ISVS EXTEND CAPABILITIES OF WEBLOGIC SERVER 9.0.

On the heels of the recent BEA WebLogic Server 9.0 product release, BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:BEAS) has formed a new partnership with several Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that is designed to extend the capabilities of BEA's record- setting WebLogic Server 9.0. As part of the BEA Partner Program, the Global Management Alliance (GMA) aligns seven of the industry's leading software vendors to extend a key theme of the WebLogic Server 9.0 release: superior operations, administration and management support. Unlike most of its competitors, BEA offers its customers a choice among leading Application Management vendors that apply extensive knowledge and experience in helping customers reduce downtime and simplify the management of production systems.

The solutions that the alliance partners offer include: managing and monitoring BEA WebLogic Server 9.0 (WLS) in pre-production, deployment, and live production environments while helping to optimize uptime and application performance. Members of the alliance have demonstrated their commitment to BEA technology and customers through their validated ability to execute critical software lifecycle tasks, thereby providing customers with assurance of close vendor co-operation. BEA partner products represent complete lifecycle management for debugging, optimizing and configuration management.

"The GMA consists of joint engineering and marketing initiatives with our partners to deliver a tightly integrated SOA platform, which is designed to combine our Enterprise Infrastructure Platform with the leading Enterprise Management solutions," said Alan Button, senior vice president, Worldwide Partner Alliances, BEA Systems, Inc. "Alliance partners have made a long-term commitment to BEA Platform 9.0 and our SOA solutions strategy to deliver seamless, end-to-end IT solutions designed to enable smooth SOA implementation by leveraging current IT assets."

The fluidity of the customer experience achieved through this alliance is consistent with BEA 'Think liquid" messaging and emphasizes the company's focus on partnering.

Partners in the GMA must be validated by BEA and prove they can integrate with BEA WebLogic Server 9.0. To help ensure interoperability, all partners receive advance briefings on BEA product roadmaps and service packs which can help expedite validated solutions soon after or prior to general availability of BEA releases.

BEA WebLogic Server 9.0 is built on top of an enterprise-grade kernel that can dramatically reduce downtime. Built-in support for multiple programming models and a focus on operations, administration and management capabilities make BEA WebLogic Server 9.0 an ideal platform for application infrastructure. BEA WebLogic Server 9.0 is designed to be the mission critical development and deployment platform for building new services or extending existing applications for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Key benefits include:

-- An extensible framework that is designed to be unmatched by any other J2EE application server, for the integration of 3rd party management tools. The framework includes the WebLogic Diagnostics and Instrumentation Framework, JMX, and SNMP 

-- A standards-based scripting tool (WebLogic Scripting Tool) that is designed to enable system administrators to automate tasks

-- A diagnostics framework (WebLogic Diagnostic Framework) that is designed to provide diagnostics information for analyzing and debugging

-- New versions of applications designed to be deployed without affecting the user experience

-- Dynamic configuration changes that are designed to reduce service interruptions and server downtime

The combination of WebLogic Server 9.0 with the Global Management Alliance creates a unique offering.

"BMC Software is pleased to join BEA Systems' Global Management Alliance program. Our mutual customers can now experience the benefits of an even closer working relationship between BMC and BEA," said Israel Gat, vice president, Infrastructure Management, BMC Software. "Through this program, the two companies have agreed to provide each other with earlier access to product futures, roadmap information and new product releases as well as broader cross-training and education within our customer-facing organizations. Customers can directly benefit through enhanced product support and joint solution delivery, including the ability for BEA customers to easily access trial BMC Software products."

"HP is a long-standing BEA partner, and we are excited to be a part of the Global Management Alliance," said Yale Tankus, vice president, Partnerships and Alliances, Management Software Business, HP. "The GMA can help to accelerate the validation of our HP OpenView Smart Plug-ins and OpenView Transaction Analyzer products on WLS 9.0. The tight integration of these products with WLS 9.0 can help provide customers with access to world-leading enterprise management and application management solutions and help to simplify the complexities of designing, deploying and managing SOAs as a fundamental enabler of the Adaptive Enterprise."

"As part of BEA's Global Management Alliance, Mercury is excited to support WebLogic Server 9.0 with Mercury LoadRunner, Mercury Performance Center, Mercury Business Availability Center and Mercury Diagnostics," said Jonathan Rende, vice president of product marketing at Mercury. "The combination of Mercury's application testing and management offerings and the BEA WebLogic platform can provide IT organizations with a complete lifecycle solution to help rapidly deliver business applications designed for quality, performance, and manageability."

"The BEA WebLogic Platform serves as the foundation for many of the advanced applications and services leading enterprises around the world rely on for their business success," said Jay Hallberg, Motive's vice president of Product Management. "As a key partner in the BEA Global Management Alliance, Motive is able to provide our customers the most advanced management capabilities available for their critical BEA WebLogic Platform-dependent business applications."

"We are excited to join the Global Management Alliance program, as it is designed to help ensure optimal application performance and availability with Quest's validated application management solution for enterprise BEA customers," said Larry Humphries, vice president, application management solutions, Quest Software. "We are also proud to announce that Quest JProbe is the first Quest Software product to be validated for the BEA WebLogic Server 9.0 platform. Organizations deploying the newest WebLogic Server technology can now be empowered to optimize Java application performance, helping increase productivity of IT workers and end users."

"Symantec and BEA have enjoyed a long partnership and the GMA program can help BEA customers manage their availability, performance and provisioning of mission critical applications," said Niall Wall, vice president of business development and alliances, Symantec Corp. "Joining this initiative ensures that VERITAS i3 and OpForce applications, now from Symantec, are designed to be compatible with BEA's technology."

"Joining the GMA program can ensure Wily will continue to support BEA WebLogic customers with one of the most advanced application management solutions in the industry," said Kent Smith, vice president of business development, Wily Technology Inc. "Introscope provides BEA customers with unmatched in sight into the performance of their WebLogic applications by tracking real transactions in real-time. By proactively monitoring critical applications, joint WebLogic and Introscope customers can address application issues quickly and decisively before they impact business performance."

About BEAWorld

BEAWorld is an annual infrastructure software technology conference providing critical insights, hands on instruction, best-practice strategies, and opportunities for interaction with like-minded professionals, industry leaders, visionaries and expert practitioners.

In addition to helping make SOA a successful reality, BEAWorld delivers the latest information on infrastructure technologies including BEA Tuxedo BEA WebLogic, BEA AquaLogic and a Partner Showcase that highlights the latest and greatest from the extensive BEA partner community. To register or receive more information about BEAWorld, visit http://www.bea.com/beaworld.

The next event to be held: Beijing (December 7-8).

About BEA

BEA Systems, Inc. is a provider of enterprise infrastructure software, providing standards-based platforms to accelerate the secure flow of information and services. BEA product lines -- WebLogic, Tuxedo, JRockit, and the new AquaLogic family of Service Infrastructure -- help customers reduce IT complexity and successfully deploy Service-Oriented Architectures to improve business agility and efficiency.

Bea can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.bea.com/.

For more information, call 408-570-8704.