Top transaction-processing vendor BEA Systems Inc. last week unveiled eLink, which combines BEA's Tuxedo and WebLogic transaction-processing engines with the application connectors and business-process translators that link the business processes of various enterprise applications. It's BEA's first product for the application-integration market, but the company says 40% of the transaction-processing software it has sold is being used by customers who have manually integrated it with enterprise applications. The eLink software does away with manual connections, automatically linking to Tuxedo or WebLogic.

BEA has incorporated integration technology from TSI Inc. and InConcert Inc. into the eLink Server, which will ship next quarter for $170,000. BEA will also ship a connector to link SAP R/3 with legacy applications and is planning connectors for other enterprise apps.

BEA isn't the only transaction-processing vendor to enter the market. IBM last fall teamed with Neon Inc. to tie IBM's MQSeries transaction-processing server to Neon's application-integration software. The result: IBM MQSeries Integrator links enterprise applications while also handling the high number of transactions generated by these applications.

"It's a powerful combination," says Chris Dahl, director of data services for enterprise applications at Monsanto Co. in St. Louis, which is going into production with the IBM products. MQSeries' broad platform support helps Monsanto link all its applications regardless of the operating system.

Transaction processing is key to this type of integration: "People are starting to use application integration as an enterprise backbone," says Kimberly Knickle, an analyst with AMR Research.

Middleware vendor Iona Technologies Inc. plans to use its Orbix Corba messaging platform to link multiple applications. Enterprise application integration is a logical extension of middleware's connecting function, but Knickle says Iona still lacks the application connectors that link to specific apps such as SAP.