SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- 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.

ESB is infrastructure software designed to make reusable business services widely available to users, applications, business processes, and other services. The Forrester Wave report states, "BEA has returned to the forefront of the integration solution provider market with the new BEA AquaLogic Service Bus(TM) and enhanced BEA WebLogic Integration products, thereby providing its existing customers with leading-edge integration solutions." (1)

"BEA continues to outpace rivals as the leader in helping organizations realizes the huge benefits of implementing service-oriented architectures (SOA). To be positioned as a leader in both Forrester segment waves illustrates BEA's progress in bringing products to market that can help to drive the adoption of SOA across the enterprise," said Marge Breya, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, BEA Systems, Inc. "With AquaLogic Service Bus, BEA is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of customers looking for a focused, simple ESB solution, as well as a complete SOA integration solution designed for customers that need a wide range of integration functionality."

Forrester defines the 'ESB Suites Segment' as ESBs with optional components for service orchestration, service management and partner collaboration delivered as suites. The firm defines 'Comprehensive ESB Suites' as full-service integration suites that encompass all of the ESB suite features, plus support for human workflow, vertical industry solutions, portals, and rules engines.

Forrester evaluated BEA's current offering and strategy for the ESB category against approximately 100 criteria, within the domains of current offerings, strategy and market presence. According to Forrester, "BEA's overall product portfolio of application development tools, application platform, portal, and others provides one of the broader total solutions for service-oriented architecture (SOA) available today. This means that BEA AquaLogic Service Bus, combined with BEA WebLogic Integration is a good fit for buyers that will be developing and/or deploying applications in WebLogic and need advanced ESB functionality, from a strategic platform vendor."(2)

In its report, Forrester also highlights the importance of the ESB to the SOA market. By the end of 2005, Forrester expects that 77 percent of large enterprises, 51 percent of medium enterprises, and 46 percent of small enterprises will be actively implementing SOA. Furthermore, of large enterprises implementing or planning to implement SOA, 69 percent are using SOA for internal integration, while 50 percent are using SOA for external integration with business partners and customers. An enterprise service bus is the most popular way to implement SOA-based integration; Forrester estimates that about one-third of U.S. infrastructure decision-makers plan to increase the scope of ESB deployment in the next 12 months.

For more information on BEA AquaLogic Service Bus, please visit: http://www.bea.com/aqualogic/index.htm . To review the complete Forrester Wave(TM) evaluation of the enterprise service bus market report, please visit http://www.forrester.com/.

(1) Forrester Wave(TM): Enterprise Service Bus, Q4 2005 report, Forrester Research, Inc., November 15 2005.

(2) Enterprise Service Bus Scorecard Summary: BEA Systems, Forrester Research, Inc., November 2005

About BEA

BEA Systems, Inc. is a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, providing standards-based platforms to accelerate the secure flow of information and services. BEA product lines -- WebLogic(R), Tuxedo(R), JRockit(R), and the new AquaLogic(TM) family of Service Infrastructure -- help customers reduce IT complexity and successfully deploy Service-Oriented Architectures to improve business agility and efficiency. For more information, please visit bea.com.

NOTE: BEA, Tuxedo, WebLogic, BEA JRockit and BEA WebLogic Server are registered trademarks and BEA WebLogic Enterprise Platform, BEA WebLogic Integration, BEA WebLogic Portal, BEA WebLogic Platform, BEA WebLogic Express, BEA WebLogic Workshop, BEA WebLogic Java Adapter for Mainframe, BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic, BEA eLink and BEA WebLogic Enterprise Security are trademarks of BEA Systems, Inc. All other company and product names may be the subject of intellectual property rights reserved by third parties.

For More Information: http://www.bea.com/news +1-408-570-8004

CONTACT: Media, Jim Rivas, +1-408-570-8834, or jrivas@bea.com, or
Industry Analyst, Pam Crain, +44 1494 559 534, or Pam.crain@bea.com, both of
BEA Systems

Web site: http://www.bea.com/