1. "Cisco Acquiring WebEx for $3.2B,”
CIO.com, March 15
In a week full of mergers and acquisition news, Cisco’s latest stood out. The company plans to buy online collaboration service WebEx for $3.2 billion, with the aim of getting into the hot software-as-a-service market. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter, will give Cisco access to small and midsize companies that use WebEx and also will give Microsoft’s Live Meeting collaboration service another competitor. It marks Cisco’s first foray into hosted applications service provider terrain.

2. "IBM Ups Its BI Ante with Third-Generation Strategy,"
Computerworld, March 13
IBM is taking a new tack in business intelligence. Analysis of data stored in its data warehouse will be part of a business process under the "dynamic warehousing" strategy. That move was announced along with word of a new version of the DB2 Warehouse, which is a data analysis tool and data warehouse appliances for the small and midsize business market. The strategy is being termed "third generation" by IBM, which says query and reporting was the first and online analytical processing was the second. DB2 Warehouse is expected to be available by the end of the month.

3. "Intel Committed to Smaller, Energy-Efficient Chips,"
CIO.com, March 15
Intel expects to decrease the size and power consumption of mobile microprocessors by next year, with chips that consume 10 percent of the power of those on the market last year. The future microprocessors will be 85 percent smaller than their predecessors of last year, according to Christian Morales, the vice president and general manager of Intel’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Advances in process technology will lead to most of the improvements as Intel moves to the more advanced 65-nanometer process, compared to the 90-nanometer process it used last year to produce most of its chips. The company will soon produce chips using 45-nanometer process technology. Smaller chip sizes allow for more of them to be produced on one silicon wafer, which drops costs, along with leading to better performance and less power consumption.

4. "Launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Renews OS Debate,"
CIO.com, March 14
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, or RHEL5, with built-in virtualization capabilities from the Xen project, was released this week. Customers have been waiting for the update, though Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10 already offers built-in virtualization. RHEL5 costs the same as the previous version, which also ought to make customers happy. The new OS has features designed to make it easier to manage virtualized environments, as well as more streamlined customer support. The company is creating the Red Hat Cooperative Resolution Center, which is meant to help customers deal with problems they’re having no matter which software is causing the headaches. And the company is going to launch Red Hat Exchange to offer pre-integrated business application software stacks, though a launch date for that hasn’t been set.