BEA Takes Aim At Portal Arena

BEA Systems

BEA, based here, unveiled BEA WebLogic Portal 7.0 as part of the unified BEA WebLogic Platform--comprised of an application server, portal, integration server and the WebLogic Workshop tool--in early June. The stand-alone portal will be generally available this week for $57,000 per CPU, which includes a clustered version of the BEA WebLogic app server, said a company spokesman.

WebLogic Portal 7.0 includes native Web services support in the form of new administration tools that will consume and display Web services built on multiple platforms, according to BEA. Platforms supported include Microsoft .Net and BEA's own WebLogic Workshop development environment, the company said.

To help solution providers develop on its portal, BEA is launching the BEA Portal Solution Center, http://portalsolutions.bea.com. The center gives solution providers access to resources, including a portlet catalog, prebuilt connections to third-party enterprise applications and predesigned portal solutions from systems integrators, the company said.

According to research from IDC, BEA still leads in Java-based application server market share with 24.8 percent over IBM's 23 percent. But BEA has been reshaping its image in the past year, positioning itself as an application infrastructure provider offering a complete J2EE-compliant middleware stack for building enterprise applications and Web services.

While BEA and J2EE-based platform competitors IBM and Sun Microsystems all sell similar products on a stand-alone basis, the availability of WebLogic Platform 7.0 in June made BEA the first vendor to offer a unified platform combining them.

Mike Gilpin, research fellow at Giga Information Group, said marketing will be key to BEA's success in markets beyond the app server space.

"Historically, customers have perceived them as being specifically focused on app servers and even where they had [other offerings, customers weren't necessarily aware that they had them," said Gilpin. "It's important as communication of this new strategy is taking place that BEA succeeds in getting that message out and changing that perception so they're seen as a platform player, not just [an app server [player."

Mike DeBellis, principal and e-business CTO of Deloitte Consulting, said he has witnessed BEA making strides in the portal space against stand-alone vendors. "We're seeing them more and more in selections that would've gone to Epicentric or Plumtree," said DeBellis. "We're seeing them as definite competitors in the portal space."

DeBellis said BEA's main advantage when competing against IBM with a complete middleware platform is that BEA's products are more tightly integrated.

"IBM on paper looks like they have similar capabilities, but the problem is that IBM is a loose confederation of 20 different products that may as well have been developed by different companies and aren't well integrated," said DeBellis.