James Niccolai

Intel Corp. launched the second version of its Itanium processor Monday, trying once more to carve out a business for itself in the lucrative market for high-end workstations and servers.

BMC Software Inc. has updated some of its tools for managing Oracle Corp. databases, promising to help companies cut data management costs and get more out of their time-strapped database administrators (DBAs).

Oracle Corp. is in discussions with Hewlett-Packard Co. to buy its middleware assets, a move that could provide a much-needed boost to Oracle's application server business, industry sources said.

Oracle Corp. released an upgrade to its Oracle9i database product to developers on Monday, adding new XML (Extensible Markup Language) capabilities and other enhancements that it hopes will help it recover ground lost to competitors.

IBM Corp. has dislodged Oracle Corp. from the top of the market for database management software, helped along by its billion-dollar purchase of Informix Corp., according to new figures that were released Tuesday by Gartner Inc.

IBM Corp. kicks off its annual developer conference in San Francisco this week where it will emphasize new products and technologies that should help improve the level of integration among its broad software catalog.

Hewlett-Packard Co. has pulled the plug on its worldwide developer conference scheduled to take place in Las Vegas at the end of this month.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has gained crucial backing from Microsoft Corp. for its forthcoming family of 64-bit chips, code-named Hammer, the company announced Wednesday. The chip maker also revealed that server and workstations versions of the chip due in the first half of next year will take the brand name "Opteron."