'Today's marketplace requires that companies improve customer retention and profitability, which means focusing on strategies to increase service effectiveness and lower service costs in their contact centers,' said Marty Robins Vice President, Partner Marketing, BEA Systems. 'Jacada offers innovative contact center solutions that are designed to help leverage the performance and scalability of the BEA WebLogic Platform. Working together, we have the opportunity to deliver solutions that can help provide a significant impact on call center productivity and customer satisfaction'.

JadeLiquid Software announced the release of WebRenderer Server Edition, the leading Java browser component. WebRenderer Server Edition has successfully completed its beta phase. Development of the WebRenderer Server Edition was driven by overwhelming demand for a standards compliant Java browser component supporting headless server environments.

The Apache Jakarta POI project provides components for the access and generation of Excel documents. The POI HSSF API is used to generate Excel Workbooks and to add Excel spreadsheets to a workbook. An Excel spreadsheet consists of rows and cells. The layout and fonts of a spreadsheet are also set with the POI HSSF API.

In this column over the years, I have spent a considerable amount of time talking about contention and locking in the database tier. At the end of the day, the endless conversations about scaling the application tier boil down to less than a bag of beans if a scaled application can't go any faster because the database has hit a limit.

It is rumored on a couple of news sites that Oracle is buying JBoss. If this is true, it is an exciting opportunity for BEA. Oracle would, IMHO, kill JBoss, whether through malice or benign neglect. Not many people realize that with the acquisition of M7, BEA now has a development tool product which can deploy applications to many other open source application servers like JBoss and true open source, open community containers like Apache Tomcat. This presents those developers that have to work in this blended environment that mixes open source and commercial technologies with a migration path from JBoss to any of the other platforms BEA Workshop supports, like WebLogic Server, WebSphere, Tomcat, or Resin.

An anecdote that an engineer shared with me recently reminded me of a long-standing concept in manufacturing, design for production (DFP). The concept has to do with evaluating how a given operation - production line, supply chain, or an entire factory - is performing.

Let me start by defining the current problem-detection process in most enterprises. An issue arises in the production environment for a J2EE application running on WebLogic, information is captured via logs, and WebLogic server is rebooted. From this point, application developers and administrators are tasked with analysis of the information and finding the root cause.

'JBoss closed out 2005 in a stronger position than ever. We exceeded our sales goals, expanded our operations and delivered many industry firsts in the technology arena,' said Marc Fleury, chairman and CEO, JBoss, Inc. 'These new appointments in the JBoss management team reflect our tremendous growth and momentum and will provide a solid foundation for scaling the entire JBoss organization to continue delivering the highest level of support services and the most innovative technologies to our customers. Scott, Sacha, Ben and Rob have been key players in JBoss' phenomenal growth and we look forward to having Andy join our team.'

BEA Systems, Inc. , a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced that BEA WebLogic SIP Server(TM) has received a 'Product of the Year' award from INTERNET TELEPHONY(R) magazine, a leading publication in the rapidly growing VoIP/IP telephony industry.

Yakov Fain, in Lesson 9 of his immensely popular online 'Java Basics' series for JDJ Industry Newsletter, talks about using threads for creating more advanced programs than those already discussed in Lesson 8. He analyzes the role they play in major Internet portals like Yahoo, CNN, or your bank's Web site. These portals usually display different types of information like News, Weather, Stock Market quotes, etc. Each of these info pieces appears on the screen instantaneously even though it's coming to the portal from different servers.

A J2EE application deployed in the WebLogic server may be debugged in the Eclipse IDE with the remote debugger provided by Eclipse. Without a debugger the error message has to be obtained from the application server error log to debug the application.

BEA Systems today announced the general availability of AquaLogic High-Performance (HiPer) Workspace for Retail, a closed-loop notification and task management product for improving store operations, built with technology from the AquaLogic User Interaction product family. AquaLogic HiPer Workspace for Retail allows retail store managers to consistently execute company objectives at the highest quality, communicate their store performance and share best practices. Applebee's International, known as the largest casual dining concept in the world, and Groupe Casino, a large French convenience and hypermarket chain, with over 9,000 stores and owner of Smart & Final in the United States, are two beta customers of the retail product.

Covalent Technologies(TM), the mosttrusted source for complete enterprise open source solutions, todayannounced it finished 2005 on a strong note, citing a record number of newand repeat customers, strategic reseller and channel relationships, as wellas increased revenues and bookings for the second half of the year.

Once upon a time people spoke the same language - but that was long ago. Nowadays people speak hundreds of languages with unique characters, inflection indicators, and other punctuation marks that make each language different from all others.

BEA Systems, Inc. a world leader in enterprise infrastructure, today announced that Forrester Research has identified BEA and its AquaLogic Service Bus as a leader in both segments of the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) market. In its 'Forrester Wave(TM): Enterprise Service Bus, Q4 2005' report, Forrester rated BEA Systems as a leader in the 'ESB Suites' segment and in the 'Comprehensive ESB Suites' category. BEA is the only company to be named a leader in both segments.

Oracle Corporation today announced that it intends to offer, subject to market and other conditions, three series of investment grade notes for an aggregate principal amount of $5 billion. One series will mature in 2009, one series will mature in 2011 and one series will mature in 2016. The 2009 notes will bear interest at a floating rate and the 2011 notes and 2016 notes will bear interest at a fixed rate.

In a statement today, Oracle spokesperson, Bob Wynne said, 'Given Siebel's announcement today, we look forward to a favorable Siebel stockholder meeting on January 31st and completion of the merger on the same day or very soon after.'

'We've used the Internet to find jobs since 1994, but the rules for conducting a safe and successful job search have changed,' said Susan Joyce, Webmaster of Job-Hunt.org. 'Now, identity theft over the Internet is a significant problem, and there is tough competition for every job posted. So savvy use of the Internet is a survival requirement as well as a job search advantage.' Here are Job-Hunt.org's seven rules:

The HP/BEA banking solution is designed to simplify application infrastructure throughout the enterprise, while extending the lifetime of IT investments. One customer, Norway's Sparebank, reported a 12-percent increase in customer satisfaction through deployment of technology from the two companies.

SandCherry has designed its software so that IT organizations can use a single SOA implementation for self-service applications for both Web and voice, and voice self-service includes Interactive Voice Response (IVR), the company says. SandCherry recently leveraged its technology to become part of BEA's telecommunications partner ecosystem as well.

Ness Technologies Inc. , a global provider of information technology solutions and services, today announced that it has extended its distribution agreement with SAP AG for the Israeli market until 2010.

Tenrox, the Integrated Operational Control and Compliance Software Company, today announced that the Company's modular, project governance and compliance software has been certified by SAP for its seamless integration with SAP(R) Business One. Tenrox's solution provides robust import and export functions that enable the seamless transfer of time, expense, cost and billing data from Tenrox to SAP Business One, eliminating the use of spreadsheets, manual processes, and double-entries.

BEA Systems, Inc. a world leader in enterprise infrastructure, today announced that T-Systems has standardized on BEA WebLogic(R) to underpin Deutsche Telekom's multi-national billing and revenue collection system. Through the implementation of BEA WebLogic Server(TM) 8.1, this leading European provider of IT solutions will support Deutsche Telekom in the development, integration and management of an open, standards-based Service-Oriented Architecture.

BEA Systems, Inc. , a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced that its JRockit(R) JVM (Java Virtual Machine) has set another record, by netting a SPECjbb2000 benchmark result of 861,647 operations per second.

Wind River Systems, Inc. will host its Southern California 2006 Regional Developer Conference on January 11, 2006. The one-day event will highlight aerospace and defense (A&D) industry trends, demonstrate the latest Wind River technology innovations in A&D and also demonstrate how to develop VxWorks- and Linux-based DSO solutions.

As part of its continued commitment to provide customers with simple, flexible and transparent licensing models, Oracle today announced an update to its multi-core processor pricing and licensing policy. The new policies improve parity among hardware vendors and help ensure that customers receive the most advantageous pricing for their Oracle technology software, regardless of the hardware on which it is deployed.

Along with Auto Tuning WebLogic, Arcturus is taking enterprise application monitoring to the next level. Arcturus AutoPilot using its IntelliCheck technology, not only provides great visibility into J2EE applications running on WebLogic but also proactively detects and warns of conditions that can lead to an outage, the company says.

The Eclipse Foundation will make the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) 1.0 release generally available the week of Dec 19th, 2005.

BEA was as excited last week as Sun by the new T1000 and T2000 CoolThreads servers, announced with some splash in New York in an event that stressed Sun's return to focusing on price/performance, with a newly added twist of emphasizing low power consumption and correspondingly lowered cooling requirements.

Quest Software, a leading provider of application, database and infrastructure management solutions, has announced the general availability of version 6.0 of Quest Spotlight on Active Directory, the latest release of its diagnostic and troubleshooting product for Active Directory that is known for its graphical, single-screen interface.

At Microsoft IT Forum, Quest Software has announced version 1.0 of Vintela Systems Monitor, a powerful solution that enables Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 to extend to Unix and Linux systems. The new product enables enterprises that are already using MOM 2005 for Windows operations management.

Quest Software has announced at the Microsoft global product launch of SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006, that its database management products are ready to support Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

BEA will offer a clipping portlet that is designed for line-of-business users who can now quickly clip and deploy existing web applications within WebLogic Portal, without any additional programming requirements or need for specialized IT staff.

Quest Software has announced that it has become a premier member of the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner program and has launched extensions to the Visual Studio 2005 integrated development environment.

BEA Systems has unveiled BEA WebLogic SIP Server 2.1, the industry's first standards-based, carrier-grade, integrated J2EE and Session Initiation Protocol application server providing support for IP Multimedia Subsystem, clustering-based high availability, and industry-leading high performance based on optimized SIP engine tier tuning.

BEA says today's move will give it an early lead in the race towards Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 3.0 and Java EE 5 compatibility, ahead of competitors like IBM. SolarMetric, a privately-held company based in Austin, Texas, is known for its Kodo persistence engine, and supports both EJB 3.0 and Java Data Objects (JDO) programming models.

When BEA continued in September its support of 'blended' applications development - i.e., letting BEA customers work with both open-source and commercial components - by buying Eclipse-based development tools maker M7, it acquired an IDE called NitroX.

Introscope has been implemented to deliver real-time application monitoring and analysis so any degradation in application performance can be quickly identified and resolved to avoid losses of revenue and service. BA.com uses BEA's WebLogic platform to support its J2EE applications responsible for critical customer service and business functions on the website.

Objectivity/DB 9.1 enhances the connectivity of the product with support for IBM WebSphere and improves the performance of its object-relational SQL++ product.

As a part of a blended approach to mixing and matching open source and commercial software, BEA Systems plans to offer blended BEA WebLogic management and deployment technologies. The technologies will be designed to provide automated management and production-level support for customers using Apache Tomcat.