BEA Systems today announced it is creating a developer community to bring IT and telecom applications developers together, easing the transition to the IP multimedia subsystem architecture and other converged services.

The developer center built around its WebLogic Communications Platform is designed to aid developers in bringing their Java-based applications into the SIP environment that will power the next generation of networks. The center is slated to go live over BEA's developer's portal dev2dev next week at the 3GSM World Congress. BEA will offer a free evaluation copy of its Java EE-SIP-IMS application server for download.

BEA's SIP server allows developers to build SIP applications using Java, now the most widely used development language. Java has taken over the IT world, but its presence is still eking into the communications network, where isolated monolithic applications on the network have not required Java's unified platform. But as IMS proliferates, Java goes hand-in-hand with the network, said Ken Lee, BEA product marketing manager for the WebLogic Communications Platform. Creating the SIP server and developer center will bring the resources of the massive Java community to the telecom world, he said.

BEA today also announced that O2 UK has deployed its WebLogic Network Gatekeeper as its policy enforcement engine to power O2's mobile content delivery services.