James Niccolai and Ashlee Vance

New hardware designs, including server chips that combine multiple CPUs on a single processor, will challenge the way enterprise software vendors price their products and could eventually force them to adopt new pricing schemes altogether, according to analysts.

New hardware designs including server chips that combine multiple CPUs on a single processor will challenge the way enterprise software vendors price their products and could eventually force them to adopt new pricing schemes altogether, according to analysts.

A U.S. district court on Thursday ruled that technology used by Intel Corp. in its 64-bit Itanium processors infringes on technology patents held by Intergraph Corp., a ruling that could require Intel to hand over at least US$150 million in liquidated damages to the smaller company, Intergraph said.

Hewlett-Packard Co. is about to sell off its middleware assets and exit the business, looking instead to partnerships to meet its customers' middleware needs, HP executives said Tuesday.

Microsoft Corp. said some of its most popular Web sites were knocked off line Thursday by an act of Internet vandalism known as a "denial of service attack." It claimed that the incident was separate from an internal technical problem that brought down its key Internet properties on Tuesday and Wednesday.