China Martens

Microsoft Corp. unveiled Dynamics AX 4.0, the latest version of its high-end ERP (enterprise resource planning) software Monday at its Tech Ed 2006 user conference in Boston. Available in the U.S. and Canada, the product will soon ship in five additional countries -- China, Denmark, France, Germany and the U.K -- and then roll out to the rest of the world later in the year.

IBM Corp. unveiled the first fruits of its Project Harmony initiative Thursday, announcing Notes and Workplace software that will tighten integration between the vendor's front-end collaboration products and SAP AG's back-end enterprise applications.

Sun Microsystems Inc. expects to release its Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) 5 software development kit and compatibility test suite to developers at the company's upcoming JavaOne conference, Sun announced. "This is one of the most significant [Java] updates we've done in years," according to Joe Keller, vice president of marketing for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and integration platforms at Sun.

Looking for a better way to help corporate software developers meet compliance demands, IBM Corp. said Tuesday that it has acquired BuildForge Inc. IBM didn't reveal financial details about the purchase of BuildForge, a privately held specialist in application-development management software located in Austin, Texas.

MySQL AB unveiled a new transaction database engine at its Santa Clara, Calif. user conference this month. The open-source database vendor will also be showcasing database engines from third parties, said Zach Urlocker, vice-president of marketing at MySQL.

Red Hat Inc.

Oracle Corp. made another move to target telecommunications providers, unveiling plans for a telecom service delivery platform (SDP). Oracle is designing the SDP for use by carriers, network operators and systems integrators to help them move to SOA (service-oriented architecture).

Oracle Corp. intends to make another vertical-market acquisition, announcing plans Wednesday to offer about US$220 million to acquire Portal Software Inc., a maker of billing and revenue management software for the communications and media industry.