BEA Systems (Nasdaq: BEAS – News), a world leader in enterprise and communications infrastructure software, today announced it has expanded its partnership with IP Unity, a leader in carrier-grade media servers, application servers and real-time multimedia applications. The two companies have integrated IP Unity’s Mereon(TM) 6000 Media Server and media rich applications with BEA WebLogic SIP Server(TM), the industry’s first converged Java EE-SIP-IMS application server. The resulting joint solution will be designed to be a SIP- centric service delivery platform for media rich services such as Dynamic Group Communications.

IP Unity became a member of the BEA Systems telecom partner ecosystem in October 2005 and today’s announcement marks a key milestone in the partnership. The two companies have agreed to jointly deliver SIP-powered services for telcos, cable companies, mobile operators and ISPs. Dynamic Group Communications Services — the first category of services to be jointly delivered — will be designed to include instant conferencing, group conferencing, push-to-conference and push-to-collaborate services.

“The commercial success of the next generation of media rich services hinges on the operators’ ability to deploy best in class service building blocks,” said Brian Partridge, senior analyst, Yankee Group. “This partnership between BEA and IP Unity is designed to offer operators a proven set of pre- integrated building blocks to deliver blended multimedia services across any type of network environment.”

With this expanded partnership, IP Unity has agreed that it will integrate its proven multimedia services APIs with BEA WebLogic SIP Server. The integrated APIs will be available as service-independent building blocks, to provide a wide range of functions designed to include enhanced speech and IVR, messaging and multimedia session control capabilities. These building blocks will also be the basis of the Group Communications solution delivered by IP Unity on BEA WebLogic SIP Server. The APIs will also be designed to enable BEA WebLogic SIP Server to leverage IP Unity’s award-winning Mereon 6000 Media Server to provide the Media Resources Function (MRF) within the IMS architecture. The combined media-rich offering of the BEA WebLogic SIP Server and Mereon 6000 Media Server will be designed to enable applications like Group Communications and other blended multimedia services to be easily developed and deployed. Many operators already derive substantial revenue from instant communications. They are aggressively looking to add even more revenue-generating instant communications features to sustain and grow their consumer and enterprise subscriber bases.

“We are working with IP Unity to deliver services like interactive and group chat, group multimedia and instant communications, because we see their carrier-grade media processing environment and agile APIs as key to a complete solution for the service provider market,” said Mike McHugh, vice president and general manager, BEA WebLogic Communications Platform, BEA Systems. “We are impressed with IP Unity’s track record of winning large-scale enhanced services deployments. We believe that our joint solutions will accelerate time-to-market and IMS-readiness for these revenue-rich services.”

“Our relationship with BEA is a linchpin in our strategy to rapidly deliver converged, media-rich services to network operators,” said Arun Sobti, CEO and chair of IP Unity. “BEA WebLogic SIP Server is designed to integrate fully and effectively with our Mereon Media Server/Media Resource Function and media-rich APIs. This integration can benefit greatly from BEA’s clear leadership in SIP-based services infrastructure, and its excellence in OSS/BSS and Service-Oriented Architecture, to aid in rapid service delivery and content integration.”

For more information on the BEA WebLogic Communications Platform(TM), please visit www.bea.com/wlcom or visit the BEA booth, #1721, at Spring VON. For more information on IP Unity Mereon 6000 Media Servers, please visit www.ipunity.com.

About BEA Systems
BEA Systems, Inc. is a world leader in enterprise infrastructure software, providing standards-based platforms to accelerate the secure flow of information and services. BEA product lines — WebLogic®, Tuxedo®, JRockit®, and the new AquaLogic(TM) family of Service Infrastructure — help customers reduce IT complexity and successfully deploy Service-Oriented Architectures to improve business agility and efficiency. For more information please visit www.bea.com.