Paul Krill

IBM Corp. on Thursday will preview technology intended to assess and grade Web sites on their accessibility to people who are visually impaired and blind.

Microsoft Corp. and AmberPoint Inc. are hooking up to boost Web services development in the upcoming Visual Studio 2005 tool box.

Oracle Corp. foreshadowed improvements to its grid strategy, including updates to the Oracle Database 10g and the company's enterprise management tools, during an interview last week.

The on-again, off-again issue of having Sun Microsystems Inc. participate in the Eclipse open source tools initiative may soon be on again.

Java development will become markedly easier if upcoming technologies from Eclipse Foundation and Sun Microsystems Inc. live up to their promise.

Sleepycat Software Inc. recently began shipping Berkeley DB Java Edition, a Java version of its embedded database.

OASIS is working on standard technology to enable Web services to function in situations in which business process communications have a delayed response, as opposed to the quick responses normally associated with Web services, an OASIS official said this week.

Perspectives on technology trends such as service-oriented architectures (SOAs), Indian outsourcing, and e-mail management were the focus of the day at the Enterprise Outlook private equity conference in San Carlos, Calif., on Wednesday. Featured were executives from Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., and BEA Systems Inc., as well as venture capitalists.