News
HP, BEA swing a deal at BEA eWorld
- By Jack Vaughan
- June 25, 2002
[June 25, 2002] - BEA Systems Inc.
and Hewlett-Packard Co. will
jointly sell integrated hardware,
software and services solutions
built around BEA’s Weblogic
application server and running
across all HP operating systems.
The deal was made public at BEA
eWorld Europe 2002 in Paris, where
the company rolled out its
Weblogic Platform 7.0. As well,
BEA said its Weblogic Workshop
development tool suite will be
generally available at the end of
June.
As part of the BEA-HP deal, HP
will become a preferred strategic
systems integration partner of BEA
with a dedicated team of
BEA-certified consultants. A port
of HP-UX on Intel’s Itanium
processor will be key.
Additionally, HP is said to be
evaluating BEA’s JRockit Java
Virtual Machine (JVM), with the
potential to standardize on
JRockit across HP's enterprise
servers for all operating systems
and server lines for the Intel
architecture.
The agreement follows reports that
HP was set to jettison its
Bluestone-based application
server, which the company recently
began to offer for free. In the
wake of such reports (spurred
initially by comments of an HP
software executive at an
early-June investment banker
forum) Gartner analysts Massimo
Pezzini and Yefim Natis advised HP
Netaction/Bluestone users to
develop transition plans for
systems running on those products.
Systems covered by today’s
agreement include HP-UX, OpenVMS,
NonStop Kernel (NSK) and Tru64
Unix on current standard platforms
and future Itanium platforms, as
well as Windows 2000, Windows NT
and Linux.
In addition, as part of the
agreement, HP will become a BEA
preferred strategic partner for
services management via HP
OpenView.
The Paris roll-out of Weblogic
Platform 7.0 is a significant step
for BEA. Its success in app
servers has been astounding, but
critics warn that application
servers may become a commodity
item. The new platform integrates
Web services support, an
integration services broker, BEA’s
WebLogic Workshop, and an
integrated Java development
framework.
“We are expanding beyond the
application server here,” said
Wynn White, senior director of
product marketing for BEA
platforms. The new product is
intended to meet the needs of
customers looking for “an
integrated middleware solution,”
he said.
About the Author
Jack Vaughan is former Editor-at-Large at Application Development Trends magazine.