BEA's New Weapon: Arrow

The San Jose, Calif.-based developer's application platform solutions will be available through Arrow's MOCA, SBM and SupportNet divisions, which focus on Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM platforms, respectively. BEA plans to unveil the agreement at MOCA's annual Net@Work conference this week in Carlsbad, Calif.

"Arrow has just over 1,500 VARs to support all three of those product lines. This gives us access to the product lines in a highly supported manner," said Bobby Napiltonia, BEA's vice president and general manager of worldwide channels and alliances.

BEA also is distributed through Agilysys, which was authorized in March.

"Agilysys gave us a focus out of the box and allowed us to leverage HP VARs. Now we're on the next stage. We want to go a little broader, deeper, wider, and we like Arrow's services, demand-generation activities, credit capabilities, technical assistance that they offer their VARs," Napiltonia said.

BEA sought a Sun distributor because more than half of its install base uses some Sun hardware, said Rich Severa, president of MOCA.

"It's a big deal for BEA to embrace the channel," Severa said. "We view BEA as very accretive to our partners in strengthening their Sun platform offerings."

The new distribution deal comes just two months after the departure of several BEA executives, a time that also saw partners express concern about the company's direction.

Andy Kotarba, president of Dewpoint, a Lansing, Mich.-based solution provider, hopes BEA's move will lead to a more standardized channel program. "We've partnered with BEA in the past on a one-off basis," he said. "We're not real active right now, but this should be a good thing."