BEAS: BEA Recognizes Cypress, Sony Pictures Entertainment and University of Waikato For Outstanding Next Generation Portal Deployment

BEA Systems Inc., a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, today announced the winners of its Liquid Portal awards at a pre-BEAWorld conference ceremony. Cypress Semiconductor, Sony Pictures Entertainment and New Zealand’s University of Waikato were recognized for their collaborative portals connecting IT systems and business process. Portal technology continues to be a delivery vehicle for a new generation of composite applications in a marketplace driven by Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). According to Gartner, a combination of suite and stand-alone product acquisitions fueled the horizontal portal product market to more than $780 million in 2005.

“We are excited to award the following BEA customers, Cypress Semiconductor, Sony Pictures Entertainment and the University of Waikato, with the BEA Liquid Portal award as these deployments represent the critical role portals are taking in an enterprise’s SOA strategy,” said Mark Carges, executive vice president at BEA Systems, Inc. “Our customers indicate that a key benefit of BEA’s portal solution is that it can develop and deploy Web applications on our open framework. They understand that by integrating user needs, IT systems and business processes via the portal, they have taken the first steps in delivering a SOA.”

Cypress Semiconductor

Cypress is using BEA AquaLogic User Interaction as the main platform for its corporate Web site, www.cypress.com, and for its internal sales and marketing department. The Cypress.com Web site receives about 150,000 visits per month and approximately 60 percent of the traffic comes from the “Design Resources” community, where customers can download software, application notes, datasheets and other product support information. Many Cypress customers choose to sign up for updates and other information from this section, populating a customer database which is also located on the portal.

Additionally, the sales and marketing team at Cypress uses the portal as a one-stop shop for internal information and interaction. The portal provides easier access to product information along with important sales tools, which has increased collaboration among teams and helping improve overall employee productivity and efficiency.

Sony Pictures Entertainment– mySPT

Sony Pictures Television (SPT), a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, is an independent program production and distribution company. The “mySPT” portal, powered by BEA WebLogic Portal, is designed to help SPT’s marketing organization reduce costs while helping the sales organizations be as competitive as possible. As an information hub, the portal has helped allow SPT to Web-enable and integrate all key sales, finance and distribution processes. From a technical perspective, the portal is designed to help SPT establish a common application platform with a centralized data architecture where SPT can broadcast content, customer, marketing and sales information and be retrieved throughout a product’s lifecycle from program production to distribution.

The “mySPT” portal also includes an Ad Sales Executive Dashboard that is designed to provide senior executives with access to key indicators, including forecasts and revenue breakdown by account executive and advertising agency. The portal is also used by the syndication sales team and can provide users with customized workspaces and 24x7 access to applications, documents, assets, links and other business resources. Most recently, the portal added functionality to support the cable and pay-per-view sales groups. Through the implementation of “mySPT”, the portal is helping contribute to the sale and distribution of television programs developed and produced by SPT.

University of Waikato, New Zealand – “My Papers”

A leader in eEducation, the University of Waikato developed its own online learning management system, where almost all courses offered by the university have Web-based elements. The university selected BEA AquaLogic User Interaction to build iWaikato, the student and staff portal used to provide a collaborative forum for learning, research and administration activities. The core teaching and learning community of iWaikato is “My Papers” that can provide students access to online services and resources for each education course in which they are enrolled in. With an increasingly complex IT environment, the university needed a portal solution to integrate a variety of learning management, online assessment and online enrolment systems plus two legacy portals. Additionally, the university hosts a mixed development environment with the use of Oracle, Java, .NET and open source.

As a result, the organization required a single, open portal framework and deployed the BEA portal to provide faculty, staff and students with a common area to deliver and access resources and services for every course. “MyPapers” has over 12,000 students and 800 faculty members using the application. Through the “My Papers” community, the university can reduce the cost of duplicating technology, help students access information and resources and help faculty manage course requirements, ultimately facilitating and supporting students’ relationship with the university and faculty.

Portal solutions from BEA are designed to help enable employees, customers and partners to work together more efficiently by connecting existing systems with people. BEA provides a broad range of application and portal infrastructure services that are designed to help simplify the development and management and help improve the user effectiveness of portal solutions. For more information, please visit bea.com/portal or register today at bea.com/beaworld to see the products in action at BEAWorld 2006.