BEA Readies WebLogic Wares To Ward Off Sun

In addition to the WebLogic JRockit JVM, BEA plans to roll out WebLogic Workshop 7.0, a J2EE runtime and development tool, and WebLogic Platform 7.0, a unified development environment comprised of the WebLogic application server plus portal, integration and Workshop products, the sources said.

Last week, Sun said it would offer a free, simplified version of its own application server. The vendor also cut pricing for the standard and enterprise editions of the product to $2,000 and $10,000 per CPU, respectively.

About 75 percent of WebLogic deployments currently run on Sun's Unix-based hardware, analysts estimate.

BEA is seeking to align itself with other hardware vendors, said Mike Gilpin, research fellow at Giga Information Group.

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Sun can tie Sun ONE to its server products, giving it an advantage over BEA, said Vin D'Amico, director of application development at Corporate Technologies, Burlington, Mass.

Gilpin said BEA has a backup plan with Hewlett-Packard to deploy WebLogic more broadly on both HP's Unix and Intel-based servers.

Yet Sun Chief Strategy Officer Jonathan Schwartz told CRN that HP likely will bundle HP-UX with the Sun ONE app server.

HP, which acquired Java software from Bluestone Software in October 2000, is now trying to get rid of those Java products, according to recent reports.

Schwartz said the Sun ONE Application Server is a good fit for HP-UX because HP already deploys the Sun ONE directory on that platform. He has "some degree of confidence" that HP will opt for Sun's app server over BEA's, especially now that the simplified Sun ONE is free of charge, he said.