Just two days after Siebel Systems Inc. signed a landmark deal with Microsoft Corp., embracing .Net, the market-leading CRM software vendor threw a bone to the Java crowd Wednesday, recommitting itself to the J2EE platform in a joint announcement with Sun Microsystems Inc.
The companies, at Siebels User Week conference in Los Angeles this week, announced support for the J2EE Connectors specification in version 7.5 of Siebels eBusiness Applications. Siebel first introduced J2EE interoperability in version 6.0 of its suite. The J2EE Connectors provide a standard architecture for enterprise applications to interoperate with the J2EE platform, Siebel officials said.
“Customers need to know their Siebel eBusiness Applications will interoperate with other business applications,” said Stuart Wells, senior vice president of Suns Market Development Organization, in a statement. “Siebel Systems commitment to J2EE will help customers improve the ROI of their Siebel eBusiness Applications by reducing integration costs and complexity.”
Richard Gorman, Siebels senior vice president of products and alliances, said in a statement that Siebels customers have indicated a “strong interest” in the J2EE, particularly for integration.
“The J2EE platform and Suns commitment to open Java Web Services can help ensure faster integration of Siebel eBusiness Applications so customers can achieve seamless levels of interoperability and flexibility across multiple channels and lines of business,” Gorman said.
Siebel and Sun have had a partnership in place since 1998 and in July 2001 signed a Global Strategic Alliance, committing them to work together on technology initiatives and solution development as well as sales and marketing campaigns. Todays announcement was largely a reaffirmation of that deal in the wake of a similar agreement Siebel signed on Monday with Sun arch-rival Microsoft to support its .Net platform.
In other news from the show, Siebel announced that BMC Software Inc. and Ascential Software Corp. have both signed on to support its Universal Application Network application integration initiative. IBM Corp., SeeBeyond Technology Corp., TIBCO Software Inc., WebMethods Inc., Vitria Technology Inc., BEA Systems Inc. and Microsoft (BizTalk) have previously announced support for the UAN, which provides a semantic layer that maps industry-specific business processes between disparate applications.
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