The Yankee Group released a report named "Why Microsoft Should Buy BEA Systems" which says "Microsoft could use BEA to stave off competition to .Net from IBM". People have come out against the report, saying that it isn't thought out, and that it won't happen. Why do analysts come out with this? It is Jan 1, not April 1 :)

Read Analyst Encourages Microsoft Acquisition of BEA

Ted Neward discusses the report in Microsoft buys BEA?

Hmmm...and April 1st is still 3 months away!

I think the Microsoft purchase of BEA would be a smart move -- for Microsoft. By buying BEA, Microsoft would extend it's product offering to negate the whole ".NET vs. J2EE" argument from a sales perspective. No different than alot of software solution providers.

BEA's market penetration would help isolate any Sun/McNealy backlash. Plus, Gates was anti-Sun, not necessarily Java contrary to what we heard in the media circus. C#/J# are testimony to that. They could grab a large community of development resources by proxy.

But the smaller development companies and innovaters will get crushed. IT Managers will go back to "buy at one store" mentality and buy the new mythical "MS .J framework" and that would be that.

As far as BEA goes, they already seem to be adopting MS strategies in their product line with Weblogic Workshop. I see more advertisements for this tool than their platform product. Smells alot like the Visual Basic and Studio push not too long ago. Plus, JRockit is a serious competitor to Sun's JVM for x86 machines. This alone would be icing on the cake for Gates to stick it to McNealy. And a blow to Linux.

Let's hope that this story is just of an analyst who's not happy with his BEAS holdings and is praying for a push.


- Frank Bolander

"Plus, Gates was anti-Sun, not necessarily Java "

Hmm. I'd heard someone say he was anti-innovation where the innovation didn't line his pocket.

"As far as BEA goes, they already seem to be adopting MS strategies in their product line with Weblogic Workshop. I see more advertisements for this tool than their platform product. Smells alot like the Visual Basic and Studio push not too long ago"

Indeed. In fact, I believe BEA recruitred a core team of ex M$ people. I am working with workshop and it is the closest thing to the M$ world I've seen in J2EE, what with those control things ending in 'cx' :)

In my opinion it is a leap forward because it *will* make it very much easier to develop not just J2EE stuff, but the range of the BEA product offerings such as WLI and Portal. But at the moment, in my opinion it constitutes business prevention in some areas because it is literally too slow to develop with. 8.1 sp2 is supposed to have addressed some of the perf issues but I haven't tried it yet. The M$ close coupling strategy does have its benefits though, for example, the IDE (workshop) is always up to date with the latest version of the app server.

"Plus, JRockit is a serious competitor to Sun's JVM for x86 machines."

Not so. It is a specialised server side VM, Sun's VM would always prevail against JRockit. In our experience JRockit causes too many problems to seriously consider. Perhaps the recently released version will improve.

All in all, I hope M$ come nowhere near BEA, that would be my livelihood up the swanny unless I get some J2EE->.net training :(


>
> - Frank Bolander

I'm sure MS shareholders are thankful of that :) However, most of the bluster in the press surrounded Gates vs. McNealy. In the end, noone won and I'm not sure innovation ideals were defended.

> In my opinion it is a leap forward because it *will* make it very much easier to develop not just J2EE stuff, but the range of the BEA product offerings such as WLI and Portal. But at the moment, in my opinion it constitutes business prevention in some areas because it is literally too slow to develop with. 8.1 sp2 is supposed to have addressed some of the perf issues but I haven't tried it yet. The M$ close coupling strategy does have its benefits though, for example, the IDE (workshop) is always up to date with the latest version of the app server.

Architectures based around IDE's are a problem and in my career have caused the early demise of a lot of technologies before their time. You get locked into a monolithic view of a problem solution and have to wait for the IDE to catch up to the developer feedback. That's why RAD/CASE and to some extent UML never lived up to promises(MDA seems interesting but the jury still seems out). Easier doesn't always necessarily mean the right solution.

>
> Not so. It is a specialised server side VM, Sun's VM would always prevail against JRockit. In our experience JRockit causes too many problems to seriously consider. Perhaps the recently released version will improve.

Sorry, should've clarified. I was talking about server side JVM. I've had opposite experiences with respect to thread handling, GC, stability and performance under heavy stress conditions -- admittedly to my surprise. JRockit isn't perfect by any means but it is a serious threat. IBM has also launched an attack with their JVM. The gauntlet is being thrown down at Sun. It will be interesting to see if they pick it up. If MS were to buy BEA, they'd be definitely at a disadvantage dollar for dollar.

I agree, I don't want to take any J2EE->.net classes either...

The main issue with BEA is they need a strategy for keeping developer-seat licensing revenues. All other application server vendors have eliminated developer licensing. BEA has taken a partial step by suggesting one year free. The focus on Workshop over their server products stays inline with this thought. They also know that if people become aware that their are several eclipse plugins that are better than workshop, they will have no choice but to close up shop.

Maybe Gartner will announce tomorrow BEA is planning to buy Microsoft. Then next week Sun will buy IBM. Most research analysts have no idea what there writing anyways and by no means are they great predictors of technology trends by any stretch of the imagination. The analyst should go hide under a rock with a another case of liquor wait for spring and try again.

Understand Microsoft first, they take the best of (steal) technologies and improve upon them over time knowing their captive customers will continue to wait and pay. They continually hire (steal) the best people from Apple, Sun, and IBM and now have what they think is a superior technology to J2SE/J2EE/J2ME overall. The last thing they need to clutter up their precious little empire with any non-Microsoft invented technology. If they really thought Java was superior they would have walked down a path with Sun long ago. They have a great development environment which BEA, Sun and IBM are all patterning after today so what do they have to gain by buying BEA who in fact hired away key employees to match Microsoft development tools. Also why would Microsoft want to create an internal/external war over their clearly stated future development strategy to customers?

Microsoft would be better off spending the few billion dollars on marketing and R&D vs. buying BEA. Microsoft owns the small and middle markets, they just haven’t proved to the enterprise market with many of their products they will actually scale cost effectively in large implementations. Microsoft is in every large enterprise, they just can’t prove it’s better and BEA alone won’t help that either.

The statement about BEA’s stock price is weak, the last I recall there still making money with their tiny product line. BEA has a solid customer base but future licensing costs will be critical to compete against IBM. This on-demand stuff tends to hide the traditional costs of licensing. In many cases today IBM is offering package deals to enterprises that encompass a wide-range of their products so their just squeezing BEA out by default. You have a company that can offer software, hardware, hosting and pro services so that’s an overall challenge to all companies.

What is the real business problem being solved here if such a thing were to happen? I’m still choosing between two frameworks which I know one will work and the other is questionable. I just don’t see the customer impact being that of cost savings or shorter implementations, just more confusion. I doubt the FTC would let happen anyways.

I wished I had a job like the analyst (weatherman), no accountability yet still get paid.

I agree Joe: I don't expect Microsoft to acquire something where they don't control the plaform. They'll have to adhere to the Java and J2EE specifications to be compliant. And we know how it went with MS adhering to the Java specification....

That's should be a kidding.

but, what if that comes to reality, that's would be awful!

So if Microsoft bought BEA, I just the BEA platform would be issuing new security patches every hour of everday. :-)

First and foremost question comes to my mind -
This will mean microsoft supporting "something" which runs on unix. Is it possible ? forget about strategy, market cap, competition etc. going into unix or linux environment will be a BIG move for MSFT.

It's more than possible, it is already true:

<
Rotor is a CLI implementation that runs on FreeBSD & MacOS.

Sean: This will mean microsoft supporting "something" which runs on unix. Is it possible?

Craig: It's more than possible, it is already true: Rotor is a CLI implementation that runs on FreeBSD & MacOS.

Microsoft has produced Unix software for years and years. Among other humorous examples are "Microsoft Internet Explorer for Solaris." As far as MacOS, Microsoft sells more software for MacOS than almost any other company does.

However, Rotor is hardly a good example, since you can't use it for anything other than research.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
Tangosol, Inc.
Coherence: Clustered JCache for Grid Computing!

Without Microsoft Office X for Macintosh Apple would not be in business at all! :)

So the Unix software vendors better pray to god that MS do not decide to port more software to Unix.

Regards
Rolf Tollerud

Actually, it makes a lot of sense, I would buy (of course if I could) them all including IBM and Oracle, Oracle could be a Christmas present to PeopleSoft and PeopleSoft then would migrate the entire suite to .NET and SQL Server embedded CRL. The only question is what would the BEA acquisition price?

The Yankee Group was purchased by Microsoft late Friday, 2nd January 2004. The
<br>sale was made for an undisclosed amout of cash late that afternoon.
The employees of the disbanded Yankee group were given a choice of moving to <br>Bangladore, India, with no moving fees, or learning the ethnic language spoken <br> in Bangladore and accepting an 80% reduction in wages.
A Microsoft spokesperson said that every former BEAer she spoke with was
<br> delighted a the new mangement.

BEA will get purchased soon. Recently they just changed the comp plan for their executives to protect them in case of a buy out. M$ has the cash, Adam Bosworth who came to BEA from Crossgain azquisition is an ex-m$ employee and a smart one at that. This would be a move clearly targeted at IBM. Either IBM or M$ will buy BEA IMHO.

Here is the article about the executive comp plans...http://www.forbes.com/technology/newswire/2003/12/16/rtr1183591.html basically, all execs will get two years pay and highest possible bonus if there is a change in control.

What about HP?

How about Sun buying BEA ?

Dion,
    Its obvious. The analysts have to produce some reports to prove their existence. I am sure, Bill Gates is brilliant not to buy into such an analysis.

Here is the simple reasons.

BEA's main product is J2EE server. Microsoft created a whole C# and .NET environment only to counter balance J2EE, not necessarily Sun Microsystems.

Why MS worried about J2EE? B'cos it runs in Unix and Linux and any operating system, not tied to MicroSoft platform.

So MS real concern is, protecting its cash cow, Windows. Remember, they were able to kill all other competition just because they have a powerful weapon Windows.(well, atleast commercially).

Now, for an argument, if MS buys BEA only to kill it (they cant enhance the product, b'cos that means enhancing J2EE against .NET. only in my dreams this could happen), that alone will not solve the problem.

B'cos BEA is not the only J2EE provider. There is JBOSS, SUN, ATG, Oracle, and that 100 ton Guerilla IBM. This will clear the market for IBM and Sun not for MS.

And now, why the analysts recommends MS to buy BEA?? I guess, they wanted to entertain the markets for the start of the year. No more value.

Every so often, there is a big shift in an industry. The shifts are not usually visible until long after they've happened, making you look back and say: "Oh yeah, things were different back then".

We are experiencing a major IT industry shift right now, and if you know where to look you can actually see it as it happens. This shift is all about Microsoft and open source.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13350

Can Yankees think only about money or short term goals?

What advantage BEA will give to MS? Only name and clients.

Client are smart enough to know what to buy.

BEA is not a .NET product company. (Can only help in Bridging)

MS will have to start from scratch.

MS should buy a established .NET company which also provides .NET and J2EE bridging, unless MS wants to kill a good J2EE product.

and many more reasons ....

Only four days ago, I wouldn't have thought it possible that these so called market analysts could be able to outdo last year's show of utter incompetence in 2004 :-=

How to see this move as a positive development to J2ee Community.
How it help Java Programmers.
I hope something great comes out of all for Java Programmers

I 'm working with WebLogic now
for more than 2 years,
but if MS make this move to buy Bea,
the first thing I would make is to search another application server
(probably BES or Pramati)
because it would mean the end of WebLogic,
slowly but surely

Maybe some analysts are just trying to get BEA's stock price to go up so they t conjure up an aquisition story.

Heck, maybe even BEA put them up to it; to drive up interest from others like IBM or to boost the stock price! Who knows?

Maybe it's the open source community trying to cause mass confusion and panic in the streets?

In the very first week of the new year alone, there are 3 articles about .NET.

"Your J2EE Community" indeed.