technology magazine.

IBM announced that it has begun electronic delivery of WebSphere Studio Application Monitor for Multiplatforms, V2.2 (WSAM).

BEA has witnessed the departure of two key executives in the past two weeks. Scott Dietzen has resigned as chief technology officer, closely following the recent departure of Adam Bosworth, BEA's former chief architect and senior vice president, to join Google.