BEA signs African Middleware Corporation as its First Authorised Service Partner in Africa

BEA Systems, Inc. a market leader in mission-critical middleware solutions for global enterprises, has announced the expansion of its middleware technology professional services offering by adding African Middleware Corporation (Pty) Ltd, based near Johannesburg, South Africa, to its Authorized Service Provider (ASP) programme.

African Middleware Corporation has the local delivery capabilities and includes experts in the areas of middleware-based architecture and design, development, deployment and legacy integration.

Most industry analysts agree that "middleware technology" is one of the two fastest-growing segments of the IT industry. Worldwide trends in business such as globalisation, consolidation and the shift from mass production to "mass customisation" have resulted in significant increases in transaction volumes and the demand for integration of diverse technologies and applications across the enterprise. These are just a few of the major contributing factors in middleware gaining popularity" notes Forrest Holleman, CEO of African Middleware Corporation.

"The worldwide demand for middleware consulting services has resulted in many seasoned professionals leaving the country to pursue lucrative contract work overseas. Exacerbating the situation is the somewhat esoteric nature of the technology and thus the lack of suitable training programmes for producing middleware specialists in South Africa" says Holleman.

"Through our incentive-driven, equal opportunity development programmes, we are successfully developing highly skilled middleware specialists to meet rapidly growing industry demand in the local market."

Ken Murdoch - Marketing Manager at BEA South Africa, concurs. " Global deregulation of many industries - particularly telecommunications and banking - has enabled smaller players to enter the market. Middleware allows mid-size, corporate and governmental organisations to offer online services and ensure scalability and robustness of mission-critical, enterprise applications. In South Africa, the demand for specialist middleware skills is equally apparent, hence our partnership with African Middleware Corporation".

With its ASP program, BEA is responding to the growing demand from its enterprise customers to supply them with design, development and implementation expertise to support its industry-leading middleware product set.

"BEA realizes that enterprise companies are wanting to augment their existing staff with end-to-end development and deployment expertise in order to implement and maintain component-based technology in mission-critical IT systems," said Anders Holmstrom - Managing Principal of Professional Services for BEA South Africa. "The addition of African Middleware Corporation to the programme makes it easier to provide our customers with knowledgeable resources, in addition to our professional services team, which is key to our customers` success".

"With the expansion of our capabilities into the African market, BEA is furthering its commitment to what we believe to be the largest worldwide services organization focused solely on mission-critical middleware in the industry," said Holmstrom. "By adding African Middleware Corporation into our Authorized Service Provider network, our customers have access to an expanded pool of talented experts to help them design and implement middleware- and component-based applications across the enterprise."

ASP Program BEA`s ASP program is a strategic sales and marketing effort created to deploy world-class consultants, trainers, and systems integrators in a variety of markets. Adding more companies that focus on middleware technology to the ASP program augments the existing BEA and third-party professional services capabilities available to customers implementing objects in their most important applications.

BEA`s ASP program offers training, product licenses, technical support, and marketing assistance to qualified consulting firms and systems integrators. The program allows participating firms to provide a rich set of services to BEA`s customers, with some of the world`s largest IS organizations that are designing, developing, and deploying mission-critical, component-based middleware solutions for their enterprise.

African Middleware Corporation (Pty) Limited African Middleware Corporation is a young and dynamic professional services company, solely focused on providing the highest calibre of middleware expertise available to the corporate market. Based in Johannesburg, the company offers comprehensive training, consulting and support services exclusively in the middleware arena. African Middleware Corporation bridges the gap between business and technology, creating effective technology-enabled processes that support business strategies.

As an economic empowerment initiative, the company`s equity, leadership and staff complement are truly representative of the South African population.