BEA moves beyond app server

With the launch of WebLogic 8.1, BEA Systems has outlined its vision for making itself an integration software vendor.

Completely integrating WebLogic’s portal, application server, and development tool for the first time, WebLogic 8.1 represents a major upgrade to the platform, said Alfred Chuang, CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based BEA.

“Our software shares a single common code base,” Chuang said. “This technology is built to work together.”

WebLogic 8.1 also features a greatly expanded role for its WebLogic Workshop development tool, which can now be used to build custom Java applications as well as WebLogic Portal applications.

This more integrated WebLogic reflects a focus on application integration rather than just software development, said Tod Nielsen, BEA’s chief marketing officer. As well as continuing to support the emerging Web services standards, BEA will focus on ease of deployment and application security, he said.

“We are expanding to be much more than just an application server,” Nielsen said.

Virgin Mobile USA has been using WebLogic to build both an application server and a Web services infrastructure for its cellular telephone services. “For us, it was a leap of faith to go to a combined integration and application environment,” said Michael Parks, CIO of Virgin Mobile USA in Warren, N.J.

The fact that WebLogic itself is now an integrated application was a selling point for Virgin, said Parks, who had also evaluated IBM’s WebSphere.

The big question for BEA is whether or not its software partners will work with BEA or try to solve the integration problem themselves, said David Zilkha, an analyst at Greenwich, Conn.-based investment company Shumway Capital Partners.

“A lot of the applications vendors are building integration into their applications, which is why the independent integration guys are suffering,” Zilkha said. “The big risk is that as an independent integration company, the market passes [BEA] by.”