In Brief

High-level news at a glance

New Servers Hit the Market. IBM and Hewlett-Packard both released new enterprise-class servers recently.

IBM announced a server based on the second generation of IBM's Enterprise X-Architecture (EXA) technology, among other new eServer systems. The new eServer xSeries 445 (otherwise known as x445) will scale up to 32 of the newest Intel Xeon processors MP. Its XpandOnDemand configuration allows customers to increase computing capacity on demand and only pay for the capacity as needed.

HP declared Itanium "ready for prime time" because of HP's new line of 64-bit Integrity servers based on Intel's Itanium 2 1.5GHz processor. The Integrity family ranges from one- and two-processor entry-level systems up to a 64-processor HP Integrity Superdome server. HP says its Itanium 2-based systems are backed by a network of more than 700 applications from major independent software vendors in both commercial and technical arenas.

SOAP 1.2 "Recommended." The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced that version 1.2 of the simple object access protocol (SOAP) has reached "recommendation" status. This version addresses some of the shortcomings of version 1.1, but will take time, perhaps a year or two, to be incorporated into products. SOAP 1.2 allows transmission over protocols other than HTTP, such as SMTP, TCP/IP, BEEP (the Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol) and IBM's MQSeries, which are more secure. It also allows performance optimization.

UML 2.0 Approved. The OMG voted to recommend adoption of the UML 2.0 Superstructure specification at its Technical meeting in Paris. The OMG's Analysis and Design Task Force also recommended the complementary MetaObject Facility (MOF) 2.0 specifications for the MOF Core and XML Metadata Interchange (XMI), updating the repository foundation on which UML and Model-Driven Architecture tools are built. Alignment of the UML 2.0 metamodel with the MOF metamodel is expected to simplify model interchange via XMI and cross-tool interoperability.

LexisNexis Boosts Role in Patriot Act Aftermarket. LexisNexis U.S. will acquire the public-records business of Dolan Media Co., a Minneapolis-based provider of electronic public-records information. The motivation: "The federal government and regulated industries such as financial services and insurance are seeing increased need for fraud mitigation and identity verification solutions," says Bill Pardue, president and CEO of Corporate and Federal Markets for LexisNexis U.S.

SCM Needs Proper Commitment to Pay Off. Critical to supply chain management success is sponsorship by senior management, according to a study by Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. 45 percent of survey respondents said their supply chain information technology solutions haven't lived up to expectations. But SCM-driven savings nearly double when executives treat SCM as a strategic endeavor.

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