BEA Systems launches broad e-commerce campaign

BEA Systems Inc. announced today it has embarked on a $20 million marketing campaign to remind Wall Street and the enterprise that it's a platform company for e-commerce.

Executives told reporters and analysts during a teleconference that the San Jose, Calif., company's new branding campaign has already produced a new corporate logo and Web site.

"We do believe there's a transformation going on out there," said BEA Chairman and CEO Bill Coleman. "The transformation is so fundamental that e-commerce represents an undermining of the business models of every industry. If you don't move to e-commerce, and move to it quickly, you're going to be left behind."

In the coming weeks, BEA will advertise extensively in major business and trade publications and on Web sites and portals. In addition, the company will put up billboard advertising in Silicon Valley, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and New York.

Opportunity knocks

A year ago, BEA acquired WebLogic, which makes a family of Java-based application servers. Coleman said that until last year BEA assumed Microsoft Corp. would own the low and medium ends of the market with its Windows NT/COM (Component Object Model) strategy.

"What's happening is that the environment has opened up and it is all based on non-Microsoft standards," Coleman said. "The browser, HTML, CGI and XML are handling the client, and the back end is server-based applications that are all being built on enterprise Java. Microsoft has no product built on enterprise Java. It opens up the market from top to bottom. We have increasing demand and a huge number of leads we can't get to."

BEA is targeting IBM as the company to beat for providing end-to-end e-commerce solutions. Earlier this year, BEA announced a partnership with Hewlett-Packard Co. and promises other partnerships with systems and tools vendors and with systems integrators.

While BEA has recorded steadily increasing revenues over the last seven quarters -- from $53.4 million to $103.2 million -- the company has lost money in the last six quarters. For the year ended Jan. 31, BEA posted a loss of $51.6 million on revenues of $289 million.

BEA stock, which trades on the Nasdaq, was up 2 13/16 in early afternoon trading to 33 7/16.

BEA's flagship products for the e-commerce market include Tuxedo, a transaction-processing monitor; the WebLogic application server; and BEA eLink for integrating Web applications with back-office systems.

BEA Systems is at www.beasys.com.

Additional reporting by Deborah Gage of Sm@rt Reseller