BEA Systems’ service-oriented architecture (SOA) plan
will kick into overdrive this summer when the company unveils new
software next month in New York City.
The new product line will build on the announcements the company made last
year, wrapping together its WebLogic Network Gatekeeper software
for authenticating network identity; Liquid Data XML integration software
and QuickSilver Web services and business process management software.
Unlike previous software deployed under the company’s popular WebLogic
brand, the new products will help developers create composite
applications that will work on disparate platforms without writing code.
This reusable asset approach is the keystone of SOA
are primed to employ software that provides application-to-application
exchanges, or Web services
The company has talked about its service infrastructure software suite in
meetings with analysts and press. But now is the time to show progress. CEO
Alfred Chuang, CTO Mark Carges and Chief Marketing Officer Marge Breya
will shoot for that objective at the launch, analysts said.
ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg said the new software combines enterprise
service bus (ESB)
capabilities to make sure disparate pieces of software work together in a
single product.
The software will expand BEA’s offerings in the SOA market as well as the
composite application development platform market, Bloomberg said.
“By offering a product that focuses on service re-use and rapid composition,
they are going about SOA the right way,
and will give their competition a good run for their money,” Bloomberg said.
Zapthink analyst Ronald Schmelzer said the public can expect BEA to separate
service infrastructure from application infrastructure for the first time.
All the technology that sits at the service interface level, including
security, process, management and composition, is part of the service
infrastructure.
The application infrastructure sits below the service interface, making a
service work in a particular environment.
“The two are symbiotic, since Quicksilver itself is based on the WebLogic
application server, but the difference is in how they are positioning and
selling the product,” Schmelzer said. The company believes that it can
triple its current $1 billion revenue by selling to the service
infrastructure layer.”
IDC analyst Dennis Byron said the launch is par for the course for a company
that specializes in a market that is being gradually commoditized:
application servers.
“BEA is trying to grow further up the stack from where they traditionally
played,” Byron said in an interview. “They have to take advantage of the
pieces they have in their integration server in Liquid Data and some of the
security things they announced last year and try to move up the stack with
that.”
While IDC hasn’t released final numbers for 2004, Byron said not much has
changed in the past year from 2003. He said IBM held the market with a
middleware share somewhere between 30 percent and 35 percent, with BEA following at 15 percent and Oracle garnering 7 percent.
BEA Gears For SOA Launch
