BEA uses WAP Technology to enable wireless e-commerce

Off-the-shelf Integration of BEA WebLogic Server with Nokia WAP Server provides powerful solution for creating Web applications for mobile phones and PDAs

BEA Systems, Inc., the E-Commerce Transactions Company, has announced plans to work with Nokia to integrate their industry-leading technologies to create a powerful new standards-based solution for building wireless e-commerce applications for the Internet.

The integration of BEA WebLogic Server and the Nokia WAP Server, gives independent software vendors (ISVs) and corporate developers a powerful off-the-shelf solution for rapidly creating transaction-oriented Web applications for any WAP-compliant wireless device, including Nokia`s Internet-ready WAP phones.

Applications expected to leverage the integration of BEA WebLogic Server and the Nokia WAP Server include stock trading, banking and financial services, order entry and confirmation, and other text-based transactions that can be compactly displayed on a wireless handset such as a personal digital assistant (PDA) or mobile phone.

"The e-generation accessing the wireless Web won`t be content with just downloading basic information such as stock quotes and news dispatches. They will want to conduct e-commerce transactions on the go, anytime, anywhere," said Joe Menard, president of the BEA E-Commerce Server Division. "With BEA WebLogic Server as the engine of their WAP applications, they will have the same high-availability 24x7 access to personalized e-commerce services that they have on their PC browsers."

"By 2003, at the very latest, 50 per cent of the one billion mobile phones in global circulation will be WAP equipped - including our own Nokia 7110 GSM dual band phones for the European and Asian Pacific markets and the Nokia 7100 Series handsets for the U.S. market. Also, by that time even greater numbers of people will access the Internet via a mobile device than a personal computer," said Gerhard Romen, vice president of enterprise, Nokia Internet Communications. "The integration of the Nokia WAP Server with the award-winning, market-proven BEA WebLogic Server will play a significant role in meeting the exploding demand for wireless Web access, and in creating new business models and opportunities leveraging wireless connectivity to information systems."

BEA WebLogic Server provides an industrial-strength set of services for building highly available and responsive transaction-based e-commerce applications using the Java language and the industry standard Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform, including Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) components.

Menard noted that the BEA WebLogic Server implementation of Java significantly boosts programmer productivity for WAP applications. "WAP developers can use EJB components - including our prebuilt e-commerce components - to quickly create the business logic of an application just once, then create tailored presentations for regular Web browsers and WAP devices simply by writing separate Java Server Pages," he said.

The Nokia WAP Server 1.0 is the world`s most recognized WAP server, allowing businesses to fully leverage the power and functionality of existing and new service offerings in a mobile environment. It is an open server platform for mobile applications that lets companies maintain control over end-to-end security of access to data and customer traffic between the wireless network and the Internet or their own internal networks. The Nokia WAP Server complies with the WAP 1.1 specification and sets the industry milestone with its security option, the first commercially available implementation of the Wireless Transportation Layer Security (WTLS).

Together, the Nokia WAP Server and BEA WebLogic Server provide a complete end-to-end infrastructure for the development and deployment of transactional mobile applications. "This out-of-the-box integration makes it easy to quickly develop `on the go` e-commerce applications by eliminating the need to build and debug an equivalent integration from the ground up - a task that could take weeks," said Menard. "Instead, developers can now implement the integration in just a few hours in most cases, making it possible for their companies to get to market much faster with applications that deliver a competitive advantage."

The Wireless Application Protocol

The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an open, global specification that empowers mobile users with wireless devices to easily access and interact with information and services instantly. For more information about WAP see: www.wapforum.org