Analyst: BEA, HP To Partner More Closely

"If you ask HP who are your key software partners that you are planning to partner with in the future, they will say BEA and Microsoft," said Mike Gilpin, research fellow for Giga Information Group. "[BEA is equally important to HP in that regard."

Rumors have been brewing among industry reports that HP, based here, plans to sell off the Java 2, Enterprise Edition [J2EE-based middleware it acquired when it bought Bluestone Software in October 2000. HP most recently has been giving its J2EE app server away for free after the server failed to perform well in the competitive J2EE market, which is dominated by BEA and IBM.

HP has yet to confirm or deny the reports it will dump its Java middleware, but one solution provider, who requested anonymity, said Bluestone Middleware is "definitely on the [selling block."

As Sun Microsystems gears up to unveil its Sun ONE software platform this week--a platform Sun hopes will win market share from BEA's industry-leading WebLogic platform--industry observers say the relationship between Sun and BEA may become strained. BEA likely will align itself with other hardware vendors to maintain its market share, they say.

BEA currently sells about 80 percent of its WebLogic platform to run on Sun's Unix-based server line, according to analysts.

Anticipating competition from Sun, BEA late last year forged a partnership with Intel and plans to optimize its platform on Intel-based servers--such as those sold by HP--using JRockit, a Java virtual machine it acquired earlier this year. BEA will make its version of JRockit available next week, said sources close to the company.

Next week BEA will unveil the general availability of its J2EE app server, WebLogic Server 7.0, as well as BEA WebLogic Platform 7.0, a unified J2EE and Web services development platform comprised of its app server, integration server, portal server and WebLogic Workshop development environment, said sources close to BEA.

Gilpin said that this unified WebLogic platform increasingly will be sold with HP's Unix-based operating system, HP UX, as the two companies become more closely aligned.