BEA recruits 30 ISVs for Workshop

BEA Systems Inc. said 30 independent software vendors (ISVs) have agreed to support WebLogic Workshop, its integrated developer environment for building enterprise Java applications.

Actional Corp., Blue Titan Software Inc., Salesforce.com Inc., E.piphany Inc., Documentum Inc. and FileNet Corp. are among the vendors building controls and extensions that will allow developers to link functionality from their products with Java applications being developed in WebLogic Workshop 8.1, BEA announced Monday.

For example, Actional makes software for managing and monitoring the performance of Web services applications. It created a set of controls that makes it easy for a developer to integrate performance data from Actional’s software into an application being built using Workshop, said James Philips, an Actional senior vice president.

Gathering support from ISVs is crucial for BEA as it tries to establish a market for Workshop, said Shawn Willet, principal analyst with Current Analysis Inc. in Sterling, Virginia. “What BEA needs to do is make sure they get the big-name ERP guys on board too, like Siebel (Systems Inc.),” he said.

The 30 ISVs signed on to BEA’s Controls and Extensibility Program, which includes a free development kit, sample code and documentation to help them create controls for Workshop, as well as joint marketing initiatives with BEA. “It wasn’t hard at all, they make it very easy,” Philips said.

About half a dozen ISVs will have Workshop controls ready Monday, with the remainder coming in the next “30 to 60 to 90 days,” according to Dave Cotter, BEA director of developer product marketing.

BEA isn’t alone in its efforts. Microsoft Corp. announced a similar program in July to encourage ISVs to create extensions for its Visual Studio .Net environment. Its Visual Studio Industry Partner software development kit is free to small ISVs and costs up to $10,000 for larger partners, Microsoft said at the time. [See “Microsoft revamps developer partner program,” July 29.]

Indeed, Microsoft has partnered with some of the same ISV’s being courted by BEA. Actional is creating controls for Visual Studio that it plans to announce in the near future, Philips said.

In another boost for Workshop, BEA announced that Salesforce.com will use Workshop as a base for its Sforce developer environment, which allows customers to customize Salesforce.com’s hosted CRM (customer relationship management) applications. “There’s a licensing framework where they will distribute Workshop for their developer base,” BEA’s Cotter said.

BEA won’t release figures about how many customers it has for Workshop, in part because the product is still fairly new, according to Cotter. Actional is seeing interest among its customers for Workshop, which is why it decided to work with BEA, according to Philips.

ISV’s can download BEA’s Workshop Extensibility Development Kit for free at http://dev2dev.bea.com/products/wlworkshop81/workshop_ext.jsp