BEA today announced an alliance with Dell, under which BEA WebLogic Server will be available through Dell's Infrastructure Accelerator initiative, pre-loaded on Dell PowerEdge servers. This deal may give BEA the complete hardware/software stack it needs to retain its position relative to Sun, IBM and HP.

Like iPlanet on Solaris, BEA today announced an alliance with Dell, under which BEA WebLogic Server will be available through Dell's Infrastructure Accelerator initiative, pre-loaded on Dell PowerEdge servers.

All the big players have been working at getting a complete hardware and software stack for a unified enterprise development platform. Sun has th iPlanet suite bundled with Solaris and its Sun Servers, HP now has a complete stack consisting of its NetAction (Bluestone) J2EE products and HP OS and hardware products, and IBM has the same with its own. One of BEA's disadvantages was that it was a pure software company. Although its software stack is arguably more complete and mature than that of any competitor, BEA was unable to completely bundle an end-to-end solution. Painfully aware of this deal, it looks like BEA has made the right move in going after Dell - the only major hardware vendor not owned by a J2EE server vendor (other than Compaq of course).

Read the Bea Weblogic Server Pre-Loaded in Dell's Infrastructure Accelerator Bundle press release.

This is a response I think to IBM who already bundle WebSphere/DB2 on Netfinity boxes.

So whats stopping sun from Bundling IPlanet?

It is bundling iPlanet, with Solaris and Sun Servers. Thats what the whole Sun One thing is about.

Floyd

I wonder how you make money out of this if you are BEA?
I can understand HP, IBM, SUN doing it to make
their hardware products more lucrative.
Who knows

Here is the blurb from the press release that says we make money by selling licenses. That is usually the way it works.

Bill
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BEA WebLogic Server™, recognized as the world's number one Java application server, will be pre-loaded on Dell PowerEdge servers, in a range of configurations for enterprise applications. To activate BEA WebLogic Server, customers can simply request an evaluation license or purchase a production license key from BEA. The combination of the Infrastructure Accelerator bundle for BEA, with joint
marketing and selling activities by BEA and Dell, is expected to broaden the market for Dell PowerEdge
servers running enterprise-class Java applications in multi-national companies, government agencies and small businesses.