BEA's future hangs on new server

The future of BEA Systems may hinge on the industry's acceptance of the latest version of its application server.

Reaction to the release will play a large part in deciding the company's future in the face of increased competition, according to analysts.

Web Logic 7.0 is compliant with the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.3 specification, which includes Enterprise JavaBeans 2.0 support.

The application server also features a full Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration implementation to host private or public registries in WebLogic Server, as well as a custom XML parser.

Firms that are comfortable deploying Java applications would find the latest version a "cleaner" way of deploying them, said Ian Doyle, senior architect at BEA.

The compliance with J2EE 1.3 would enable users to link J2EE and non-J2EE applications, he explained.

Oracle boss Larry Ellison had promised that his company would be the first to deliver a J2EE 1.3 compliant application server, but BEA has beaten him to the punch.

Ellison's promise was indicative of the increased competition in the application server market, which is set to continue, said Tony Lock, senior analyst at Bloor Research.

"BEA will need to convince firms that the enhancements it has made are sufficient reason not to look elsewhere," he explained.

Lock pointed out that businesses needed to be reassured that BEA could compete with such heavyweights as Oracle, and would still exist in five years' time.

"BEA always got into tenders by virtue of being the market leader. Now IBM has caught them up, and Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Hewlett Packard are all competing in this space. This release will be very important for BEA to demonstrate that it can live with such competition," he said.

BEA's involvement in web services standards bodies, and its support for web services development in WebLogic 7.0, would provide customers with the confidence that their investment would be "future-proofed", said Doyle.

Recent figures from analyst Giga had IBM and BEA level in leading the application server market. This represented a large increase in revenues for IBM.

Meanwhile Sun has now taken the i-Planet server, previously co-owned with AOL, fully under its wing.