BEA pitches to the business crowd

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The reality of most corporate customers pursuing a services-oriented architecture (SOA) is that there's a wide variety of standards and programming languages, Patrick said.

"It's not just about Java. It's not just about J2EE. It's not just about WebLogic," he said. "AquaLogic is not tied so it can only run on WebLogic."

Buying spree
To fuel its product expansion, BEA has acquired several companies over the past year. The largest were portal software company Plumtree, acquired last August, and Fuego, picked up earlier this year, which makes so-called business process management (BPM) software for automating business processes.

The acquisitions, coupled with BEA's strategy of supporting open-source products, mean that applications made with AquaLogic can run on both Java and Microsoft .Net servers, said Patrick.

But that strategy has drawn some skepticism, in part because of overlap with BEA's existing WebLogic products.

Annrai O'Toole, CEO of Cape Clear, which competes with BEA, said that the Fuego and Plumtree offerings brought proprietary technology into BEA's standards-based product mix.

"The success of SOA is dependent on open standards. How does the addition of more proprietary technologies get them closer to supporting SOA?" O'Toole wrote in a blog entry.

He speculated on whether the departure of several high-level executives from BEA in 2004 had affected the company's decisions.

Financial picture
While BEA sells only middleware, its large competitors have assembled broader product portfolios. That bigger product "footprint" can be an advantage when selling to cost-conscious corporate customers looking to cut down on the number of vendors they deal with, analysts said.

In addition, there are now a number of freely available open-source Java application servers that, in general, are low-end alternatives to BEA's flagship software WebLogic Server. The company was also considered a takeover candidate from Oracle for a time.

Still, despite the mounting competition and internal tumult of two years back, BEA's finances are better today than they were 12 months ago.

After seeing its license sales drop for five straight quarters through the first half of last year, the company watched revenue perk up last summer, and BEA topped $1 billion in revenue last fiscal year.

The improving financial picture has helped push its stock above $13 in the past month, a significant jump from its $8 share price of about a year ago.

But even with its strong fiscal year, some analysts are not convinced that BEA can maintain its growth rate. The company reports its first-quarter fiscal 2007 results in May.

Burton Group analyst Anne Thomas Manes said BEA continues to have good products and well-regarded engineers. But some problems remain, including lost market share to JBoss and product overlap following its acquisitions.

"BEA is feeling proud of themselves because they had a good year," Manes said. "But I'm not convinced they are out of (the) water."

[SWEngineer]

Different Name, Same Game

I'm a Java developer and I've used BEA's line of Application servers and other products. I have to say that while their application server is satisfactory in terms of its stability and performance, their AquaLogic brand is really nothing more than their previous products rebundled under a different name.

I've evalutated other application servers such as those created by JBoss, IBM and Oracle. Of them all, including BEA, JBoss is the one that tends to feature the most current updates in terms of adopting standards early. Oracle continues to worked closely with the Java Community Process people to ensure that specifications tend toward their liking.

As a developer, I only get a luke warm feeling from companies when they announce new products or cabilities. The time it usually takes to go from release to mainstream product delopment usually takes over 6 months to a year. Bragging rights aside for first to market or "oh ah" effect, announcements such as this are only meant to assuage financial analysts who have little or no technical knowledge.

[SWEngineer]

Different Name, Same Game

I'm a Java developer and I've used BEA's line of Application servers and other products. I have to say that while their application server is satisfactory in terms of its stability and performance, their AquaLogic brand is really nothing more than their previous products rebundled under a different name.

I've evalutated other application servers such as those created by JBoss, IBM and Oracle. Of them all, including BEA, JBoss is the one that tends to feature the most current updates in terms of adopting standards early. Oracle continues to worked closely with the Java Community Process people to ensure that specifications tend toward their liking.

As a developer, I only get a luke warm feeling from companies when they announce new products or cabilities. The time it usually takes to go from release to mainstream product delopment usually takes over 6 months to a year. Bragging rights aside for first to market or "oh ah" effect, announcements such as this are only meant to assuage financial analysts who have little or no technical knowledge.