By Dan Jones
BEA Systems Inc will today (Monday) announce that it is planning to reorganize the company into four separate units, aimed at increasing the firm’s market share and brand recognition in the fast growing e-commerce transaction market. The four units will be called the E Commerce Server Division, the E Commerce Integration Division, the Component Division and the Services Division. The company is also announcing its latest software, WebLogic Enterprise 5.0, and new and extended partnership deals.
Company president and COO, Alfred Chuang, said that he hopes the move will level the playing field between BEA and IBM Corp, which he regards as the company’s only real competitor in the market. He also hopes that the refocusing will allow the company to shake off its historical reputation as a middleware software and services house and allow it to push ahead as an e-commerce software provider. We don’t want to be called a Tuxedo company anymore, Chuang said.
Chuang says that forming separate enterprise application integration was particularly key to the company going forward. The unit will launch BEA Integrator software that competes directly with IBM’s MQSeries messaging platform. Our customers have never thought of BEA as an EAI company before, Chuang said. The company recently signed a partnership deal with New Era of Networks (NEON) and will integrate some of the EAI company’s software into its own platforms.
The E Commerce Server division will concentrate on the firm’s core software packages, WebLogic and Tuxedo. While the components division will supply ‘building blocks’ to firms that want to bolt on specialist features to BEA software. Chuang said that BEA had recently bought the Boston-based EJB specialist The Theory Center to bolster its skills in the component field. Chuang described the services unit as critical to the company’s plans; it will focus on mainframe implementations and training.
Chuang describes the new WebLogic 5 package as a unification play that enables Corba, Tuxedo and Java applications to communicate with each other. The software is built on java. Chuang said that he expects customers to migrate from Tuxedo to EJB as a platform to build server-based transaction processing applications over time, although the program is fully backward compatible.
Chuang also talked up BEA’s growing roster of partnerships with companies such as Sun, Bull, Unisys, NEC and NCR. We are relying on our partnerships to grow, Chuang commented.
