iPad Coming in April

It's officially official. The Apple iPad is now coming to Blighty in April. Probably.

The US release date has been announced as April 3rd, with pre-ordering switched on from the 12th of March. At first, only the WiFi versions will be released into the wild. Our American cousins will have to wait a bit longer for the 3G versions.

However, the fruity computer maker says that folks in the UK (and a bunch of other territories) will get both versions some time in late April.

Office 2010, the latest version of Microsoft's office productivity suite, will ship to business users on 12 May.

The product tackles document sharing by using SharePoint 2010 to allow users to share Office documents. It also features Office Web Apps, which enables users to view and make light edits to Word and Excel documents through their browser.

Microsoft Office 2010 also allows users to work offline through new software - SharePoint Workspace 2010. According to Microsoft, when users reconnect their laptop to the network, the changes they made while offline will be synchronized.

Businesses and consumers who purchase and activate Office 2007 - or a new PC running Office 2007 - between 5 March 2010 and 30 September 2010 will be able to download Office 2010 at no additional cost.

To qualify for the free upgrade, users also need a Windows Live ID and must claim it before 31 October 2010 by visiting Microsoft's Technology Guarantee page.

Oracle unveils plan to integrate software with Sun hardware

Oracle has presented a vision for its $7.1bn acquisition of Sun which will see the company sell integrated hardware and software designed to lower IT operating costs and boost performance.

At an event in London attended by more than 500 of Oracle's customers and partners, David Callaghan, UK country leader at Oracle, said, "Oracle's strategy is about being complete, open and integrated, which brings value by broadening functionality and driving out risk."

Dermot O'Kelly, vice-president of systems at Oracle, said that by combining its software with Sun's server and storage hardware, Oracle was uniquely placed in the market to offer users a fully integrated enterprise system from the application, middleware and database through to the operating system, server and storage hardware

More than 44,000 businesses run Oracle on Sun servers, including Pfizer, Barclays, Avis and Vocalink, he said.

"By combining Sun with Oracle, we are changing the economies of running a datacentre."

The combination of Oracle database and Sun hardware allows Oracle to develop systems that offer a 500% performance boost compared to optimising database software on its own.

This performance boost is possible due to technology such as Oracle's Exadata database appliance and systems built using Sun hardware and Sun's Flashfire, flash memory-based storage.

For large businesses, the complete software and hardware system Oracle will offer will potentially cost millions of pounds. Oracle will be supporting these customers directly. O'Kelly, said, "Our major customers spend millions with us. It is our duty to talk to them directly. We will have a direct sales team for our major customer accounts."

Oracle said it will continue to develop Sun's Sparc hardware and Solaris operating system. The company will focus on developing enterprise systems for Solaris. However, Oracle reassured users that it will continue to support those running Sun's x86 servers and using Windows. Specifically, Oracle will develop Linux and Solaris systems for the SunFire 2200, 4100, 4200, 4400 and 4600 servers.