News

BEA brings Tuxedo to Web services dance

• By John K. Waters
• February 18, 2003

BEA Systems (http://www.bea.com) last week added technology to its venerable Tuxedo TP monitor that officials say can ease the pain of Web services-enabling, Tuxedo-based legacy applications. To that end, officials said that the new Tuxedo 8.1 incorporates a direct link to Web services through closer integration with the company's WebLogic application server and the WebLogic Workshop development environment.

Providing Tuxedo -- which was acquired by the San Jose, Calif.-based infrastructure software maker shortly after its inception -- with a Web-services nip and tuck demonstrates an ongoing commitment to one of the company's true workhorses, maintained company officials.

Olivier Helleboid, president of the BEA product organization, noted that the latest release of Tuxedo comes some 20 years after its original unveiling by AT&T. He said the latest version can extend Tuxedo into more modern technologies by delivering ''a multilanguage platform that is tightly integrated with the rest of their environment.''

Tuxedo was first developed in AT&T's Bell Labs, originally to handle phone-switching networks. Novell purchased the software, and then sold the technology to BEA in 1996. Tuxedo continues to serve as, in BEA's words, ''the backbone for enabling transactions that stretch from front-end e-commerce applications to back-office processes.'' Tuxedo processes phone calls, credit card transactions, package shipping, ticket purchases, fund transfers between banks as well as a host of other transaction-based activities. E-Trade and FedEx are among its many users.

The multi-environment Tuxedo 8.1 complements Java-based WebLogic by supporting a range of programming languages, including C, C++ and Cobol, on a range of proprietary hardware. According to BEA's Helleboid, Tuxedo's closer integration with WebLogic Server will lead to improved Tuxedo operations, including single sign-on and centralized security administration. Tuxedo had been able to interact with WebLogic through specific connectors, but interactions via Web services will now be far quicker and need much less integration, he added.

Separately, BEA representatives said that WebLogic Server 7.0 has been ported to Hewlett-Packard's Itanium 2-based servers running the 1.6 version of the HP-UX 11i operating system as part of a joint development effort by the two firms.

NTT Comware Corp., one of Japan's largest system integrators, is already offering BEA WebLogic on HP Itanium-based servers (HP Server rx2600), said officials at that company.