EMC subsidiary VMware could raise as much as $100m in its initial public offering of stock, the virtualisation specialist said in a regulatory filing.

Apple reported financial results far ahead of Wall Street's expectations on Wednesday, and the company's board of directors defended chief executive Steve Jobs' role in Apple's stock options backdating scandal.

IBM plans to start selling products from smaller rival MySQL, a developer of an open-source database that is used to help run websites, including Yahoo, Google and YouTube.

Google has knocked Microsoft off the top spot and been named the most powerful global brand of 2007.