BEA Gives EAI Suite A Shot In The Arm With New Adapters

The new adapters, which link legacy systems to J2EE-based middleware, mark the first time BEA is branding adapters under WebLogic, said Peter Linkin, senior director of product marketing at BEA. They include application adapters for enterprise apps such as Siebel and PeopleSoft; adapters for industry-

specific standards such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act; utility adapters for standard protocols such as HTTP and FTP; and technology adapters for legacy technologies such as EDI and mainframe connections.

The adapters are priced separately from WebLogic Integration server. They will cost $20,000 to $50,000 and will be available this week, Linkin said.

BEA had a deal to OEM integration adapters from third-party EAI vendor Peregrine Systems, but that ended when Peregrine ran into financial trouble in the wake of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into accounting practices earlier this summer, observers said.

Peregrine has since sold off its adapter business.

While BEA's leading middleware competitor, IBM, has a diverse integration portfolio, BEA has been limited in its range of integration software, said Shawn Willett, principal analyst at Current Analysis.

Indeed, Giga Information Group estimates BEA took only 3 percent of the EAI market share in 2001, a market IBM led with 23 percent.

IBM has the most comprehensive EAI portfolio, said Larry Calabro, Enterprise Connection Services practice leader at Deloitte Consulting. "They cover that space pretty well," he said.

BEA does have one advantage over IBM in that its technology is unified around J2EE and its WebLogic Application Server, while IBM's integration portfolio is built on a variety of technologies, Willett said.