BEA Systems Inc. has formed a new division called the Business Interaction Division, following its acquisition of Plumtree Software, which closed Oct. 20, 2005. The Plumtree products have been re-branded as the AquaLogic User Interaction suite of products.
The new division will be central to the company’s AquaLogic brand, focused on enabling enterprise portals, collaborative communities and composite applications.

Led by Mark Carges, 43, as Executive Vice-President, the Business Interaction Division will be focused on growing BEA’s market share, while providing comprehensive solutions to help customers leverage multi-platform portal technologies as part of their Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) deployments.

Carges (pictured) has been with BEA for more than nine years, and has been instrumental in leading the strategy, development and integration of several BEA products and acquisitions. Most recently, Carges was chief technology officer at BEA where he focused on leading some of BEA’s key initiatives, including its blended open source strategy. Prior to his position as CTO, Carges held various management positions including executive vice president of Strategic Global Accounts as well as leading the Enterprise Framework division responsible for many of BEA's WebLogic Platform product lines.

“Portals are becoming a key integration point for the service-enabled enterprise,” said BEA’s chairman and chief executive officer, Alfred Chuang. “With our acquisition of Plumtree and appointment of Mark to run this new division, BEA leads the market for multi-platform, transactional and collaborative portals. Standalone software stacks will increasingly be replaced by portals that access modular software components linked via SOA for a more personalized user experience.”