BEA Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: BEAS), a world leader in infrastructure software, today announced that Sun Chemical Corp., the world's foremost manufacturer of printing inks, is implementing a service-oriented architecture (SOA) built on BEA WebLogic Server(R) 8.1, BEA WebLogic Workshop(TM) 8.1 and BEA WebLogic Integration(TM) 8.1, to support numerous enterprise business processes including enterprise application integration (EAI) and customer relationship management (CRM).

Sun Chemical saw an opportunity to help improve its operational efficiency and competitive position by employing an integration architecture and SOA to help unify a sprawling infrastructure that included many standalone applications and silos of data. BEA WebLogic Integration 8.1 supports an integration hub connecting numerous enterprise systems, which include Cognos, Ariba, Epiphany as well as AS/400s. Rather than building links between every data source and application, business processes flow through the integration hub, which helps to enable the orchestration of application interactions. This business processes flow also utilizes BEA to support a reliable messaging layer and optimize infrastructure performance. BEA WebLogic Workshop 8.1 was selected for application development and creation of Web Services.

New applications taking advantage of a BEA-supported SOA strategy at Sun Chemical include an electronic-invoicing system and an order-tracking solution. The invoicing system is designed to help one of Sun Chemical's divisions streamline its billing processes by helping to eliminate the time and cost associated with manually processing invoice information. Order tracking can allow customers to check the status of orders from initial placement through delivery.