BEAM is a programming language designed for building concurrent and distributed systems. It is known for its ability to handle many tasks at once without crashing, making it ideal for applications that require high availability, such as web servers and telecommunications systems. BEAM is the virtual machine at the core of the Erlang programming language, which was originally developed for telecom applications. The BEAM virtual machine executes code written in Erlang and other languages that compile to BEAM bytecode. It features lightweight processes, garbage collection, and message passing, allowing for efficient communication between processes. This architecture supports fault tolerance, enabling systems to recover from errors without significant downtime.