Oracle/BEA reveal post-merger telco product lineup

Oracle this week unveiled new products and a combined product lineup coming out of its recently closed acquisition of BEA, focusing on a combination of BEA’s core platform and Oracle’s telecom applications.

The two companies, which count telecom as a key customer sector, competed vigorously prior to the merge, particularly in trying to move service providers onto more horizontal, IT-focused service delivery and back-office architectures and platforms. Both companies have deep roots in integration and SOA platforms as well as specialty telco platforms like service delivery platforms (SDPs) and more general applications like billing and operations support.

Together the companies are well-positioned to compete with other IT-centric vendors – like HP and IBM – as well as with traditional network equipment providers and specialty BSS/OSS vendors.

That said, the combined companies had some choices to make, given their overlapping product sets. In a nutshell, the combined telco product set will lean on former BEA platform-focused products and Oracle applications such as VoIP, virtual PBX and presence, said David Sharpley, Oracle’s vice president of product marketing and channels for Oracle.

The two former rivals “were absolutely going to market separately with products in the service delivery arena,” Sharpley said. “As a result of our combination, we believe we can assume a market leadership position.”

Today Oracle announced a new version of the newly-christened Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper 4.0, formerly a BEA product. As its name implies, the Gatekeeper product is focused on opening up telco networks to partners while allowing carriers to retain control over the process. In particular, the new version automates partner management and provides new developer tools for third parties to leverage carrier-exposed service components. The platform is based on standards like J2EE, SIP and Diameter, all of which aid in the integration into Oracle back-office applications, said Ken Lee, Director, Product Marketing, who came over to Oracle from BEA.

Lee pointed to a number of key enhancements to the product, including improved policy-based enforcement of network access; new standards-based service enablers for building Web services that can take advantage of network resources; and lowered cost of ownership due to moving the platform to the latest release of J2EE in the WebLogic Server 10 platform.

In announcing the new Communications Services Gatekeeper platform, Oracle also outlined the rest of its new Oracle Communications Service Delivery portfolio, which includes components of BEA WebLogic Communications middleware platform and Oracle Fusion Middleware. The combined platform will feature – in addition to the Gatekeeper product – the Oracle Communications Converged Application Server (formerly BEA WebLogic SIP Server) as well as three Oracle-derived applications: Oracle Communications Presence; Oracle Communications Virtual PBX and Oracle Communications Residential Telephony.

“The two platform products [Gatekeeper and Application Server] come over from BEA and are all now branded Oracle Communications. On top of that are the three applications that Oracle had that BEA did not,” Lee said. “Together, the result is completely additive. They are all J2EE-based, so they work together today and over time will move to a more common platform.”