Plans for the future
Recent Gartner figures showed IBM and Oracle gaining ground on BEA, while Giga claims WebSphere and WebLogic are in a dead heat. How is BEA going to stay ahead?
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.
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