China Martens

Red Hat Inc.'s planned purchase of JBoss Inc. will enable the Linux distribution company to more fully embrace SOA (service-oriented architecture) as well as expand its offerings of integrated software stacks, according to company executives Monday. For its part, open-source middleware vendor JBoss will gain access to Red Hat's worldwide channels to extend its global reach.

MySQL AB has signed a multiyear agreement with Oracle Corp. to renew its licensing of the InnoDB database storage engine, according to a MySQL executive. The move resolves confusion in the market about the likely effect on MySQL of Oracle's purchase last year of the maker of InnoDB, Innobase OY.

A community open-source effort known as the Portland Project gave the first look Tuesday at software tying together the two major Linux desktop environments, KDE and Gnome. The move should help speed the adoption of the open-source operating system on the desktop since developers won't have to choose between the two different interfaces and tools when writing applications.

Corporate users will increasingly combine traditional enterprise software with online capabilities to create composite applications, Bill Gates said. In the keynote address at Convergence, an annual conference for users of Microsoft Corp.'s business software, the Microsoft chairman and chief software architect also shared his vision of a world of work in which "smart" tables will function as adhoc screens for mobile devices.

Microsoft Corp. Monday unveiled a global initiative to crack down on cybercriminals who engage in phishing. The company will set in motion more than 100 legal actions against phishers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) by the end of June, according to a release.

Oracle Corp. made its low-end, free-of-charge Oracle Database 10g Express Edition database, also known as XE, generally available as of last month. When the company initially released the beta version of the software in October last year, Oracle expected to debut the first full release of XE by year-end.

Microsoft Corp. will hold its first Small Business Summit as a way to increase communications between the software vendor and its small and mid-size business (SMB) customers.

IBM Corp. is allowing its business partners to join it in selling front-end consulting services to small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) for the first time, the company announced.