Software, Interrupted

I'm not really a huge sports guy but I do peripherally pay attention when something entertaining is going on, especially when a beloved star like Alex Rodriguez gets taken to task for unconscionable greed.

Rodriguez and Boras botched this thing from the very beginning. They alienated Yankees fans with their greed and indifference. They angered the Steinbrenners with their arrogance (and that takes some doing, considering how the Steinbrenners handled the Joe Torre situation). And they created a scenario where absolutely no one would want to root for A-Rod's success. If anything, you rooted for the Yankees, which is like rooting for Lord Voldemort.

Sounds kinda similar right? People used to like BEA and hate Oracle. But now BEA is looking like the bad guy (which is somewhat undeserved) for trying to raise shareholder value. The problem is that the level of value is unrealistic and everyone seems to know that...except BEA.

I'm not sure that BEA was greedy in holding out for more money, but it's clear that the market isn't stepping up to give them anymore. And you have to wonder what customers are thinking about the situation and BEA's near and long term viability. Considering that services were up and not license revenue, I would expect the downward license trend to continue as customers become further concerned about the future and continue to adopt open source alternatives. Customers need closure from the Oracle ordeal and it doesn't appear to be coming.

To quote ESPN.com's Gene Wojciechowski "you need two suckers for a bidding war" and BEA only has Oracle. The Oracle yacht appears to have retracted the lifeline and now BEA (despite it's strangely successful 3rd quarter) will likely get flushed away.

MySQL's Zack Urlocker published an article called Sitting Duck, which gives you a great 13-point checklist to figure out if your company is screwed. If you do a quick analysis you can predict a bit of the future and also use hindsight to figure out if the company's strategy went sideways.

In light of all the hub-bub around Oracle trying to acquire BEA let's take a quick pass and see if the company is flailing based on a few of Zack's points.

Is everyone in your market having trouble?
No. In fact the application server/middleware/SOA space is growing at an alarming rate. The fact that Oracle wants BEA means that they see more opportunity that can be exploited and that they are more capable of generating dollars than BEA is with that product set. If we agree that BEA is struggling, they seem to believe it's because of their cost structure and not their products. Which leads to...