BEA Systems unveiled the latest version of BEA WebLogic Server 9.0, code-named "Diablo."

Rich with new features, Diablo is the cornerstone of the upcoming BEA WebLogic Platform 9.0, the next generation of integrated software components that are designed to connect disparate computer systems and run the applications that large companies use to run their businesses. What makes Diablo unique is that it's designed to help allow companies to rapidly develop and deploy very high-volume, minimal-disruption applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

An Optimal Foundation for Building SOAs with Speed, Confidence and Efficiency

Diablo is designed to provide an optimal platform for the development and deployment of service-oriented architectures. The simplified development of service-oriented applications can help lower development and operational costs. Implementation of industry standards can help allow for seamless interoperability between services in a heterogeneous environment. The enhanced service security framework is designed to reduce complexity of security applications, increase flexibility and help prevent costly security holes.

In keeping with WebLogic tradition, Diablo supports the latest industry standards such as J2EE 1.4 and the latest Web Services standards, helping to allow developers to more quickly create portable and interoperable applications.

Robust Messaging Infrastructure for High Volume, Asynchronous Architectures

Diablo is designed to provide enterprise-class messaging, which is a critical part of the infrastructure for building out a SOA. High-volume, reliable messaging can help ensure that information is successfully delivered between systems, even in the event of a system failure. Until now, companies have needed to purchase specialized messaging products for these capabilities. Diablo now delivers enterprise-class messaging functionality as part of the unified platform, including such features as store-and-forward and failover. In addition, Diablo implements the WS-ReliableMessaging standard which is designed to make different systems compatible for reliable exchange of business messages. The messaging infrastructure in Diablo can also deliver significant performance and scalability gains, helping to allow for thousands of messages to be processed per second -- territory that was previously only possible with stand-alone messaging products.

Diablo is Designed to Help Reduce Company's Total Cost of Ownership via Simple, Reliable Management Functionality

Many IT organizations spend the majority of their resources supporting existing applications. Whether it is the deployment of a new enterprise application, or the process of maintaining and upgrading existing applications, Diablo is designed to help support highly-reliable, minimal-free service in a constantly changing enterprise environment. Featuring "live" application and server upgrades, Diablo is designed to perform application and server upgrades without having to take an application offline or disrupting service to end-users.

Diablo's powerful yet greatly simplified administrative features are designed to help companies realize significant cost savings in maintaining their WebLogic based applications. With a new, portal-based administration console and command line scripting language, system administrators are provided with a more holistic view of cluster deployments and have more complete control of operations. The console can be customized to provide different views for the various roles and responsibilities across the organization, and is designed to allow third parties to plug in their own management and monitoring tools to provide additional functionality. Diablo also features an advanced diagnostic framework that is designed to allow administrators to identify and resolve issues in applications running in production in real-time; as well as auto-tuning, an innovative self-tuning technology that is designed to include the ability to specify service levels so the server can make resource adjustments and take corrective actions in real-time The result is that Diablo is designed to not only to increase uptime, but also to help take the complexity out of configuration and tuning

Provides the foundation for the Application Platform Suite

BEA WebLogic Server is the cornerstone of the BEA WebLogic platform. This fully integrated, unified software platform is designed to help accelerate the service-driven enterprise. BEA provides a platform that helps bring SOA to mainstream IT projects, helping to accelerate enterprises' ability to more rapidly evolve into a shared services environment and deliver faster time-to- value for competitive advantage.

"We are thrilled that Diablo can help us meet our desire to further implement a service-oriented architecture while helping us to meet our customer's demands for constant uptime and reliability," said Jeff Davies, director of software architecture and standards at Covad Communications. "When companies such as ours implement an SOA, there is an immediate expectation that all applications across the enterprise are always available. However, this is difficult when our business calls for constant changes and updates to our applications. We look forward to having Diablo help us meet constantly changing demands without disruption to our employees or customers."

"BEA is a leading innovator in the enterprise infrastructure software market, and we are very excited to introduce our flagship application server as the first part of our next-generation WebLogic product line," said Wai Wong, executive vice president of products at BEA Systems. "With today's Diablo announcement, BEA can help solve some of the most critical issues businesses are facing today, while helping them to become more agile and responsive enterprises in a way that can help reduce management and operations costs, increase uptime, and improve adaptability for enterprises."