BEA Joins Forces With Intel

BEA and Intel officials formally unveiled the expanded partnership at BEA's eWorld 2002 Conference, hoping to appeal to Java developers looked for higher-performance J2EE software solutions. A major component of the new alliance includes a Java Product Bundle, which better enables BEA software running on Intel architecture and operating systems such as Linux and Windows. In addition, Intel will support JRockit, a Java Virtual Machine acquired by BEA from Appeal Virtual Machines.

Officials at both companies say BEA's WebLogic Platform running on Intel with the JRockit JVM achieved a world record ECperf benchmark for J2EE servers and a 47 percent higher performance than the closest competitor and at a 25 percent lower cost.

John Davies, vice president of channels and marketing of Intel's Solutions Group, said his company has been working diligently with BEA since last summer, when the two first formed a partnership, to support WebLogic.

"I think we have an enormous opportunity with BEA running on Intel architecture," Davies said during his keynote at eWorld this morning. "This benchmark performance is second to none."

BEA president and CEO Alfred Chuang said the expanded alliance with Intel is a major step for his company.

"Our job is to make our software as ubiquitous and run as fast as possible on every type of platform," Chuang said. "Because of what happened between Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, there really isn't a ubiquitous Java platform running on Intel today. We have to fill that void."

Both sides say the technology alliance will have a substantial impact on their customers and partner business. Davies said the addition of the JRockit JVM technology will help extend BEA's presence from Unix to other operating systems on Intel such as Linux and Windows. In addition, Chuang said the alliance would help technology partners and solution providers since the majority of BEA developers use Intel technology.