Conference pamsrc::objectbroker_development

2439.0. "BEA OBB Press Release" by A1VAX::GILFIX () Tue Feb 18 1997 10:02

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                          DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION

        EDITORIAL CONTACT:
  
        Dick Calandrella
        Digital Equipment Corporation
        (508) 467-2261
        [email protected]

        Birdie Fenzel
        BEA Systems, Inc.
        (408) 542-4081
        [email protected]



             DIGITAL AND BEA FORM WORLDWIDE TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIP

                TO DELIVER UNIVERSAL MIDDLEWARE INFRASTRUCTURE

           Companies Collaborate to Develop and Distribute Products


     MAYNARD, Mass. and SUNNYVALE, Calif., February 18, 1997 -- 

	Digital Equipment Corporation and BEA Systems, Inc. today extend their
long-standing relationship by announcing a major strategic technology and 
distribution partnership to simplify the development and deployment of 
distributed, mission-critical applications.

	This worldwide collaboration will provide the first industry-standard,  
cross-platform universal middleware infrastructure, and brings together the 
leading products in distributed transaction middleware, object technology, 
and message-oriented middleware. 



     	Under terms of the agreement,  DIGITAL and BEA will work together to 
deliver a broad, integrated middleware portfolio, created from their 
respective industry-leading software components.  BEA will acquire DIGITAL's  
ObjectBroker,  DECmessageQ, and related software technology,  making BEA the 
only  complete,  cross-platform provider of open middleware.  This 
transaction is pending U.S. Government approval.

      	BEA also will provide its market-leading BEA TUXEDO product on 
DIGITAL's OpenVMS platform in addition to the DIGITAL UNIX, and Windows NT 
platforms already supported by BEA.  All of DIGITAL's platforms will be 
first-tier ports for BEA's products. 

     	To further underscore the importance of this partnership, DIGITAL will 
assume an equity position in BEA, and will make a direct engineering 
development investment in ObjectBroker and DECmessageQ on DIGITAL Alpha 
platforms.  

     	DIGITAL also will continue to develop underlying distributed systems 
software, provide interoperability between the joint DIGITAL/BEA work and  

corresponding Microsoft Corporation technologies, and optimize these products 
on DIGITAL's  UNIX, OpenVMS, and Windows NT platforms.  In addition, both 
companies will expand marketing,  sales, and distribution of BEA TUXEDO, 
ObjectBroker, and DECmessageQ.  

     	This arrangement expands the multi-platform offering for these 
products, and ensures their continued individual availability and evolution 
for existing and future customers.

     	The fundamental technologies required for creating and integrating 
distributed business applications across the enterprise or over the Internet 
include transaction processing, object-based, and message-oriented solutions.  
Today, organizations developing and deploying mission-critical systems find 
that no single middleware technology addresses their complete enterprise 
application needs.  

	This extended partnership directly addresses these requirements for 
a simplified enterprise application environment by bringing BEA TUXEDO, 
ObjectBroker, and DECmessageQ together so that DIGITAL and BEA are now 
delivering the full range of required middleware functionality for solving 
complex business application needs.

      	"The partnership between DIGITAL and BEA indicates the strong, 
continuing commitment these two companies have to these technologies," said 
Alex Seale, project manager of Credit Risk Management System at Banque Paribas 
in London. "Their integrated middleware vision lays out a powerful direction 
for ObjectBroker, DECmessageQ, and BEATUXEDO -- one that we can take as a 
serious commitment to supporting my company's success."


 
     	"The partnership between BEA and DIGITAL comes at a critical time in 
the evolving marriage between legacy systems, the Internet, and the explosion 
of distributed object computing," said Christopher Stone, CEO, Object 
Management Group. "A robust object-based transaction model (BEA TUXEDO), 
coupled with DIGITAL's ObjectBroker (CORBA/IIOP) and DECmessageQ, sends a 
clear message to the financial services and transaction-oriented enterprises 
that they mean serious business. This was a smart, savvy move, and a 
partnership to bet the bank on."

      	"The technology collaboration between BEA and Digital will yield a 
portfolio of mission-critical middleware that takes full advantage of Network 
Computing Architecture (NCA)," said Mark Jarvis, vice president, Server 
Marketing, Oracle Corporation.  "DIGITAL and BEA are both long-time partners 
of Oracle's, and we look forward to working with both companies as they 
implement this strategy."

     	Don Harbert, vice president, UNIX Business Segment, Digital Equipment 
Corporation, said, "This extended partnership with BEA significantly 
strengthens our mutual commitment to supply our customers with the best 
multi-platform middleware products in the market today.  BEA now becomes 
our premier partner in developing multi-platform enterprise middleware 
for UNIX, OpenVMS, and other heterogeneous environments."

     	Bill Coleman, chairman and CEO of BEA Systems, Inc., said, "This 
announcement marks the further execution of our original mission - to provide 
an enterprise middleware infrastructure for distributed mission-critical 
applications. By combining the scalability and application management 
functionality of BEA TUXEDO with robust message queuing middleware and an
enterprise-class ORB (Object Request Broker),  we can provide our customers 
with a single, integrated product suite that addresses all of their middleware 
requirements.  We are pleased to be working closely with DIGITAL to make this 
solution available to the market."

     	BEA Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of cross-platform middleware 
solutions for enterprise applications.  BEA's products enable mission-critical, 
distributed applications that work seamlessly in client/server, Internet, and 
legacy environments.  BEA provides a transactional and messaging software 
platform based on BEA TUXEDO for developing and deploying these enterprise 
applications.  In addition to its product line, BEA provides complete solutions 
through its extensive partner network and broad range of professional 
services.  BEA is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices around 
the globe.  Additional information on BEA is available on the Internet at 
http://www.beasys.com.

     	Digital Equipment Corporation is a world leader in open client/server 
solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide information systems.  
DIGITAL's scalable Alpha and Intel platforms, storage, networking, software 
and services, together with industry-focused solutions from business partners, 
help organizations compete and win in todays global marketplace. Additional 
information on DIGITAL is available on the Internet at http://www.digital.com.

                                   -END-


CORP #97/553


Note To Editors --- DIGITAL, the DIGITAL logo, ObjectBroker, and DECmessageQ 
                    are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation.

                    BEA and Enterprise Middleware Solutions are trademarks of 
                    BEA Systems, Inc.

                    TUXEDO is a registered trademark in the U.S. and other 
                    countries.

                    Windows and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft 
                    Corporation.

                    All other company and product names may be trademarks 
                    of the company with which they are associated.




                              (ADDENDUM PAGE)


INFORMATION ABOUT KEY PRODUCTS INVOLVED

BEA TUXEDO 
     BEA TUXEDO provides a robust middleware engine for developing and 
deploying business-critical client/server applications.  BEA TUXEDO handles 
not only distributed transaction processing, but also the application services 
necessary to build and run enterprise-wide applications.  It enables developers 
to create applications that span multiple hardware platforms, databases, and 
operating systems with full freedom to mix and match those platforms to best 
fit the application environment.  BEA TUXEDO is the market-share leader for 
distributed transaction middleware.

OBJECTBROKER
     DIGITAL's ObjectBroker is a proven, industry-leading, CORBA-conforming 
Object Request Broker (ORB), deployed widely today for business-critical 
distributed object-based applications.  With this partnership, BEA enters the 
growing distributed object systems market.  During 1997, BEA will provide 
integration between the mission-critical, high-performance deployment
characteristics of BEA TUXEDO and ObjectBroker's CORBA Distributed Object 
Development capabilities, creating the industry's first transaction-enabled 
object middleware.  The combination of BEA TUXEDO and ObjectBroker capabilities 
will allow customers to comfortably deploy mission-critical object-based 
applications.  BEA TUXEDO will integrate ObjectBroker to allow
objects and BEA TUXEDO services to interoperate, providing an evolutionary 
migration path to object technology.


DECMESSAGEQ
     DECmessageQ is the industrys highest performance, industrial-strength 
message-oriented middleware (MOM) solution.  Known for its leading position 
in the market, DECmessageQ provides a fast and reliable queuing system that 
connects disparate applications without invasion from or reliance upon other 
diverse applications.  This allows customers to incorporate existing 
applications into their enterprise middleware infrastructure.  DECmessageQ also 
provides a robust mechanism for seamlessly integrating legacy applications and 
data.  DECmessageQ, with its asynchronous connectivity capability, complements 
the BEA TUXEDO and ObjectBroker products as both a stand-alone product and an 
integrated addition to the product family. It is optimized for integrating 
distributed applications across a range of hardware platforms and operating 
systems, including UNIX, Windows NT, and OpenVMS.  During 1997, BEA will extend 
the integration between DECmessageQ to both BEA TUXEDO and ObjectBroker to 
ensure seamless access to both new and existing applications and systems.

In the near term, at least, is this going to look like a classic outsourcing
deal to the rest of us?

I.e. can we still harangue you via notes or are you moving out to new
premises and falling off the Enet?

Is it the Engineering group that's going or are you including the
supports groups as well (a la Oracle)?


Thanks
Mark

Yes this is an outsourcing deal. The engineering group will be
working for BEA Systems in a very short while.

You (and others inside Digital) will be able to use the notes
files, PTR, and email to communicate with the engineers until
we leave the Digital facility. After that departure, we're not
sure (yet) how communication will be handled. That is something
we will address in the coming weeks.

Just the engineering groups are involved. And yes, we'll have
to address support as part of this move.



  Dick Gumbel
  ObjectBroker development

    re: Note 2439.2 by REQUE::whocrz.zko.dec.com::Gumbel "Dick Gumbel"
    
    How does this deal affect internal-to-DIGITAL use of ObjectBroker (i.e.
    licensing)?
    
    Ken....

    This is great news for our Customers, Digital, & BEA.  ObjectBroker
    will now get the attention & marketing it requires.  Good luck to all
    the engineers & staff moving to BEA.
    
    jay ()

When we say the engineering group is going, the ObjectBroker 
engineering group provides both development, and support of IPMT 
cases, bug fixes etc. So all the developers in the group are going, 
as are the writers for the named products.

The CSC in Atlanta, the first line of support, is not going. At some 
point we will move out the the Digital building, and at some time we 
will be cut off from the Digital network. These may occur at the same 
time, or not. 

There are many details to be worked out. I do not know what the status 
of continued Digital internal use of the sold products is. We have not 
read the formal contract. Dan Gilfix, the product manager is staying 
at Digital, so you may want to ask him such questions about continued 
product use. A1VAX::GILFIX

    In a way to bad that you leave Digital, but certainly a challenge and a
    chance for you and ObjectBroker. I whish everyone in the ObjectBroker
    Engineering Group good lucke and satisfaction in theire future
    engagement with ObjectBroker. Everyone in this group since AIL & ACAS
    Times did a very greate Job. Thanks for that to all of you very much. 
    
    I will leave Digital too by end of April; but will 100% stay with CORBA
    and hopefully as much as I can, propose, develope and use ObjectBroker
    and FBE based Application Integrated Solutions. 
    
    In this sense I say thank to all of you who where so helpfule since AIL
    & ACAS Times. I will certainly miss the direct e-net wire. I hope that
    the BEA-ObjectBroker engineering group will be enabled to get access to
    WWW & Internet and hopefully have some real good live wire, like VMS
    Notes, established soon, to further help everyone with this sometimes
    not so easy SW. 
    
    My whish is it, to count on your strong support, soon through a WWW
    wire when ever I need it, and hopefully seeing a Java Applet invoking
    via IIOP or direct Java Language Binding or a synthesised DTC a CORBA
    ObjectBroker Interface which then talks to your Service Implementation.
    
    Good Luke, Thanks and Kind Regards to the ObjectBroker Engineerin Crew!
    
    Sepp Stadelmann
    ObjectBroker/FBE Supporter, Evangelist and Missionary 
    delivering OBB & OT Technical Consulting to all who need it.
    
    
    

Yeah. My best wishes too. Good luck in the new departure.
I hope ObjectBroker makes it. 

John D.