Dr. Dobb's | BEA Places SOA At Center Of 360 Vision

BEA Places SOA At Center Of 360 Vision

BEA Systems is working to unify its technology within a new product line dubbed BEA SOA 360 , introduced at this week's BEAWorld user conference in San Francisco. The introduction is part of BEA's ongoing effort to overhaul its product portfolio and position itself at the center of the enterprise software industry's move toward SOA.

September 21, 2006
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/web-development/bea-places-soa-at-center-of-360-vision/193004696

BEA Systems is working to unify its technology within a new product line dubbed BEA SOA 360 , introduced at this week's BEAWorld user conference in San Francisco. The introduction is part of BEA's ongoing effort to overhaul its product portfolio and position itself at the center of the enterprise software industry's move toward SOA (services-oriented architecture).

The BEA SOA 360 platform will be built atop BEA's newly named BEA microService Architecture (mSA). The mSA will underpin all of BEA's products by the end of 2008, according to company executives. The new line is BEA's strategy for melding its own disparate product lines: Tuxedo, WebLogic and AquaLogic, with those it has picked up through a spate of acquisitions, such as its purchase of portals vendor Plumtree last year.

While technical details on BEA SOA 360 are still scant, BEA says it is committed to SOA ideals of modular, lightweight design focused on standards-based and open-source software.

BEA also introduced a new tools product line, WorkSpace 360 , which will begin shipping next year. Tailored editions for business analysts, architects, developers and IT operations will help users design and implement systems of linked business processes.

BEA is hitching its wagon to the SOA movement to give it a technical and marketing advantage in the rapidly consolidating enterprise software market. Last year it began reshaping its product line, introducing the AquaLogic portfolio of SOA infrastructure offerings. Since then it has completed a number of smaller deals to add specific, very technical pieces of functionality to its portfolio, such as its purchase last month of metadata repository software maker Flashline.

Analysts generally applauded the moves, although BEA is currently suffering some turbulence on Wall Street for delaying regulatory filings as it reviews its history of stock options grants, the same issue afflicting Apple, Novell and other tech companies.