BEA, Intel in Pact to Offer WebLogic on New Chips

Jul 22 2001

Intel Corp. and BEA Systems Inc. on Sunday said they have formed a alliance to enable BEA's WebLogic software to operate at pea efficiency on a new microprocessor the world' No. 1 chip make is banking will extend its PC dominance into the high-en server market.

BEA's WebLogic, known as application server software provides a foundation on which programmers can buil applications, such as those used for electronic commerce WebLogic, operates on top of major operating systems, includin Unix, Linux, Microsoft Corp.'s Windows and Su Microsystems Inc.'s Solaris.

Historically, programmers have used Intel-based persona computers and low-end servers to build programs that wer subsequently deployed on high-end servers with the power t process huge numbers of transactions in seconds and built b Sun and International Business Machines Corp., amon others.

"The issue is almost 100 percent of development o applications running on WebLogic was done on Intel and les that 5 percent of the actual deployment," Bill Coleman, chie executive of San Jose, California-based BEA, told Reuters.

Intel has long dominated the world of microprocessors - the engine of personal computers -- with its chips in more tha a half a billion PCs world-wide. But Intel wanted to move int the market for servers, the computers that are at the heart o the systems companies use to conduct business. First it rolle out its Xeon processors and is about to go into the very hig end of server processors with its Itanium processors.

Ten years and an estimated $2 billion later, Santa Clara California-based Intel is releasing it's new Itanium processor the company's first chip to use its new IA-64 architecture which will process data in chunks of 64 bits, rather than th 32 bits that chips like Intel's Pentium III and Xeon handle.

With the Itanium, Intel hopes to extend its dominance fro the PC to the high-end server market, taking on Sun and othe server makers that use their own proprietary chi architecture.

Intel is betting the new chip will allow companies t deploy their applications on Intel-based servers and run the more cheaply because of the company's ability to mass marke Itanium chips and sell them at lower prices.

"The fact that we can pump out millions and millions o these processors a day, and the fact that these processors ar now in the performance range of what you've seen in th traditional proprietary servers, you now get comparabl performance for a third or less the price," said Deborah Conrad vice president and general manager of Intel solutions marke development.

Between the pricing and the performance, BEA and Intel hop to expand the market outside of the usual top 1,000 riches companies in the world that have been able to afford suc computing power.

For BEA the deal means its WebLogic products will operat very competitively on the Intel architecture as the chip gian moves into the mainstream business market and allow BEA t retain its lead in the application server market.

"The big deal about this is we both get to vastly expan our total available market," Coleman said.

Under the alliance, the two companies will establish technology lab used to validate and document the WebLogic' performance and its ability to work efficiently as demand o the server grows. Intel and BEA also will jointly train an provide support materials to their direct sales organization and through companies that sell each of their products. The also will work to develop service offerings.

The deal also includes working to optimize WebLogi performance on Intel's lower end server chip family IA-32.

So far, Compaq Computer Corp., Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard Co., NCR Corp. France's Groupe Bull and Unisys Corp. hav signed on to support the WebLogic optimized for the Inte chips, the companies said.