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SCMP Reporter

Business-automation platform supplier BEA Systems   plans this week to unveil a new class of products for the emerging service infrastructure software market.
The move could  be a clinching issue in BEA's plan to generating US$2 billion in annual revenue against larger, better-diversified rivals  such as IBM and Oracle.
According to BEA chief marketing officer  Marge Breya,   the company  envisions a new category of software that enables the 'free flow of processes, information and services across and between businesses'.
 Ms Breya said the annual global demand for so-called service infrastructure middleware would be worth about US$7 billion by 2008.
Silicon Valley-based BEA is expected to unveil in New York on  Thursday 'Project Free Flow', a middleware layer that is separate and independent from the firm's traditional WebLogic application server software.
Initially, this new line will  include BEA's 'QuickSilver' Enterprise Service Bus, LiquidData and Enterprise Security products, according to research firm Gartner. 
It predicted the middleware offering would be further extended through internal development, acquisitions and partnerships.
'BEA will  pursue the evolution of two strategic technology tracks: its well-established application platform (WebLogic) and its new service infrastructure (Free Flow),' Gartner said. 'Enterprise users involved in software development and enterprise integration may find the new BEA platform more complete and consistent with their project requirements than BEA's previous offerings or other competitors' offerings.'
Wilvin Chee, director of Asia-Pacific software research at International Data Corp, said 'the repackaging of BEA's product line' would allow the firm to be 'a stronger player' in the market.
Project Free Flow will server as the layer on top of enterprise applications and help organisations adopt a so-called service-oriented architecture, a standards-based framework for organisations to integrate data and Web services across the enterprise and externally, with customers, partners and suppliers.
'This will allow syndicated services - think Ebay, Amazon, outsourcers, messaging and other Web services - to run above the business applications,' Ms Breya said.
The new BEA middleware will be used primarily by IT and business architects, helping them overcome the industry's long-standing US$200 billion integration problem.
Ms Breya said every major transition in the information technology industry brought with it a wave of new software categories.
In the beginning, there was a collection of computer operating environments that generally made it difficult for their users to talk to each other. 
These included the old mainframe platforms from vendors such as IBM, Windows NT from Microsoft and the various flavours of Unix, including Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Solaris from Sun Microsystems and Linux. That resulted in the development of a middleware layer, called application infrastructure, which provided the server software foundation for building and deploying enterprise applications across various operating systems. 
The layer included platforms such as BEA's WebLogic, IBM's Websphere and .NET from Microsoft.
Next came the transition to client-server computing, which brought relational databases, rapid application development tools and several new categories of enterprise business applications. The internet era brought the Web browser.
Ms Breya said BEA's service infrastructure initiative would deliver business-automation capabilities more akin to an 'assembly line' for IT services to match business needs.



BEA seeks to beat rivals with new software layer