Microsoft is moving towards HailStorm, as part of it's strategy of paid Net services. (ListBot had been acquired by Microsoft and integrated into bCentral).
Compaq to switch from Alpha to Itanium/McKinley by 2004
Compaq has truly submerged the identities of DEC and Tandem. Compaq is also transferring the Alpha technology to Intel. It will also phase out MIPS in favour of Itanium/McKinley on Tandem machines.
Compaq seems to be moving from the "raw iron" of Alpha and Tandem to being a services / solutions provider. Although it talks of boosting the speed of the EV-6 and bringing out EV-7 as it's last chip, it is clear that it will now focus on software and services as it's strengths. It might position the "single-chip" (Itanium/McKinley) for all it's operating systems (OpenVMS, Tru64 and NonStop -- and, who can forget, MS-W2K/XP). The question is will customers stick to Compaq or will some switch to IBM or Sun ?
Compaq's exit from Alpha will be a let-down for Alpha fans (I am one). Compaq believes that it cannot continue the performance differentiation of the Alpha for long.
CNet News analysis is that it leaves 3 major vendors : Intel, Sun and IBM. HP, too, has already decided to switch to Itanium. Another implication of the switch to Itanium is a lowering of confidence in RISC vis-a-vis CISC (or Intel).
RedHat positioning it's own Database
RedHat is trying to build on it's strength in Linux with the RedHat Database. It will be based on PostgreSQL.