Service-Oriented Architectures Take Center Stage At BEA eWorld

In his opening speech to kick off his company's ninth annual technology conference, Alfred Chuang, Systems founder, chairman and CEO of BEA, introduced the vendor's vision for Liquid Computing, previously code-named Project Sierra, as a long-term strategy to provide software and technology to build and deploy SOAs.

Chuang's talk, which outlined in-depth Liquid Computing's three principles of enterprise compatibility, active adaptability and breakthrough productivity, sounded like an SOA primer linking BEA's software to the very idea itself.

One analyst attendee called the speech BEA's effort to own the SOA message. "He is trying to connect the [SOA] trend to what BEA is doing so BEA is not hostage to IBM's message," said John Rymer, research director at Forrester Research.

Indeed, IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and every other major technology vendor has jumped on the SOA bandwagon over the past several months, professing that they will either support the architecture going forward or that they've been doing it all along in some way, shape or form.

In a question-and-answer session after his keynote, Chuang defended BEA against the suggestion that the company has arrived late to the SOA party, since both IBM and HP outlined SOA strategies earlier this year. Chuang said BEA has been providing software for building SOAs since the release of its WebLogic Platform 8.1 software last year.

"Talk is cheap," Chuang said. "Every one is talking about SOA. However, we are the one that is selling the platform that has done SOA for several quarters. We're not talking about how we're going to support SOA. We sell an SOA platform right now and 1,500 customers have deployed them."

Chuang positioned Liquid Computing and SOA as a replacement for traditional integration technology by providing an environment that leverages standard technologies and can adapt quickly and effortlessly to constantly changing business needs. This Holy Grail of melding business effectiveness and IT will enable every VAR and developer that touches applications in a system to change business processes and applications in minutes rather than hours, days or months, he said.

"The fundamental promise of SOA is to close the IT gap with users--that struggle between the demands of the business and what IT can deliver," Chuang said. "We need IT systems that drastically reduce the time needed to address business change. The current situation is unacceptable."

CRN reported last week that BEA would introduce Liquid Computing, as well as another project Chuang outlined in his talk, Project Quicksilver (see story). Quicksilver is a project aimed at building software that combines messaging, Web services management and monitoring technology into one product.

In his keynote, Chuang also unveiled Project Alchemy, a project for an occasionally connected mobile browser that he said Adam Bosworth, BEA's chief architect, are scheduled to detail in a keynote Wednesday.

Late last year, Bosworth disclosed details of Alchemy but not the code name in a CRN interview, describing it as a wireless browser that can allow applications to be updated in the background, allowing for better performance of Web-based applications on wireless devices (see story).

Bosworth said at the time that BEA was attempting to build a persistent browser that can download e-mails and other information sent via a wireless network in the background immediately when it is sent so users can receive information on demand.

Following Chuang's keynote, Hewlett-Packard Chief Strategy and Technology Officer Shane Robison unveiled new HP software and services for the deployment of SOAs in his address to attendees. The new software, Real-Time Information Director, leverages BEA WebLogic Server to apply business rules in realtime, while integrating, cleansing, aggregating and distributing critical business data across company, supplier and partner systems.

Robison also unveiled a plan with BEA that makes HP OpenView the preferred network management software platform for BEA WebLogic. However, in his question-and-answer session after the keynote addresses, BEA's Chuang said that while HP is the primary network-management software to be integrated with WebLogic, BEA also would support a host of other network-management software on its platform, including products from Computer Associates International and BMC.

In other eWorld news Tuesday morning, BEA CTO Scott Dietzen announced that the Apache Software Foundation accepted BEA's Project Beehive and will oversee work on the project. Under Project Beehive, which was announced last week, BEA is open-sourcing the application framework of its WebLogic Workshop tool, including Workshop controls and runtime.