NERD ON THE STREET

BEA Systems recently unveiled its M3 "object transaction server" that the company says will handle up to 1,000 transactions per second. This object monitor uses objects to quicken the pace of building and installing large-scale applications. The twist to this object transport product is the integration with BEA's flagship Tuxedo product, which interprets objects. Among the third parties supporting M3 are Digital, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Micro systems. The product, which will be available next month, might become a real contender among application server products says Mike Gilpin, a vice president with Giga Information Group, a market research firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gilpin predicts that BEA will be "one of the top three providers of application server products, along with IBM and Oracle, within two years." With M3's planned support for Enterprise JavaBeans and its core transaction processing engine, BEA has a good chance to become a leader, he says. "The trading rooms are looking for the fastest and most reliable object transaction servers, and M3 has a good shot at being one of the main products they consider because of its performance. Some of the other services M3 provides, like messaging and Java support, are also important to trading floor software."

Fast on BEA's heels is Iona Technologies, which recently announced its intention to integrate Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) with its own OrbixOTM, which Iona claims is "the world's first object transaction monitor." This step was expected in light of Iona's previously announced licensing of Microsoft's COM technology (TTW, February 2) This new integration will "make it easier for programmers to make software work together," says David Clarke, an Iona senior product manager based in Dublin. Integration has become more important with so many trading firms having Microsoft Windows NT front-ends and Unix servers. The agreement also promises to provide interoperability for transactional components across the Internet. With the accord, Microsoft acknowledges that "Corba and Iona are serious players that are important to a lot of customers", says Clarke.