HP, BEA set to take on common foe IBM

By Ilaina Jonas

NEW YORK: Hewlett-Packard, announced on Friday that it would bundle BEA Systems flagship software product, WebLogic on its best-known line of high-end computers, stepping up their alliance to battle against a common foe, IBM.

Hewlett-Packard, which is tied with International Business Machines Corp as the No. 1 maker of hardware, will ship a copy of the most up-to-date version of WebLogic with its UX11i server.

"With this bundle, what we provide is a unique competitive offering that HP and BEA together can bring to the market relative to our natural common enemies here," said Gamiel Gran, BEA's vice president of strategic alliances. "Clearly, we're eager to present our message relative to IBM and IBM WebSphere, and similarly HP has an interest to erode IBM market share, as well."

The announcement is the most recent between the two companies that have periodically dangled hints of their relationship ever since Peter Blackmore, HP's head of high-end computers, said that the company would "retire" its middleware business.

Subsequent to the merger of HP and Compaq, HP shuttered its money-losing Bluestone middleware division, which had competed poorly against BEA and IBM's WebSphere software application server.

BEA has retained a slim lead over IBM in the market of application servers - software that programmers use as a base for their application. Application servers perform important but routine tasks, such as load balancing, for networks of servers that run businesses.

However, the alliance is not exclusive and industry sources said that HP is in talks with IBM to offer IBM's WebSphere too.

In the new agreement BEA has named HP's OpenView, which monitors networks, computers and software application performance to pinpoint sources of bottlenecks. WebLogic has been adjusted for optimum performance on HP's servers.

"BEA is just trying to find a way to regain momentum that they clearly lost to IBM," Steve Eisenstadt, IBM spokesman said. About 60 percent of the programs running on BEA WebLogic operate on Sun Microsystems. "This is a clear indicator that we are attempting to diversify and grow into markets that we have not been as strong in before," Gran said.

In June, the companies announced that HP would put its giant sales and services force behind BEA's software products. That alliance created teams of consultants from HP's services arm, one of the world's largest, specially trained in BEA's products.

"Our intention is to bundle BEA's WebLogic server with all of our HP platforms in the future," Don Jenkins, Hewlett-Packard vice president of marketing for operating environment software said. Those platforms include Windows 2000 and Linux. The new agreement will permit customers to use WebLogic during a free, six-month trial period, the two companies announced.

(C) Reuters Ltd.