BEA unveils AquaLogic portfolio for SOA management

NEW YORK - BEA Systems tried to draw attention to its strength in what it deems a new enterprise software category, "service infrastructure," by unveiling on Thursday a new product portfolio dubbed BEA AquaLogic.

AquaLogic is BEA's brand for software to help develop and manage components in SOA (service-oriented architecture) environments, in which Web services are used to link back-office systems. BEA is repackaging old technologies and developing new ones to create the product line.

"We really see this as a chance for BEA to take ourselves to the next step," Chief Executive Officer Alfred Chuang said at a launch event in New York.

AquaLogic consists of six product lines, three of which will have products available within the next several months: AquaLogic Messaging, Data and Security. Later, BEA will fill out the portfolio with AquaLogic Composer, Portal and Process. The Process product is for service choreography, or arranging how and in what order services work together.

Initial products will include the AquaLogic Service Bus (formerly code-named Quicksilver) for SOA management; the AquaLogic Service Registry for discovering and publishing services; the AquaLogic Data Services Platform (formerly called Liquid Data), for unifying access to data from disparate sources; and AquaLogic Enterprise Security (formerly WebLogic Enterprise Security), for centralizing application security services and policy controls.

BEA's flagship offering is its WebLogic Platform, a suite built around BEA's WebLogic Application Server. With AquaLogic, BEA hopes to extend its reach further into enterprises as more turn to SOA environments to connect their heterogeneous systems.

One WebLogic customer at the event, John Peebles of Cendant Car Rental Group, said his organization is using BEA's software to help it link its various brands together though shared back-office systems.

"It allows us to get new applications out much more quickly, because we have a common infrastructure," said Peebles, Cendant's vice president of online marketing. Parsippany, N. J.-based Cendant operates the Avis and Budget car rental brands.

"Right now, there are about 50 or so partners using our services model to connect to that same infrastructure," Peebles said. "It's very important to us to keep the brands very distinct, so the Web sites should never look like each other from the consumer perspective. But the way they process pickup dates, for example, is exactly the same."