Dennis Byron

Will Oracle Pass BEA In the Middleware Market?

Hi Robert. Thanks for the comment. In my phrase in the last paragraph of my December 21 SeekingAlpha opinion, "if Fusion doesn't do the job," I am referring to Fusion in the broadest sense, just as Oracle does in defining middleware. I do not mean just the application server, lower case (not just OC4J if that helps).

As the original post tries to argue, Oracle's broad definition of middleware is what will allow Oracle to "overtake BEA" in Oracle's fourth fiscal quarter
-- BEA doesn't offer products in most of the categories that Oracle (and IBM, SAP and Microsoft) call middleware so of course Oracle will eventually be larger (unless BEA acquires someone in the 4GL, business intelligence/analytics or collaboration markets).
-- I have never understood Oracle management's obsession with this claim (which is always made to the investor community, not to those of us that follow the technology closely) because it is so misleading.
I can only conclude it is an attempt to divert attention from the broader picture.

That big picture, under the numbers, is that Oracle is really competing against IBM, SAP and Microsoft with Fusion middleware, not BEA. Fusion middleware is still just in the process of becoming a suite (I think Oracle calls it a platform) in the way that WebSphere, NetWeaver and implicitly the middleware bundled into NT already are (because the others have been at it longer and/or are less dependent on acquisitions). That's why I still think there's a chance Fusion in this broad sense "won't do the job" for your applications guys as they try to truly integrate the many application architectures (10, I think, last time I counted) they have inherited.

If that happens and Oracle needs another middleware suite to put under its next-generation apps, BEA would be a good choice (or the best of some bad choices:
-- SAP and Microsoft would make no sense because they are the direct applications market competitors
-- IBM would probably be a bad choice culturally although I think the market would accept it).

(Hopefully it's clear from the above that I am looking at SAP NetWeaver in this same broad way, not just at its application server, lower case. In fact, I have said publicly that I think that the NWAS is NetWeaver's weak link and I would like to see SAP get something like the TP-monitor capbility that was built into Basis under their next-generation apps.)

Dennis