(September 23, 2003) - BEA Systems is expanding its strategic relationship with mmO2, a provider of mobile services, under the O2 brand, to more than 18.7 million customers in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Ireland. mmO2 selected BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 to reduce the complexity of J2EE development and provide an enhanced service delivery platform for the O2 portal and O2 Active.

The portal (www.O2.co.uk) operates on Intel-based servers and Linux operating system, and plays a key role in delivering innovative text-based services to mmO2 customers. BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 on the Intel/Linux server also will underpin O2 Active, the color icon menu that offers mmO2 customers a simple means to access a wide range of color mobile data and multimedia services including ringtones, multimedia messaging, games, information, alerts, and pictures.

In late 2002, mmO2 began working with BEA to create a product infrastructure, which would enable customers to get the most from their mobile devices. mmO2 migrated its product systems onto Linux and successfully deployed BEA WebLogic Server to support the delivery of Internet-based services for wireless customers. mmO2 is the UK’s market leader in mobile data services such as text, with over half a billion messages being sent by mmO2 customers each month. The majority of mmO2’s interactive text services are delivered by BEA WebLogic Platform.

The second phase of the project involving BEA, saw mmO2 upgrade to BEA WebLogic Server 8.1, for improved scalability, enhanced deployment, and easier to use administration capabilities.

mmO2 is working with BEA to develop a component-based environment for the development of new services; it will begin by converging its disparate wireless products onto a single platform using BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 and BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic 8.1.

mmO2 has selected BEA Professional Services for areas of implementation tuning, performance testing and training, enabling rapid knowledge transfer, fast access to technical expertise and accelerated deployment of BEA software within mmO2’s existing products environment.