Sir Bill Gets His Royal Due

Bill Gates will be knighted tomorrow by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace. Do these throw-back honorifics remind anyone else of Bugs Bunny dubbing (actually drubbing) some poor schlub Sir Loin of Beef or Sir Osis Of Liver? Are you with me here people?

Back to bidness. The problem with tech coverage is you end up writing about stuff that some reporter scooped, then some vendor pre-announced, then announced. Lately, that cycle has lengthened as vendors like Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, re-announce it, then re-announce, then re-re-re announce it. You get the picture. It's happened with Oracle 10g, IBM Lotus Workplace. It's increasingly difficult to track when any of this stuff actually ships. Or if anyone cares by the time it does.

So to tidy up some loose ends, here goes: Microsoft has posted its promised Information Bridge Framework update. In this case, CRN helpfully pre-announced Microsoft on this one as well as on the original framework.

Next week, Microsoft poobas, including Sir Bill himself, will again talk up the company's real-time communication strategy. Let's see: Live Communications Server 2005 is already shipping so here's hoping they'll actually announce availability and pricing on the remaining components. Those would be the "Istanbul" VoIP/IM client and the connectivity pack for Yahoo and AOL instant messaging. Smart money is that the connectivity pack may be out by month's end and Istanbul, the real name of which remains shrouded in mystery, after that.

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In the same vein, IBM's great press release machine keeps churning with still more someday-to-ship Workplace solutions.

At Partnerworld in Vegas, IBM execs also promised what they called the company's first Tivoli Express and Informix Express editions. (Didn't they already announce Tivoli Express? Who knows?)

And, the company said Informix Dynamic Server (IDS) version 10 database is now available. Since IBM bought the Informix database business four years ago, it pledged continued support for its venerable (and multiple) databases. And so far it has.

Whaddaya know?