the Pipeline

Product integration

In the world of software, Microsoft Corp. is what young companies dream of growing up to be and grown-up companies dream of figuring out how to relate to. They want their products to mesh with those of the Redmond, Wash., giant but not so well that their corporate identity gets lost.

Therefore, it's no surprise when a company such as Computas NA Inc. announces that its Metis Team Server can now work with Oracle Corp.'s database technology. The system, a content and configuration management module for enterprise architecture developers, previously worked only with Microsoft SQL Server. Computas officials said Oracle technology is widely used by the government, so the flexibility will make the product more marketable.

Meanwhile, SteelEye Technology Inc. and Lucid8 Information Services LLC are combining two of their Microsoft Exchange Server products into a single solution for managing and monitoring the Exchange environment. The collaboration, which will combine SteelEye's LifeKeeper with Lucid8's GOexchange, will track everything from storage and servers to data integrity and client connectivity. Individually, LifeKeeper manages data protection, high-availability clustering and disaster recovery for Exchange Server, while GOexchange automates maintenance chores for the system.

Miramar Systems Inc. announced Desktop DNA Enterprise 4.7, a tool to help organizations make the migration from older versions of Microsoft Windows, including moving the internal data from Windows NT Domains to contemporary Active Directory systems. Without the tool, Miramar officials said organizations have to manually update individual user settings. Desktop DNA automates that process, enabling systems administrators to automatically migrate or upgrade desktop applications and configurations, system settings, network settings, user profiles, printer settings, user preferences and data files.

Microsoft, not wanting its smaller partners to get all the glory, recently unveiled a beta version of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. The software reports real-time information from data sources to devices, making a host of data-exchange scenarios possible.