IBM said it had acquired privately held Webify Solutions to expand in the fast-growing market of integrating corporate software systems. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. IBM said 120 employees of Webify, based in Austin, Texas, will become IBM employees. Webify has operations in Austin and Mumbai. Webify helps insurers, health care companies and banks, among others, share data among various software systems that otherwise would not be able to communicate with one another.

Teamwork Solutions, a provider of sophisticated applications and workflow tools for Lotus Notes, IBM WebSphere, and the Internet, announced the availability of ProcessIt! Document Library Version 8.0. The product is the newest version of the company’s Domino-based three-database suite for managing the creation, updating and archiving of controlled documents. This enhanced version of ProcessIt! Document Library features a simplified setup and configuration interface, consolidated workflow history, and an updated Web interface, making it easier to define and modify document approval workflows of virtually any level of complexity.

In an effort to compete with Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard, IBM is expected to announce Tuesday it will expand its line of servers powered by chips from AMD. IBM already sells low-end servers with AMD’s Opteron chips, so the move will allow the company to offer more choice in its high-end, commercial line. IBM would not confirm the details, but said its systems division, responsible for designing servers and chips, would announce new products and partnerships in "our biggest announcement of the year," according to IBM spokeswoman Joanna Brewer.

Ten major IT vendors including Microsoft and IBM on Monday released a draft of a new specification, the service modeling language, which they claim will make it easier for customers to manage their heterogenous systems. SML provides a consistent way to describe system information about computer networks, applications, servers and other IT resources including services in XML, according to Kirill Tatarinov, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows enterprise management division. Joining Microsoft and IBM in work on the draft are BEA Systems, BMC Software, Cisco Systems, Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Sun Microsystems. Missing from that list of supporters are players including CA, Oracle and Advanced Micro Devices.

Percussion Software and Synaptris announced a strategic partnership under which the companies have integrated their product offerings to provide Lotus Domino administrators with advanced reporting capabilities. Percussion ServerAdmin Plus, the most proactive and integrated solution for managing Lotus Domino servers and Lotus Notes clients, provides administrators with extensive data about their environment in the areas of security, mail files, databases, users and groups and client management. Synaptris’ product, IntelliPRINT, provides comprehensive reporting, data analytics and printing solutions for Lotus Notes and Domino. The integration of the two products will provide users of ServerAdmin Plus a set of pre-packaged IntelliPRINT reports.

After a laptop goes missing, companies must rush to determine the severity of the incident based on the data involved, and decide who to call first for outside help. It’s the call that no IT manager wants to receive, but one that’s clearly ringing bells across the world of enterprise security: An employee’s laptop computer has been stolen, and it may contain sensitive data. Experts say the manner in which companies respond to such incidents, and the strategies they employ to improve their device security, will determine the impact that stolen laptops will have in putting affected companies’ information at risk.

Many businesses will be forced to respond to the theft of a laptop at some point, and getting the right plan in place to deal with such incidents makes a world of difference, IT security experts say. With the implications for losing a laptop computer to theft growing every day, companies must be prepared to respond to the theft of these machines and put strategies in place to protect both their sensitive information and their corporate images.

Today’s data centers are an outdated model in desperate need of change. The linear rows of rectangular boxes, cooled by large air conditioning units hanging along the walls, in many instances can no longer address the needs of the modern-day data center, where greater flexibility and more efficient power and cooling capabilities are in great demand. What Hewlett-Packard’s Enterprise Design Center team has come up with is a design unlike what’s seen in data centers today, based on the hexagon pattern found in snowflakes, with a six-sided core at the center from which everything else expands out.

BitRock Incorporated announced the release of BitRock InstallBuilder 3.8. The development tool turns the application packaging, distribution and deployment process of multiplatform applications into a fast, easy and cost effective task for independent software vendors and custom application developers. The latest release includes native support for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD, IRIX and Linux on IBM z Series. Using BitRock InstallBuilder allows software vendors to present an intuitive installation process to end-users, reducing installation-related support requests while making a positive first impression. The ability to build installers for all supported platforms from one project file allows for easy maintenance and updating of installers, so that developers can spend more time on their primary development tasks.

On July 27, the FSF (Free Software Foundation) and the SFLC (Software Freedom Law Center) released the next discussion draft of the GNU GPL (General Public License) version 3. In addition, the groups released the first draft of the revised GNU LGPL (Lesser General Public License) version 3. Since the release of the initial GPLv3 discussion draft in January, members of the free software community have submitted nearly one thousand suggestions for its improvement. With the help of discussion committees, the FSF and the SFLC have taken these comments into consideration and have implemented revisions to the draft.