Baan’s Web Products
Baan introduced a line of Web collaboration systems — the first major product line from the company since it was acquired by Invensys PLC. iBaan is designed for integrating supply- chain management systems and allows business users to personalize information.
The products include
- iBaan Portal — which gives employees access to information sources, applications, and business processes and features monitoring of individual employee page views and security access
- iBaan OpenWorld — an integration framework that links third-party and legacy applications with graphical business-object mapping and XML- based gateway technology
- iBaan Collaboration — a series of packages that allow businesses to reconfigure applications
- iBaan Webtop — a thin-client for Baan’s enterprise resource planning system
Baan also unveiled version 2.0 of its iBaan OpenWorld system, which uses the XML programming language for integrating Web-based B2B applications.
Oracle Loves Linux
On Wednesday morning, Oracle and Dell Computer announced a plan to make Intel-based Dell servers that will work with Oracle’s flagship database software using the open-sourced Linux operating system.
Under the initiative, the companies plan to build a lab by the end of May at Dell’s corporate campus where customers can test hardware and software. The lab is meant to ensure that third-party Linux software will work with Dell servers, Dell storage products, and Oracle’s 9i database.
The agreement with Dell is one of several Linux initiatives Oracle is unveiling this week.
On Tuesday, the company announced that application developers can use Oracle’s Web site to download the Linux Fast Start Kit, which includes technical overviews of Oracle’s application server and database products on Linux.
Qualcomm Brew’s Mobile Standard
Qualcomm said on Wednesday that it lined up more than a dozen software developers in the games, position location, entertainment, content, and M-commerce categories to support its Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless, or BREW, which Qualcomm wants to make into an open development and operating system for wireless devices.
The developers include NetZero, AvantGo, and MP3.com.
Currently, wireless handset applications development is virtually closed to third-party developers, and the BREW platform opens up development by providing a standard programming environment.
WorldCom Wants Wireless, Too
Delivering on its pledge to bring new and innovative communications services to market for the digital generation, WorldCom expanded coverage of its Wireless Internet services to include seven U.S. cities, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, New York, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and San Diego.
The company’s wireless service links its global IP network to Metricom’s Ricochet national network, enabling mobile access to the Internet, corporate intranets, Internet Protocol Virtual Private Networks, E-mail networks, messaging systems, and other corporate E-business applications.
Service will be launched later in the first quarter in Baltimore, Denver, and Detroit. Later this year, WorldCom will extend the service to San Francisco, San Jose, Philadelphia, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Salt Lake City, and several other areas.
Japanese Java
While WorldCom is pushing wireless Web services on this side of the Pacific, Sun Microsystems and Japan’s NTT DoCoMo are making progress with third-generation, or 3G, services in Asia. DoCoMo’s Internet-enabled mobile phone service has launched support for graphics, games, and E- commerce based on Sun’s Java language.
DoCoMo’s Internet-enabled i-mode phones have drummed up more than 18 million subscribers in less than two years, but the service has been mostly text based.
The deal with Sun lets DoCoMo subscribers download Java applets. For example, a user can command a Java-enabled phone to make a screen image move rather than wait for the network server to send every frame in the image.
Finger in the Dike
Red Hat Linux 7 and 6.2 customers that subscribe to the Red Hat Network received a fix for the widely reported BIND security hole on Monday afternoon, just after the flaw in BIND was discovered by computer researchers.
BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) software was created by the Internet Software Consortium for UNIX and Linux computers, which provides something similar to a global telephone directory for the Internet. It was learned earlier this week that hackers could use a security flaw to reroute Web traffic and manipulate or shut down Web sites.