Google nabs top engineer from BEA

BEA Systems Inc. has lost an important research and development engineer to search engine giant Google Inc.

Adam Bosworth, BEA’s chief architect and senior vice president of advanced development, has found himself a new job at Google and ended his employment at BEA on Friday, a BEA spokeswoman said.

“He held a senior engineering role that contributed to the technical directions of the company,” the spokeswoman said, adding that Bosworth had lately been focusing on BEA’s WebLogic Workshop Java development environment.

Bosworth played a fairly important role in BEA’s application development tools segment and was a valuable employee, but his departure isn’t a huge loss for BEA, nor is it something that should make BEA clients concerned, said Shawn Willett, a Current Analysis Inc. analyst.

“I don’t think it’s a huge deal for BEA at this point, unless there’s an exodus,” Willett said. “Not to diminish Bosworth in any way — he’s very smart and a tech visionary — but nobody is indispensable in these companies.”

Willett also pointed out that BEA has recently hired employees from companies such as Tibco Software Inc. and WebMethods Inc.

BEA isn’t disclosing any plans with regard to replacing Bosworth, the spokeswoman said. Google didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment about Bosworth’s new appointment.

Bosworth arrived at BEA in 2001 when it bought Crossgain, a company he co-founded, according to a biographical sketch of him on BEA’s Web site. Prior to founding Crossgain, Bosworth worked at Microsoft Corp. as a senior manager, and managed Microsoft’s XML program between 1997 and 1999.

At BEA he had been working most recently on a project called Alchemy. The goal was to extend the common Web browser with new caching and other technologies that make it easier to work productively while employees are traveling and offline.

In May, BEA disclosed that Alan Fudge, senior vice president of sales for the Americas, had left the company, and that Olivier Helleboid, executive vice president in charge of BEA’s product group, had been moved to a new role directing BEA’s long-term strategy.