Paul Krill

Officials at Sun Microsystems Inc., Javalobby, and Infravio Inc. last week revealed initiatives positioned as advances in either Java development or Web services consumption.

While Microsoft Corp. already has had a tool to migrate Java code to the company

Microsoft Corp.'s Office System group is making available free of charge two "Web Part" toolkits and a Web services toolkit to boost integration of the company's SharePoint Portal Server 2003 package and SharePoint Services sites with applications from vendors such as SAP.

Macromedia Inc. is readying a multifaceted upgrade to its ColdFusion Web development tool, code-named "Blackstone," that will boost reporting capabilities while also enabling new clients such as IM systems to participate in application workflows.

Easing the assembly and integration of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) is the aim of products rolled out from BEA Systems Inc., Oblix Inc., and Cape Clear Software Inc.

Digital Evolution Inc. will on July 28 begin shipping what it calls its identity-based service-oriented architecture (SOA) management platform.

BEA Systems Inc. held a wide lead in the Unix and Linux portions of the application server software market in North America in 2003, but its overall revenues in this market shrank by 4.3 per cent while IBM Corp.'s grew by 6.4 per cent, according to a report released this month by IDC.

At the Rational Software Developer User Conference in Grapevine, Tex., IBM Corp. on Tuesday detailed an initiative to collaborate with educators to teach students open standards skills to enable them to keep pace with changes in IT.