WebLogic software gets a revamp

NEWS

BEA Sytems will seek to reposition WebLogic as an application suite for integrating business processes when it brings out a major upgrade to its flagship server software in the first half of next year. Code-named Gibraltar, the upcoming version of WebLogic is intended to strengthen the application integration and portal features of the Java application server and integrate closely with BEA's development tool, WebLogic Workshop. BEA and IBM are battling for the top spot in the market for Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) application servers, which act as container for running custom-built Java applications. The key goals of the Gibraltar upgrade are to combine application development with application integration and to bind together the different WebLogic modules, including the portal, application integration broker, Workshop development tool and Liquid Data data access software, said Olivier Helleboid, president of BEA's products division. "We are trying to provide one place where the developer can work at the business process level and integrate their own things with third-party tools and applications," he said. "Our vision is to be a workshop for integration that takes a business process management approach." A developer, Helleboid said, will be able to write code for a Web services application within WebLogic Workshop and more easily tie other software resources into the application, such as information from a content management system or an Oracle database. BEA muscled into the market for development tools last March with the introduction of WebLogic Workshop, which is intended to simplify the creation of Web services applications. With the second version of the Workshop software, also due in the first half of 2003, developers will be able to create applications that take advantage of all the different WebLogic modules, Helleboid said. The Workshop upgrade will also offer support for the latest Web services standards, including BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services), SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) and, if it is finalised, WS-Security (Web Services Security), he said. Gaining the loyalty of application developers is critically important to vendors of Java application server such as BEA and IBM, as well as to other software companies like Microsoft. Once built and installed, business applications drive sales of operating systems and application servers. "If developers don't have good tools, they're not going to commit to that platform. The switching costs are very low," said Joshua Walker, an analyst at Forrester Research. "These companies have these really high-end application servers that run like race cars, but the problem is that people aren't driving them that much." Although BEA is well established with large companies that have complex computing needs, it still faces stiff competition in the server software arena. With the added features, such as a portal and integration middleware, BEA is seeking to differentiate itself from other J2EE vendors. The company is also investigating adding "change management" features to WebLogic to help system administrators deploy and manage different software versions. BEA's efforts to introduce add-on applications to its server software mirror the industry trend toward what research firm Gartner calls "application platform suites." A recent research note from Gartner noted that Java application server vendors, including BEA, IBM, Sybase, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Iona Technologies, have bundled integration middleware and portals with their application servers.

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