Fiorina Launches HP Web Services Management Effort

In her keynote at BEA Systems' eWorld developer conference here, Fiorina said the initiatives will help "overcome management barriers to Web services adoption."

First, HP has created a dedicated Web services management group within its software organization to develop new technology that "enables better management of Web services," Fiorina said.

"Some of our best engineers are working day in and day out to develop new technology that enables better management of Web services with HP OpenView," Fiorina said. She added that engineers at HP are working to integrate Web services standards such as XML and UDDI into OpenView.

Second, Fiorina said HP's professional services organization is working jointly with BEA to provide a stronger dedicated Web services management and deployment practice for J2EE solutions. She said HP currently has 450 consultants in this practice and will grow that number to more than 1,000 by the end of the year.

The group will focus on delivering repeatable solutions to help customers "deploy J2EE solutions faster, cheaper and more effectively," she said.

Third, Fiorina unveiled the OpenView Web services management engine, which allows solution providers to build systems that intercept Web services requests and manage the actual services rather than the platform the services run on.

Finally, Fiorina said HP is working with BEA, Iona Technologies, Tibco and webMethods on Web services management standards to help speed adoption of Web services.

To do its part, HP is submitting a Web services management framework to standards body OASIS' distributed management working group.

The extensible framework allows developers to "model, design relationships and interact with the Web services environment," Fiorina said. She added that the framework will be integrated with leading management tools based on Web services standards.

Fiorina said HP's new investment in Web services management echoes its strategy to help customers build more valuable IT infrastructure by lowering total cost of ownership.

"These demonstrate that HP is committed to working with BEA, other partners and many of you to make Web services management a reality," Fiorina told attendees. "It's something we're doing because we're focused on customers achieving the most cost-effective IT, more responsive IT and more integrated IT."

Fiorina also took potshots at HP's nemesis, IBM, emphasizing that the union of HP and BEA products and services gives customers an open, easy-to-deploy platform that is not linked to proprietary technologies and does not require heavy-duty professional services to run successfully.

BEA and HP, partners since 1997, strengthened their partnership last year ago after HP abandoned its short-lived Java middleware strategy and sold off its Bluestone Software assets.

BEA, too, faced increased pressure from Sun Microsystems' own Java software strategy and needed to partner with a hardware vendor to provide its software on operating systems apart from Sun's Unix-based Solaris.

BEA also has strengthened its partnership with Dell Computer to reach the volume server market with its WebLogic products, a market where Microsoft has a clear lead over Java-based technologies.

Last year at eWorld, BEA unveiled it acquired the JRockit JVM when it bought Swedish company Appeal Virtual Machines to optimize performance of its WebLogic software on Intel-based servers.

With the release of WebLogic Enterprise Platform 8.1, unveiled here this morning in a keynote by BEA CEO Alfred Chuang, JRockit now is the JVM driving the platform, replacing Sun's HotSpot JVM.

In his keynote preceding Fiorina's, Chuang stressed the theme of this year's conference--the convergence of application development and application integration--and highlighted the ability for developers to provide both using WebLogic 8.1.

"If there is one message for you to take away, it is that all integration is development and all development is integration," Chuang said. "WebLogic Enterprise Platform 8.1 is not just a tool, it's truly convergence at all levels."

The beta of WebLogic Enterprise Platform 8.1--which includes WebLogic Server 8.1, WebLogic Portal 8.1, WebLogic Integration 8.1 and WebLogic Workshop 8.1--is available this week. General availability and pricing are scheduled for later this year.