Feature Article: Tuesday, 3/4/03

BEA President Details WebLogic 8.1 Release

BEA eWorld 2003 raced ahead Tuesday with the engine already running after Monday's exciting events. To begin, Olivier Helleboid, president of BEA's Products Organization, kicked off the morning session with an overview of BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1.

The new release conforms to BEA's overall product strategy, which consists of four elements:

• Delivering mission-critical enterprise application infrastructure
• Leading the convergence of application development and integration
• Focusing on simpler, faster development and deployment of enterprise applications
• Building on standards and open integration with partners

Helleboid reminded attendees that BEA first introduced the WebLogic Platform just one year ago, at eWorld 2002. Within the last year, BEA has delivered an integrated application infrastructure platform that provides a common runtime for J2EE applications, integration initiatives, and portal projects.

With BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1, the focus shifts to WebLogic Workshop, which Helleboid called "the star of the 8.1 release." WebLogic Workshop 8.1 will allow many different kinds of developers, including architects, database developers, J2EE developers, portal developers and others, to work in the same environment.

The applications those developers create will run on new, improved versions of all of BEA's server-based products, including WebLogic Server, Tuxedo, WebLogic Integration, Liquid Data for WebLogic, and WebLogic Portal.

Helleboid also gave attendees a sneak peek at key areas of future development under way at BEA. In particular, he mentioned improvements to management tools, application security, and the development environment. In addition, he said, BEA will continue to improve its products in the critical areas of availability, scalability, and performance.

In closing, Helleboid encouraged attendees to voice their opinions about BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform. "eWorld is all about communicating. It's not just about us talking to you. It's about listening and you telling us what your issues are today and in the future. It's the only way we can deliver the best application infrastructure platform in the industry," he said.

Further demonstrating BEA's strong partnerships, the Tuesday morning session concluded with remarks from another key BEA partner -- John Davies, vice president of Solutions Marketing at Intel Corporation.

Just as BEA is focusing on software convergence, Davies said Intel is turning its attention to hardware convergence - namely, the convergence between computing and communications. Current products in development include Manitoba, an integrated chipset for mobile phones, and Centrino, which provides Pentium 4-class performance for laptops while requiring much less power.

Chips like these, in conjunction with standards-based application infrastructure platforms like BEA WebLogic Platform, will enable wireless Web services, Davies said. The natural synergy between wireless hardware and standards-based software is what makes the partnership between Intel and BEA so special, he continued.

BEA and Intel have been working together for more than two years, he explained. As a result, Davies said, the companies are now able to deliver the best Java Virtual Machine performance in the industry, with BEA WebLogic JRockit running on Intel servers containing four 2 GHz Xeon processors.

A number of customers have recognized the value of running BEA WebLogic Platform on Intel hardware, Davies said, including Amazon.com, Bank of New York, Dell Computer, E*Trade, Hyundai, Ingram Micro, McKesson, Samsung and Siemens.