BEA Systems is the second company to receive full certification for J2EE, a boon for customers who are looking for the interoperability gains and assurances that come with the certification.
The company announced Monday that its WebLogic family of application servers had successfully completed the extensive Java 2 Enterprise Edition test suite from Sun Microsystems. In May, iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions became the first company to ship a J2EE-certified application server. iPlanet is an alliance between Sun and Netscape Communications.
"I think the consensus among CTOs [chief technology officers] right now is WebLogic is the way to go for e-business," said Monis Rahman, vice president of technology for ParentWatch. ParentWatch is an online parenting resource built primarily with Java.
"It's very important to me that WebLogic is on top of the latest standards and implementing them," Rahman said, adding that it's easier for him to move to EJBs (Enterprise JavaBeans) and other technologies if WebLogic already supports them.
"Right now, the technology is evolving so rapidly, you want to keep as much flexibility as you can," he said. "You want to make sure a choice you make now doesn't preclude you from using [another solution] in the future."
Vying with Big Blue
A recent report by Giga Information Group, of Cambridge, put BEA as the application server market leader for 1999, with 32 percent market share, followed by IBM, of Armonk, with 16 percent market share. Giga predicted that the gap will narrow this year in the US$585 million market, projecting that BEA and IBM will be tied for top market share with 24 percent each.
Another WebLogic customer, B2Bgalaxy.com, expressed a similar interest in J2EE and other standards. Edward Peck, the Parsippany, company's director of development, said standards such as J2EE can offer more flexibility and a shorter learning curve for newly hired developers.
"One of the biggest reasons is the fact that the B2B space is still fairly new territory," Peck said. "Sticking to standards makes it a lot easier. Now we're at the point where there are other technologies we can leverage."
BEA plans to use the J2EE certification branding for its next version of servers, not due out for a few months yet.
Technology included in the J2EE specification includes EJBs, JavaServer Pages and servlets, Java Messaging Service, the Java Transaction API and database connectivity.
