BEA Solutions Africa, distributor of BEA products in SA, said today that BEA Systems, a world leader in infrastructure software, has announced a new initiative designed to help telecommunications companies increase revenue by enabling them to capitalise more readily on emerging service delivery opportunities.
The multi-pronged initiative includes new products, along with expanded solutions and services that are being developed to address the critical business and technical challenges of the telecommunications industry. Supported by several partners and customers worldwide, this new initiative is a strategic element of BEA`s long-term strategy, and a significant step towards the convergence of IT and telecommunications.
The cornerstone of BEA`s new initiative is the development of a new set of infrastructure software products for the telecommunications industry. The BEA WebLogic Communications Platform is an integrated, standards-based suite of products and technologies that are being developed to provide telecommunications companies with the ability to increase revenues by creating, delivering and managing converged voice, data, video and mobile services, including voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), e-mail, calendaring, peer-to-peer services, and a wide variety of digital content and video services over wireless and wireline networks.
"The telecommunications industry is at an inflection point. The implementation of new 3G and VOIP telecommunications networks creates a remarkable opportunity to apply widely-available, general-purpose, industry-standard IT to what, historically, has been an expensive, proprietary landscape," said Alfred Chuang, chairman and chief executive officer, BEA Systems. "The primary change in telco is that the industry has become more software-driven - moving towards BEA`s strengths. This network/IT convergence promises all the economies and benefits of a common platform."
"Here in SA we are experiencing exciting times in the telecommunications sector with the launch of 3G technology from some of our mobile carriers, and the relaxation of legislation pertaining to VOIP," said Ezra Kahimbaara, Systems Specialist with BEA Solutions Africa. "BEA Systems has always had a strong presence locally in the telecoms industry, and carriers use BEA Tuxedo and WebLogic Server products in critical systems such as billing and service delivery. With the introduction of the BEA WebLogic Communications Platform, BEA Systems is demonstrating its continuing commitment to providing innovative infrastructure products for our customers in the telecoms industry."
Businesses and consumers are driving industry transformation by demanding new converged voice, data and video services. The ability to meet these demands often can be limited by existing IT and network infrastructures that are closed, proprietary and too rigid to support these next-generation services. As a result, telecommunications companies are transitioning from traditional, circuit-switched public switched telephone networks (PSTN) to VOIP networks. VOIP technologies enable voice communication over "vanilla" IP networks, such as the public Internet. Additionally, a steady decline in voice revenues has resulted in heightened competitive pressures as carriers vie to grow data/service revenues and reduce churn through the delivery of these more sophisticated data services. Increased regulation, security and privacy issues, as well as newly emerging standards can further compound the pressure.
BEA is well-positioned to serve those telecommunications companies that are turning to standards-based computing technologies and platforms to help address these challenges. BEA has been a leader in telecommunications software since the company`s founding 10 years ago. BEA`s first telecom product, BEA Tuxedo, followed by its second, BEA WebLogic Server, are the foundation of many operators` operational and billing systems. Additionally, many leading carriers have deployed the WebLogic Service Delivery Solution as their service delivery platform (SDP). With the introduction of this new telecommunications initiative, the company is expanding its offerings to better help telecommunications customers transform their business to meet their customers` demands.
The BEA WebLogic Communications Platform suite of products includes:
* BEA WebLogic SIP Server, the industry`s first standards-based, carrier-grade, J2EE application server with integrated Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) support. SIP is a standard protocol for establishing a communication path between two or more entities for exchanging information in a variety of media (voice, images, video, etc), and the BEA WebLogic SIP Server is a product designed for building and deploying services in a SIP environment.
* BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper, a product that is designed to allow carriers to define, manage and enforce access and quality of service (QoS) parameters for network resources. BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper can act as a single point to define and enforce policies for accessing key network capabilities, such as content charging, mobile terminal position information, SMS and MMS message delivery.
BEA WebLogic SIP Server became generally available on 28 January 2005, and the second product - BEA WebLogic Network Gatekeeper - is planned for release in the second quarter of 2005. Additional products and technologies are in development.
BEA also plans to continue developing and expanding its overall telecoms solution, BEA WebLogic Service Delivery. One of five BEA Enterprise Solutions, BEA WebLogic Service Delivery is a specialised solution framework for the telecoms industry designed to bring to market a single, standardised and scalable framework to help rapidly develop, integrate and deploy new digital and data services that can be tied to operations support systems. This includes helping launch new revenue-generating services as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, utilising existing investments in network infrastructure and operational support systems, and reducing maintenance by creating a layer of abstraction above the physical network and by using the legacy network in new and innovative ways. In addition to service delivery, BEA can help telecommunications companies in self-service provisioning, network resource management and billing.
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