BEA Systems loses sales exec

Matthew S. Green, president of BEA's worldwide sales, has retired to spend more time with his family and to pursue his hobbies, company spokesman Kevin McGuirk said. Green, 42, was a five-year veteran of the software maker, serving in multiple sales positions. He will continue on a consulting basis with BEA during the company's search for his replacement, McGuirk said.

In the meantime, the three sales executives managing the American, Asia and European regions will report directly to Chief Executive Alfred Chuang, McGuirk said. Chuang ran BEA's sales while he served as the company's chief operating officer in 2001.

Green's departure comes less than a week after the company met Wall Street expectations by earning a second-quarter profit of $25.9 million, or 6 cents per share, on revenue of $225.9 million.

BEA on Tuesday also announced the hiring of former Hewlett-Packard executive Olivier Helleboid as president of BEA's products. Helleboid, who will manage BEA's product strategy and development, was most recently chief executive of software start-up Rainfinity. Helleboid spent 18 years at HP, where he served in a variety of positions, including vice president and general manager of HP's OpenView business unit.

Over the past year, BEA has also hired former Microsoft executive Tod Nielsen as chief marketing office and former Hewlett-Packard executive Tom Ashburn to manage BEA's worldwide services.

"Alfred is consciously upgrading the management team to position it for the next ground of growth, from a $1 billion (in yearly revenue) company to a $3 billion to $4 billion company," McGuirk said. "And he's putting the right executives in place."

BEA competes against Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems and others in the market for e-business software. BEA is the market leader in application-server software, technology that runs e-business and other Web site transactions. The company is also attempting to expand into new areas.