So was it or wasn't it? No one seems 100% sure one way or another whether Google's 'Gmail' announcement on April 1 was an April Fool or not. We review the various interpretations from around the i-Technology world.

Microsoft is going to pay $1.95 billion to get Sun Microsystems, the company with the sharpest spurs, off its back. The pair said this morning that they had settled all their legal differences. Microsoft will pay Sun $700 million to resolve antitrust issues, $900 million to resolve patent issues and a $350 million up-front down payment on a 10-year cross-license that includes Java and .NET. Sun will pay Microsoft when the technology gets into its servers.

Organizations that have accomplished application rationalization successfully have saved significantly on time, money, and resources. Measures of success include decreasing hundreds of business applications, increasing the availability of application data, and creating savings of $1M within one year. Welcome to the world of 'Enterprise Portal Rationalization.

New from ReportingEngines is the Formula One e.Report Engine for WebLogic Workshop, a completely integrated Java reporting toolset that can be used to design, preview, compile, and deploy reports for a broad range of projects.

The enterprise software and services company iRise has expanded its partnership with BEA Systems to provide an integrated definition and development solution.

As part of its ongoing efforts to increase industry adoption of Java and improve developers' value within an organization, BEA Systems announced its new BEA WebLogic Workshop Professional Edition.

BEA and the American Electronics Association are hosting a one-day conference entitled, 'Large Scale e-Government: One Enterprise.'

Faced with a tough, if not losing, battle for PeopleSoft, Oracle executives said Thursday that they were considering other acquisitions.

BEA Systems, Inc., the world's leading application infrastructure software company, has announced that Norvergence, a provider of telecommunications services for growing companies, has adopted BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 as its standard for enterprise application development, deployment, and integration.

VERITAS Software Corporation has announced the immediate availability of VERITAS Application Saver software, a companion product for VERITAS i3 application performance management (APM) software that helps ensure business continuity by improving server utilization and preventing common software faults from becoming failures in large, distributed software applications.

Service Integrity, a developer of XML/Web Services monitoring, analysis and visibility software, has announced a new version of its SIFT software for BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1.

More than 210 customers in the Americas, Asia/Pacific, and Europe selected BEA over IBM in head-to-head sales situations during the past quarter, says BEA. In 125 of these cases, BEA was selected despite the fact that IBM WebSphere was the incumbent platform. This includes 94 instances in which WebSphere customers selected BEA for new projects, and 31 scenarios in which IBM WebSphere was removed and replaced with BEA WebLogicTM.

(August 28, 2002) - BEA Systems, Inc.; Deloitte Consulting, one of the world's leading consulting firms; and Roundarch, the Customer Relationship Architects, have introduced CRM Connect?, a multichannel CRM solution that provides a single view of the customer, allowing them to connect sales, marketing, services, Web, and back-end systems. Using CRM Connect, which is based on Java, J2EE, XML, and open standards, enterprises can create a powerful, fully integrated view of their customers that will enable them to deliver more effective, relevant customer experiences across channels.

(August 28, 2002) - Palm Solutions Group and BEA Systems, Inc., have formed a long-term strategic relationship to bring Web services to PalmTM branded handhelds, using WebLogic technology.

(September 10, 2002) - BEA Systems, Inc. is now shipping BEA WebLogic JRockit 7.0, the next generation of its Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Optimized for all Intel-based servers, including both the Intel Xeon and Itanium architectures, BEA WebLogic JRockit 7.0 is the keystone in BEA's strategy to give its customers a superior combination of price and performance for Java enterprise computing. BEA WebLogic JRockit enables companies to run Java applications on a broad range of Intel-based servers, thereby helping to lower the total cost of ownership for enterprise computing.

(July 9, 2002) - BEA Systems, Inc., led the 2002 Web Services Journal Readers' Choice Awards, receiving the following eight major awards.

(February 12, 2003) - BEA Systems, Inc. has unveiled its Enterprise Architect Resource Center - a new strategic initiative in which BEA will offer programs and technical resources aimed at architects in the enterprise. Available now at http://dev2dev.bea.com /community/architects.jsp , BEA will deliver a series of bimonthly Webinars, architectural whitepapers, peer networking opportunities, technical content and educational events in the coming months. The first Webinar, to be held on Feb. 14, 2003, at 9 a.m. PST (noon EST), will be presented by Daryl Plummer of Gartner and will focus on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Service-Oriented Development of Applications (SODA).

(July 11, 2002) - Dirig Software, a leading developer of award-winning enterprise application performance management solutions for e-business, has received $15 million in financing, led by Battery Ventures with additional investment from original investors JMI Equity, Longworth Venture Partners, and Aprisma Management Technologies.

(July 16, 2002) - BEA Systems, Inc., has launched the BEA Portal Solution Center http://po rtalsolutions.bea.com), an online resource center for businesses to design and develop enterprise portal solutions. The BEA Portal Solution Center helps to simplify portal design and development by providing secure, self-service access to a catalog of portlets, pre-built connections to third-party applications, and pre-designed portal solutions from leading systems integrators.

(July 17, 2002) - Does your organization require J2EE and .NET-based applications to talk to each other? Are you building Web services to connect legacy systems? Do you want your developers to quickly become experts in Java?

(July 23, 2002) - BEA Systems, Inc., has announced support for a certified implementation of the Java API for XML-based Remote Procedure Call (JAX-RPC) - making BEA the first major application server provider to adopt the new standard for Web services interoperability.

(July 23, 2002) - AdventNet, Inc., the leading provider of standards-based J2EE management solutions announced the immediate availability of AdventNet Middleware Manager 4.0 WebLogic Edition, optimized for advanced JMX based management of entire Web application ecosystems.

(August 1, 2002) - Free Webinars, technical presentations, and discounts on WLDJ are just a few of the perks for developers who take advantage of BEA's free dev2dev Online Membership Program. Exclusively for members of the growing BEA dev2dev community, the program builds on the core BEA dev2dev offerings launched earlier this year.

(August 6, 2002) - Dirig Software has announced support for BEA WebLogic® Server 7.0. Prospective BEA WebLogic Server 7.0TM customers can benefit from Fenway's breadth of e-business management capabilities including Web servers, application servers, and backend databases.

(August 7, 2002) -Every publication evaluating BEA WebLogic WorkshopTM to date has given it glowing reviews confirming its place as the first Java development framework expressly designed to make it easy for mainstream application developers to build enterprise-class Web services.

(August 8, 2002) - Intrinsyc Software, Inc. has announced its second annual maintenance and support contract with BEA Systems, the world's leading application infrastructure software company.

Edmunds.com, the Web's leading consumer resource for unbiased automotive information, has selected the BEA WebLogic Enterprise PlatformTM as the foundation for its new architecture after conducting a thorough review of Java-based application server platforms.

(August 12, 2002) - U.S. Cellular, a wireless telecommunications provider with 3.5 million customers nationwide, has selected the BEA WebLogic Enterprise PlatformTM for their application and portal development and deployment strategy as the company prepares its infrastructure for significant growth in the coming months.

(August 15, 2002) - BEA Systems, Inc. and Borland Software Corporation have announced plans to offer Borland® JBuilder, BEA WebLogic Edition, creating a tightly integrated product development solution for building enterprise applications on the BEA WebLogic Platform 7.0 with the JBuilder development environment. In addition to providing deep product integration, BEA and Borland will join forces to drive JBuilder, WebLogic Edition through a new co-marketing and reselling agreement.

(July 1, 2003) - BEA Systems, Inc. has been placed as the joint leader of the $2.2 billion application server software platform market with a $100,000 lead on its nearest competitor, as measured by worldwide license and license-related services revenue, according to analysis recently released by IDC [see Application Deployment Platform Software Market, 2000-2002, with Leading Suppliers, IDC #29507, May 2003]. BEA holds a 16 percentage point lead over its nearest competitor in the market for application server software on the Unix operating environment; and a 16 percentage point lead over its nearest competitor on the Linux operating environment. BEA continued to grow its share year/year, demonstrating further consolidation around the leaders in this market.

¬ít›(July 2, 2003) - Businesses are looking for real-time information visibility into their business operations in order to stay competitive. Achieving this level of insight is difficult because data is scattered across business operations - in different data formats, different applications, and on different platforms. In the past businesses relied solely on enterprise application integration software to connect these disparate systems, but now standards-based technologies like Web services and XML have created a new sub-segment of software, called enterprise information integration, designed for real-time information access across distributed data sources.

(February 25, 2003) - Confluent Software Inc. has announced the first Web services management solution in the industry to be tightly integrated with BEA WebLogic Workshop. The product, Confluent CORE for BEA, helps enterprises deploy a service-oriented architecture where shared operational policies such as security can be consistently enforced. The product helps Java application developers produce better managed and secure Web services, at a lower cost and without additional work at development time.

(February 26, 2003) - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is building the Collaborative Information Portal on the BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform that will serve as a key research and scientific tool during the upcoming Mars Exploration Rover mission.

(March 3, 2003) - BEA System Inc.'s founder, chairman and CEO Alfred Chuang, launched BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1™ at the company's eighth annual technology conference, BEA eWorld 2003 in Orlando, FL today. Mr. Chuang predicted that BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 would usher in a new era of business integration. The new platform aims to provide greater responsiveness to line-of-business needs, lower overall costs, and increase the return on IT assets. BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 includes BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1, BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1, BEA WebLogic Server 8.1, BEA WebLogic Portal 8.1, and BEA WebLogic JRockit 8.1.

(June 27, 2002) - eXcelon Corporation has announced that its XML products integrate with BEA WebLogic Platform 7.0TM to provide customers with a comprehensive solution for implementing Web services applications based on XML business documents.

(September 24, 2002) - SAMS Publishing has just released BEA WebLogic Workshop Kick Start, the first book for developers working with BEA WebLogic Workshop. Sponsored by the BEA dev2dev publishing program, BEA WebLogic Workshop Kick Start provides everything developers need to get started, including a quick Java primer and appendixes covering the essentials of XML, SOAP, and WSDL. The authors, Joseph Weber and Mark Wutka, offer detailed discussions and insights into the inner workings of this integrated development framework.

(February 5, 2003) - BEA Systems, Inc. has launched two new editions in its Java application server line, BEA WebLogic Express and BEA WebLogic Server, Workgroup Edition, both designed with departmental-level budget and application needs in mind. Leveraging the same code base as BEA WebLogic Server, BEA WebLogic Express is used for building and running JSP and Java servlets and is targeted at Web applications, such as corporate Web sites. For projects that require full J2EE functionality, BEA WebLogic Server, Workgroup Edition gives departments of up to twenty end-users the complete set of features found in BEA's Java application server, including EJB support. Both are available immediately. See www.bea.com for more information.

(September 9, 2002) - In an ongoing commitment to its growing developer community, BEA Systems, Inc. has planned BEA dev2dev Days, a global educational tour to help developers hone their enterprise integration and Web services development skills. The tour, which will visit eleven cities in the US, Europe and Asia, is targeted for enterprise development professionals. The one-day event in each locale offers a packed agenda of demonstrations, tutorials, and training on the BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform. The sessions improve an IT team's productivity by introducing developers to new technologies and demonstrating real-world development scenarios.

(May 20, 2002) - Objectivity, Inc., the leading provider of high-performance database engines for the management of complex data, has joined the growing list of companies in the Star Partner Program of BEA Systems, Inc.

(June 4, 2002) - The BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform has been selected by Cingular Wireless, the nation's second largest wireless carrier, as its standard application platform. Among Cingular's first BEA-powered applications are a retail-sales system, a Web-based activation service, and an employee portal that is slated to roll out this month.