BEA Systems has announced a partnership with Deloitte Consulting
that could make it easier for some customers to roll out BEA's
business software and help the vendor compete more effectively with
rivals such as IBM and Oracle.
Along with cross-marketing and sales efforts, the partnership calls
for Deloitte to train its consultants on the BEA WebLogic platform
and identify "repeatable solutions" - reusable software parts -
that could be used in multiple customer environments.
For example, if Deloitte builds an e-commerce system with BEA
software for a large manufacturer, it may be able to reuse elements
of that software for a different company in need of a similar
system. Using these repeatable components should allow it to build
systems for some of its customers more quickly, said Rauline Ochs,
BEA senior vice president of worldwide alliances.
"Every time they can reuse (intellectual property), that quickens
the time to market for customers. If they develop a Java
application framework that has 50% of the things that need to be
done, they can start pushing that framework to offer more
aggressive delivery dates for other customers," she said.
The efforts initially will target manufacturing and consumer
commerce companies that are building business-to-business commerce
systems for their operations, said Ochs.
The deal is notable for BEA because Deloitte becomes the last of
the "big five" consulting firms with which BEA has signed similar
partnerships. The company began courting the firms 18 months ago
when it saw the need to strengthen its service offerings.
The partnership involves training Deloitte consultants around the
world on BEA software, providing them with faster access to
technical support, identifying which software could appropriately
be reused in different environments, and finding joint customers
for whom to target the offerings, said Ochs.