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BEA Systems Thinks Telecom Needs More Java
[February 06, 2006]

BEA Systems Thinks Telecom Needs More Java


By ROBERT LIU
TMCnet Wireless and Technology Columnist
 
A year after first charging into the telecom space, middleware vendor BEA Systems has gained control of two key Java specifications outlining the application programming interfaces (API) used in call control protocols.


 
Ahead of next week’s massive 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, BEA Systems announced that it has taken over as Spec Lead for Java Specification Request (JSR) 289, entitled Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Servlet v1.1, and SIP 32, entitled Java API for Integrated Networks (JAIN) SIP API Specification. JSR 289 is an enhancement to JSR 116, first developed by SIP solutions vendor Dynamicsoft to define a high-level extension API for SIP servers.

 
But after pushing through the final release of JSR 116, Dynamicsoft was acquired by Cisco Systems for its expertise in SIP-based networking. Once the acquisition was completed, Dynamicsoft became part of Cisco’s Service Exchange framework and abandoned development of its own applications infrastructure platform, opening the door for someone to step in as Spec Lead.
 
“We’ve inherited it,” said Ken Lee, director of product marketing for BEA’s WebLogic Communications Platform, which was first introduced in February 2005. “BEA has always brought Java into the enterprise and we are now extending that into the telecom space.”
 
In addition to the Java community, BEA Systems also has joined the board of the Parlay Group and is helping to define a telecom networking Web services interface called Parley X. The Parlay Group is a telecom consortium focused on developing industry standard APIs to facilitate call control and messaging capabilities.
 
By increasing its participation, BEA Systems wants more than simply to leave its indelible mark on the software engineering world. Its goal with its ongoing four-pronged marketing blitz is clearly to increase its sphere of influence and mindshare with independent software vendors (ISV) and its partners ecosystem, which now includes companies like NetCentrex.
 
In addition to its activities with standards bodies, BEA will be unveiling a new developer resource portal at the 3GSM show called dev2dev, Lee told TMCnet during a telephone briefing. The company will also announce it has completed interoperability testing with Intel. Under a previous strategic partnership, the two companies agreed to port the WebLogic Communications Platform onto Intel’s NetStructure Host Media Processing to run on the AdvancedTCA (ATCA) form factor.

Still, a base of developers, strategic partners and leadership in establishing industry standards do little to directly affect the bottom line. Therefore, the last prong for BEA’s 3GSM marketing campaign is a series of customer testimonials that include O2, the UK-based European wireless operator, as a customer of WebLogic Network Gatekeeper, a Web services-based, carrier-grade network access management product released last April.
 
“2005 was a pretty big year for us,” said Chris King, senior director of Worldwide Telco Markets at BEA Systems.
 
Using WebLogic Network Gatekeeper, O2 is able to control access to their content in a dynamic way and enforce service level agreements (SLA) on various levels, King said. In addition to enabling better network access controls, the operator implemented an associated partner relationship management (PRM) portal so partners can self-administer the SLAs, thereby producing cost-saving for the operator.
 
“We want O2 to be the operator of choice for our service delivery partners, and we want to continue to be considered by our customers as the most innovative and attractive mobile network. Through their work with the Service Delivery Platform, BEA played a crucial role in helping us achieve that,” said John Waterfield, Head of Product Portfolio Delivery, O2, in a prepared statement.
 
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Robert Liu is Executive Editor at TMCnet. Previously, he was Executive Editor at Jupitermedia and has also written for CNN, A&E, Dow Jones and Bloomberg. For more articles, please visit Robert Liu's columnist page.

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