This is worth a little musing:
This is a BIG deal. IM(extremely non-technically educated)O, the major hurdle that IA64 must jump is software availability.
This is who BEA is, from Hoover's Private Subscription Service:
History
William Coleman, Edward Scott, and Alfred Chuang, all veteran Sun Microsystems executives, started BEA (Bill, Ed, and Alfred) in 1995 to address companies' growing needs to adapt their old mainframe systems to the world of network computing. They had a promising idea but no product; the software they wanted, Tuxedo, was owned by networking giant Novell.
In a focused acquisition plan using $50 million from Warburg Pincus, BEA bought Tuxedo's two leading distributors, Information Management Company and Independence Technologies, in 1995. Also that year BEA acquired separate technology that let mainframe users integrate their applications into networks.
In 1996 BEA bought exclusive worldwide rights to Novell's Tuxedo, thereby becoming a top provider of transaction processing software. It built an international presence by buying sales and support organizations in Australia, Finland, France, and South Africa. In 1997 the company went public. Branching into e-commerce in 1998, BEA bought WebLogic (renamed BEA WebXpress), a provider of Java-based Web application servers.
The following year the company formed a three-year, $100 million alliance to supply Hewlett-Packard with technology. The acquisition spree continued in 1999 as BEA enhanced its services to assist customers with e-commerce transitions. That year it purchased Component Systems (component architectures for e-commerce), Technology Resource Group (Java consulting), Avitek (Java e-commerce applications), and Theory Center (Java e-commerce development tools). The company also announced a reorganization into four divisions: e-commerce servers, integration, application components, and services.
In 2000 BEA acquired the Internet tools business from Web security giant Symantec; later that year BEA and Warburg Pincus created and launched an independent tools company (WebGain) to aid in e-commerce software development.
In 2001 the company agreed to buy the controversy-laden Crossgain Corp., a Web services software firm with a history of legal wranglings with Microsoft.
The Company ranks in the FORTUNE e-50 Stock Index and is Number 230 in the FT Global 500 |
