Joris Evers

Oracle Corp. has arranged a US$1.5 billion credit line for potential use in its bid to acquire rival PeopleSoft Inc., the company said in a regulatory filing.

Aiming to sell more of its business integration software into international markets and the small- and medium-sized business segment, Microsoft Corp. said its forthcoming BizTalk Server 2004 will support more languages and more connections in the less expensive editions.

Microsoft Corp. will gradually phase out its Windows 2000 Server family, the company said Wednesday. Effective April 1, 2006, the products will no longer be available.

Microsoft Corp. is creating a new central engineering division that will work on the core of the Windows OS the company said Monday.

Microsoft Corp. will stop distributing several older products this week as a result of a legal settlement with Sun Microsystems in a dispute over Java, Microsoft said.

Microsoft Corp. plans to release the second beta of Host Integration Server 2004 on Monday, countering earlier suggestions that the product would not be upgraded because its functionality would be rolled into other Microsoft E-Business Server products.

A glitch in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Update automated patching service caused a security fix that was released last month to be delivered to computer users on Tuesday, the same day Microsoft proclaimed December would be a patch-free month.

Many North American businesses still have computers running on Windows 98, even though support for the operating system is set to end on Jan. 16, according to a study released Thursday.