What's The Score?

By Rick Whiting

Middleware isn't as visible as, say, a server or a printer. But if it fails, you can be sure a business will have a whole lot of unhappy people on its hands.

That's why middleware has become an increasingly critical component in many computing environments—and why it's becoming an increasingly important bit of technology for solution providers. This year, for the first time, the 2008 VARBusiness Annual Report Card survey has included a Middleware category. And channel partners gave almost equal bottom-line scores to the three major middleware suppliers: IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp., which scratched out a narrow victory with an overall score of 68.

"We've been putting a big emphasis on our Fusion Middleware with our partners," said John Gray, group vice president for technology North American alliances and channels at Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle.

Many of Oracle's channel partners work with the company's flagship database. "But we want to be moving our partners up the technology stack," he said, citing content management and identity management software as two examples. There are more opportunities for partners to build complete solutions by adding middleware to their technology offerings, Gray said, and more opportunities to develop value-added services around those technologies.

Certainly, channel partners think highly of Oracle's middleware technology. While the overall ARC scores for IBM, Microsoft and Oracle were close, Oracle took top scores for most product innovation criteria, including technical innovation, product compatibility and ease of integration, marketability and services opportunity. Oracle's acquisition of middleware vendor BEA Systems Inc., San Jose, Calif., in April for $6.7 billion certainly didn't hurt the perception that it has become the middleware powerhouse.

IBM, Armonk, N.Y., edged Oracle out in richness of product features/functionality and the two tied on product quality and reliability. Microsoft, in contrast, came in third on every product innovation score except marketability; there the Redmond, Wash.-based company placed second.

Bluenog, a Piscataway, N.J.-based solution provider that was a BEA channel partner, has joined the Oracle PartnerNetwork and now works with all of Oracle's Fusion Middleware products, including its portal, SOA and BPEL (business process execution language) products.

"We feel the products are very reliable," said Scott Barnett, Bluenog co-founder and COO. "We're very pleased Oracle decided to keep a lot of the BEA technology in the Fusion Middleware line. That was a smart decision. We made the strategic decision to sign up as an Oracle VAR before the [BEA acquisition] was complete," Barnett said.

While it's taken a little while for Bluenog to adjust to Oracle's culture and business processes, he said it's been worth it. "Oracle has a higher-touch model in terms of staying closer to their partners than BEA did." One big difference: Oracle has many more channel managers and associated resources for channel partners than BEA did, he said.

While Oracle was the clear winner in middleware technology, things were more mixed in the scores channel partners gave the three vendors for channel support and partnership criteria. Oracle, in fact, scored lowest on presales support, partner portal and managing channel conflict, for example, but won top scores for quality of field management, revenue and profit potential, and return on investment. All told, Microsoft beat both IBM and Oracle by one point for all support criteria, while Microsoft and Oracle tied for best partnership scores with a 64, just one point ahead of IBM.

Oracle has been working to strengthen its middleware channel efforts. Eighteen months ago, it created a team of Fusion Middleware specialists within Oracle's partner program to assist channel partners, Gray said. And a program that links the company's sales and channel organizations is designed to identify partners with expertise needed to close deals and bring them into sales situations.

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