Laurence Cole, managing director of BEA Australia and New Zealand, talks to ZDNet Australia about the challenges of maintaining growth in a difficult market.

T&B: In the US, BEA has been noted recently for setting up services/alliance partnerships with the likes of PwC Consulting, KPMG Consulting, and Deloitte Consulting. Do these partnerships extend to the Australian market? Are there other purely local partnerships that BEA Australia has established?

Cole: BEA has global partnerships with the organisations you have mentioned and this obviously includes Australia. Over the past 12 months our key focus has been developing our channel business. We have a very active local partner team, which enhances existing global alliances and develops local partnerships with organisations like Adaptive International, Hubbub, EGlobal, EServe, and Cortex e-Business, to name a few. We have also continued to develop our ISV community and work closely with Peace Software, Mincom, QValent, Tower Technology, Prophecy, and Staffware. The success of these initiatives is reflected in our growth during the year.

In Australia, what percentage of BEA's revenues is expected to come from partnerships?

Over the past 12 months our business has evolved considerably from a primarily direct sales model and as mentioned we have made a significant investment in the development of our channel program. This will be reflected in the revenue contribution from our partner program, which we expect will increase by over 120 percent on the previous year to account for nearly 50 percent of total ANZ revenue.

What share of the application server market does BEA hold in Australia? Is this share growing or shrinking?

There are a number of independent sources with varying and conflicting figures on this subject. A recent Gartner study indicated that BEA Systems enjoyed a 34 percent market share compared to 31 percent for IBM. I understand a recent Giga study indicated that BEA and IBM have an equal share with approximately 34 percent share of the market. We believe that BEA in Australia and New Zealand has a dominant share of the application server market and that we will continue to grow that market share.

We are also looking to expand our presence in the application infrastructure space through the release of BEA WebLogic Platform 7.0 which is built on WebLogic Server. WebLogic Platform 7.0 unifies, simplifies, and extends enterprise application development and integration, and provides a common platform to easily build and deploy Web services. WebLogic Platform 7.0 combines integration, portal, and application development and deployment capabilities.

Has the dot-com crash slowed the demand for application servers? What lessons has the company learned from the dot-com era?

To be honest the dot-com crash has not had a significant impact on the business or direction we are taking in Australia. We are involved in major organisations across the region and across all industries and thus we continue to see strong demand for application servers in all sectors.

What has changed is that enterprises are looking very closely at their current infrastructure and how to improve the way they do business and to improve the productivity of existing systems. For example BEA recently worked with Essential Software to develop a specialised call centre for one of the major Australian state-owned energy suppliers. This solution, based on BEA WebLogic Server, has enabled the provision of fast and accurate pricing information, which is critical for the newly deregulated NSW energy industry.

BEA can provide a complete infrastructure solution that will not only help achieve new streams of growth but also help to reduce costs. The solutions that we provide are not just about e-commerce or e-business, they are fundamental to the way organisations operate.

Plans for the future

As I mentioned earlier these figures are varying and often conflicting but in the application server market BEA is experiencing growth and looking forward to the opportunities ahead.

We will continue to focus on and develop our local channel program as part of our strategy for maintaining our lead over IBM. In August this year we will be holding a major partner training program across Australia and New Zealand, aimed at equipping both our technical and business partners on all aspects of BEA's solutions. The training sessions will be held in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Auckland, and Wellington. This is in addition to the extensive training provided as part of BEA's Star Partner Program.

We believe that the direction we have taken with the new WebLogic Platform will see us emerge as the leader in the infrastructure market. Our direction has been recognised by analysts such as META and Gartner who see BEA as a leader in terms of vision and execution.

What does BEA's WebLogic platform offer that, say, IBM's WebSphere doesn't?

The BEA WebLogic Platform delivers to an organisation three main benefits. One, it provides a single, unified architecture that reduces product support, maintenance, and integration costs. Secondly, by providing simplified application development, deployment, and management an organisation is able to increase productivity. Finally, our open extensibility enables enterprises to leverage current and future technology investments and mitigate risk with a best-of-breed approach to application infrastructure.

I don't believe our competitors can provide such a complete infrastructure product. Competitors are often promoting a vast array of products branded under a single name. However, that does not constitute a unified solution and draws the focus to total cost of ownership--a complete end to end infrastructure solution versus costly serviceware.

BEA refers to the next-generation enterprise platform as "application infrastructure". How would you define this?

We are providing organisations with an end-to-end solution where they can develop new applications, simply and efficiently while at the same time utilising the potential of existing systems whether internal or external. This complete solution approach has enormous benefits for business now and in the future by allowing organisations to efficiently develop and maintain an infrastructure that maximise benefits for them, their suppliers, and of course their customers.

Earlier this year, BEA conducted interviews with customers and partners to determine what kinds of software IT executives need. What came out of this research? And how has this research affected the content of BEA's latest WebLogic Platform 7.0 release?

The clear message from the research is reflected in the direction BEA is taking.

IT executives are simply looking for a solution that will provide them with increased productivity and reduced costs. They want to be able to utilise the potential of existing systems while at the same time reducing the development complexity of new applications.

For example, a major international airline is using BEA WebLogic Server to streamline data flow throughout the organisation by integrating the airline's mainframe systems and legacy databases that include the fleet management, operations, planning, reservation, and frequent flyer systems. BEA WebLogic Server forms the basis for the airline's Web applications and the organisation is now well advanced in fully integrating its applications and providing access to the applications via a variety of traditional and Web-based interfaces.

It's been noted that the piece missing from the WebLogic offering is a data integration strategy. How is BEA responding to this?

BEA offers data integration services as part of WebLogic Integration (WLI) in two ways. Firstly WLI includes a built-in non-XML-to-XML translation with those mapping definitions defined using a GUI tool. We also utilise XSLT for XML-to-XML transformation. Any XSLT editor such as Contivo Analyst, which is bundled, can be used. Secondly BEA partners with specialist data integration vendors such as Mercator who provide a comprehensive solution.

You've said that Australian organisations feel J2EE is ready for the enterprise. How do you back this up?

Over the past 18 months we have seen an increasing demand for J2EE technology at large organisations across all industries, from finance to utilities to government, where large projects are increasingly heading towards J2EE and WebLogic.

There is also continuing evidence of ISVs building enterprise applications on the J2EE platform-whether they be telco billing systems or online banking systems. AXA is an example of an enterprise that has selected Java-based WebLogic technology in the past 12 months, as have a number of federal and NSW state government organisations.

BEA is also said to be releasing its own JVM. What's wrong with Sun's?

The goal of BEA WebLogic JRockit is to be the world's fastest, most scalable, and most manageable JVM for server-side applications. The virtual machine should be made as an open system without sacrificing specific platform advantages. Unlike other JVMs available today that attempt to strike a balance between the needs of both client-side and server-side applications, BEA WebLogic JRockit is the first and only JVM that is designed from the ground up specifically to address the unique requirements of server-side Java applications.

Do you think Sun Microsystems shipping its Sun One application server bundled with Solaris 9 will be a threat to BEA? Is Sun guilty of Microsoft-like tactics?

No. BEA is clearly the leader in the application server market. Sun is not. We continue to work with Sun in the field; however, we do not see its giveaway application server as a threat. BEA provides the functionality and support that will ensure our dominance in this market. We are also leading the way in application infrastructure with the release of the BEA WebLogic Platform.

Do you have figures on the Australian uptake of WebLogic Workshop, BEA's Java development tool?

WebLogic Workshop became generally available on June 28, 2002. Already we have seen an enormous amount of interest with an incredible number of unique individuals worldwide downloading the new software. WebLogic Workshop marks a dramatic departure from traditional Java IDEs by enabling developers at all skill levels to rapidly build, test, and deploy enterprise-class Web services without understanding the complexities of J2EE. All developers within an IT organisation can collaborate on a single code base, dramatically increasing their productivity.

BEA announced it was collaborating with RIM on Web services applications for mobile devices. How is that partnership going? What are some of the business applications we can expect for mobile Web services?

BEA partners with RIM and many other wireless technology companies. This is consistent with our strategy of working with important wireless environments. This strategy is clearly driven by the fact that wireless will be one of the key delivery technologies of the future.

Business applications for mobile Web services may be used for booking or changing flights, paying bills, and ordering taxis. In short, these devices are capable of providing the most commonly used features of the PC combined with a new level of mobility.

Subscribe now to Australian Technology & Business magazine.

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved.
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive.