email article printer friendly

A Canvas for Telecom Innovation
BEA's WebLogic Communications Platform bridges the convergence of telecommunications and IT

February 17, 2005

BEA Systems Inc. announced in early February the official release of the BEA WebLogic Communication Platform, and in doing so said ciao to the project's development code name, "Da Vinci." BEA describes the WebLogic Communications Platform as a standards-based, integrated product and technology suite that is designed to enable telecommunications companies to create, deliver, and manage converged services in the form of voice, video, and mobile data through the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), e-mail, peer to peer, and other digital content over wireless and wireline networks.

Currently, the suite consists of the BEA WebLogic SIP Server and—coming soon—the BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper, and BEA plans to develop additional technologies as it builds out the platform. The WebLogic SIP Server is a standards-based, carrier-grade application server for the J2EE container that supports the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is used to establish a path of communication for the exchange of multimedia among different entities. For developers, the WebLogic SIP Server provides a foundation for designing, building, and deploying services specifically for a SIP environment.

The upcoming WebLogic Network Gatekeeper provides a component for telecommunications carriers to define, manage, and enforce access and quality of service parameters for networks' resources. Service providers will be able to have control and visibility over network infrastructures and provide a suitable environment for third-party developers to build out the network with additional services. In addition, the WebLogic Network Gatekeeper serves as a single point for defining and enforcing access policies for networking functions like SMS and MMS message delivery, content charging, and mobile terminal position information.

Through its global communications initiative, BEA is looking to continue its reputation as a provider of developer environments for innovating mission-critical software in an industry that is in transition and exhibiting a chaotic array of components and complexities for users, applications, devices, and networks. According to Alfred Chuang, chairman and CEO, BEA Systems, there is a convergence of IT and telecommunications in which the implementation of new 3G and VoIP networks is driving the telecom industry toward software-driven technologies, creating an opportunity for applying more widely available industry-standard IT to what has been historically a proprietary development environment. BEA's announced initiative draws upon its ten-year experience in the telecommunications industry to provide solutions that will help telecommunications companies and service providers bring standardization to networks composed of old and new technologies.

In an effort to help operators and service providers grow their subscriber bases and generate new sources of revenue, BEA is looking to step up its role as a platform provider for developing enterprise-scale applications to a provider of a carrier-grade platform that provides a standards-based J2EE application server with SIP support.

"BEA is known for enterprise, mission-critical applications, but this platform takes that to another level because these kind of service-delivery applications have to be always up and always on," said Mark Carges, CTO, BEA Systems. "Downtime or failure isn't an option. This platform brings together the J2EE container and the SIP container to leverage both the IP and SIP environments, providing an opportunity for developers to build applications for telecom services and IP."