BEA revamps products across the board

BEA has unveiled upgrades for its Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) products at its eWorld 2003 event in Orlando.

WebLogic Platform 8.1, a major upgrade of its application infrastructure software, includes new versions of WebLogic application server, Java virtual machine, enterprise portal, application development and deployment environment.

"Convergence is bringing application development and application integration into one environment," said BEA chief executive Alfred Chuang.

Applications have been created to solve immediate problems and build point-to-point connections but this does not create a flexible infrastructure, he added.

"The challenge is to bring everything together, which is very good news in the time of tight budgets. All integration is development and all development is integration."

Hewlett Packard (HP) chief executive Carly Fiorina, giving the second keynote address, endorsed Chuang's theme. "The infrastructure must be able to flex with the business. If you get the infrastructure right, everything is possible.

"But the problem is it is built on islands; monolithic silos which were not meant to change quickly," she said.

BEA and HP had been working more closely together, Fiorina added, and BEA had grown its revenues on HP from eight per cent nine months ago to 23 per cent.

Further details of BEA product upgrades were also provided. They include:

WebLogic Integration 8.1, which provides a framework for business integration and a new architecture for the assembly and integration of applications and business processes.

WebLogic Workshop 8.1 application development environment.

WebLogic Portal 8.1, which is among the first products to support the proposed Java portal applications standard JSR 168, and has new content management capabilities including search, web integration and native support for wireless communications.

WebLogic Server 8.1, the first version of this software to include both web services security and an infrastructure for delivering simple object access protocol messages to assist in web services deployment.

WebLogic Server 8.1 will be available this spring, the rest in the summer.