Bea Systems Inc. is moving into the business-to-business integration and application arenas with three new products for its WebLogic application server.
Set to roll out the products at its user conference in Dallas this week, BEA is playing catch-up with some customers.
Edward Pick, chief technology officer of B2BGalaxy.com Inc., which builds B2B networks, said that while he may not need these particular products, he would like to be able to buy applications to run on top of the app server.
“Were a little bit ahead in the B2B market,” said Pick, a WebLogic customer in Parsippany, N.J. “We were looking to buy pieces, and they werent available, so we built them. Hopefully, that will change because we dont want to continue to build everything.”
The first product, BEA Campaign Manager for WebLogic, is a wizard-based tool to help nontechnical users create and manage personalized interactive marketing campaigns and track the results. Slated for availability next month, Campaign Manager will cost $10,000 per CPU.
The second product is a new release of BEA WebLogic Enterprise. Version 6.0, expected to be available in July, is a tighter integration of BEAs Web- Logic application server for Java-based development and BEAs Tuxedo platform for C, C++ and COBOL development.
The third product, BEA WebLogic Collaborate Enabler for RosettaNet, is designed to help customers expand their trading partner networks. BEA will announce general availability of the product this week for a free 30-day trial.
“Theyre coming into both of these [integration and application] markets late, but they offer some unique strengths,” said Shawn Willett, an analyst with Current Analysis Inc., in Sterling, Va. “They have a large customer base [and] a large sales force, and their Collaborate [product] has interesting workflow technology.”
The San Jose, Calif., company will also introduce a fourth product, aimed at the customer experience area.
Also at the BEA conference, WebGain Inc. will announce the integration of its WebGain Studio development environment with BEAs WebLogic 6.0. Ted Farrell, CTO of WebGain, in Santa Clara, Calif., said the latest version is a major upgrade because of changes made to the app server, such as support for Enterprise JavaBeans 2.0.
