Sun To Bundle BEA App Server With Solaris

The move runs counter to comments Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy made recently that Sun aims to steal considerable market share from BEA by offering a Java app server in its Solaris operating system. Solaris 9 already includes a free, limited-use version of the Sun ONE app server.

Sun will offer an enterprise version of WebLogic with a six-month evaluation license in the update of Solaris 9, due out in January, said Eric Stahl, director of product marketing for WebLogic Server at BEA. "It's basically providing a broad reach for us to get a large volume of product out to the Sun community," Stahl said.

The majority of WebLogic deployments already run on Solaris, which is why the deal is a natural evolution of Sun and BEA's partnership, he said.

While Sun and BEA indeed have paired closely in the past, Sun in the past year has become an aggressive competitor to BEA. McNealy has been clear in his comments to the press--most recently at the Comdex show last month--that a Java application server should not be sold as a separate product but instead should come built into an entire operating system.

Along with its free J2EE app server in Solaris 9, Sun also offers an enterprise configuration of its Sun ONE app server for a fee.

To ward off Sun's recent moves, BEA has aligned itself with Hewlett-Packard to sell app servers. BEA has a similar deal to bundle its WebLogic app server with HP hardware systems, and also struck a deal with Intel to ensure WebLogic would run smoothly on HP servers running Intel chips.

According to the latest Giga Information Group numbers, BEA is tied for No. 1 app-server market share with IBM, with Sun's app server share a distant second.

Graham Lovell, director of Solaris marketing at Sun, said that while Sun's priority is still to sell its own products, the company still recognizes that BEA is a leading app server running on Solaris.

"Clearly, as a company we want to sell our own solutions, but it's also important to us that there's a partner opportunity here," Lovell said.

Curt Stevenson, vice president of business development at Boston-based solution provider Back Bay Technologies, said he does not see the bundling as Sun abandoning its app server business. Instead, he thinks it shows Sun's faith in its own product.

"It probably is not going to affect Sun's positioning on the SunONE app server, except perhaps by showing that they are confident enough in their product to ship a competitor's," Stevenson said.

Stevenson also said that just because an OS has a free app server doesn't mean customers won't buy another product if they think it's a better solution.

"An application server decision at the enterprise level is still a significant one, and corporate customers are probably not going to be swayed by what is shipped," Stevenson said. "WebLogic is the right choice for some customers and Sun ONE is right for others."