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Oracle faces skeptical BEA customer base
According to a survey taken last week by TheServerSide and its sister sites, BEA users are wary of what the Oracle takeover means for them.
In fact, it looks as if Oracle acquiring BEA could be a major disruption event in application development, either by establishing Oracle with a brand new customer base or by releasing a slew of user free agents. The users in this poll reported very little BEA/Oracle development product overlap and a generally unfavorable view of Oracle's app dev offerings. It would seem Oracle needs to offer robust support and advancement of the BEA product line if it hopes to retain these customers. Both the survey summary and raw numbers are up for public viewing.
And thank you to everyone who participated in the poll.
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Actually I see More Opportunities
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Message #260173
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Re: Oracle faces skeptical BEA customer base
BEA users can switch to open source alternatives.
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Message #260180
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Re: Oracle faces skeptical BEA customer base
A good recap of Oracle's BEA acqusition strategy: http://www.column2.com/2008/07/oracle-bea-strategy-briefing/
Notice that under strategic products:
<quote>
Strategic products
* BEA products being adopted immediately with limited re-design into Oracle Fusion middleware
* No corresponding Oracle products exist in majority of cases
</quote>
Oracle is a smart company and they have an excellent record of making mergers work - witness Peoplesoft acqusition. They won't squander the jewels from BEA's acquisition. This survey may be tainted by responder's perceptions rather than reality.
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Message #260183
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Re: Oracle faces skeptical BEA customer base
* No corresponding Oracle products exist in majority of cases
I think people are concerned about the minority cases where there are corresponding products. I believe they've already announced that they are dropping some BEA offerings. News like this heightens those concerns.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-9961373-62.html
It may be overwrought but WebLogic users are afraid that instead of killing off OC4J, Oracle will kill off WebLogic.
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Message #260187
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Re: Oracle faces skeptical BEA customer base
As James mentioned above, this link talks about Oracle discontinuing AquaLogic: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-9961373-62.html
Here, posted two years ago as a transcript to a BEA earnings conference call, they said:
AquaLogic had an excellent quarter. AquaLogic license revenue not only grew year-over-year, but it also grew sequentially and again represented more than 10% of our license revenue. Nine out of the $17 million plus deals included AquaLogic products. We signed our very first standalone $1 million plus license deal for the AquaLogic User Interface -- User Interaction products in Q1."
So, from a cursory analysis of all this, if Oracle discontinued AquaLogic after it provided so much revenue, I suppose the same could happen to WebLogic but only if the same conditions existed with WebLogic as they did with AquaLogic.
And I doubt that's the case. Just based on intuition.
Cheers,
David
Flux - Java Job Scheduler. File Transfer. Workflow.
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Message #260192
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When was the survey conducted?
I could be wrong, but it seems that the survey was conducted prior to the strategic plans being announced by Oracle and BEA. It also seems that the survey was conducted during Oracle's SEC "quiet period", meaning no one with in Oracle (or BEA) could have (legally) talked about the strategies as they would have material impact on the market place.
This clearly explains the "uneasy masses". It was simply (and legally) not possible for Oracle or BEA to contact customers. The SEC regulations on acquisitions and end of financial reporting "quiet periods) are very clear - no communication that will materially effect the market. What is "material" is really anyones guess, so basically it becomes "no communication".
While I'm no statistics guy, it's very possible that the data represented in the survey (possibly being based on conjecture due to the lack of communication) is statistically invalid. It's very possible it's a "hyped survey" for "media purposes".
Perhaps if the survey was run again AND people being surveyed where asked a). if they have read or heard about the strategic plans and b) had their questions answered by their local BEA/Oracle contact, the results may be more statistically valid.
Instead of panicing, it's best to find out information from the owner of the strategy - Thomas Kurian. A good starting point is here: http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/ofmradio.html
-- Brian
Product Management @ Oracle (warmly welcoming all of BEA ;)
PS: One of the tough parts about the "quiet period" is not being able to talk about the new innovations that BEA and Oracle are creating - like Web Logical Application Grid - best of breed Data Grid (Coherence), best of breed real-time management (Web Logic Liquid Operations Control) and best of breed Real-Time JVM (JRocket Real Time). All of these products are available separately, but now together... just as the joint BEA and Oracle customers have been asking for ;)
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Message #260193
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When was the survey conducted?
I could be wrong, but it seems that the survey was conducted prior to the strategic plans being announced by Oracle and BEA. It also seems that the survey was conducted during Oracle's SEC "quiet period", meaning no one with in Oracle (or BEA) could have (legally) talked about the strategies as they would have material impact on the market place.
This clearly explains the "uneasy masses". It was simply (and legally) not possible for Oracle or BEA to contact customers. Would we have liked too? Sure. Could anyone? No.
The SEC regulations on acquisitions and end of financial year reporting "quiet periods" are very clear - no communication that will materially effect the market. What is "material" is really anyones guess, so basically it becomes "no communication".
While I'm no statistics guy, it's very possible that the data represented in the survey (possibly being based on conjecture due to the lack of communication) is statistically invalid. It's possible it's a "hyped survey".
Perhaps if the survey was run again AND people being surveyed were asked a). if they have read or heard about the strategic plans and b) had their questions/concerns addressed by their local BEA/Oracle contact, the results may be more statistically valid.
Instead of panicing, it's best to find out information from the owner of the strategy - Thomas Kurian. A good starting point is here: http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/ofmradio.html
-- Brian
Product Management @ Oracle (warmly welcoming all of BEA ;)
PS: One of the tough parts about the "quiet period" is not being able to talk about the new innovations that BEA and Oracle are creating - like Web Logical Application Grid - best of breed Data Grid (Coherence), best of breed real-time management (Web Logic Liquid Operations Control) and best of breed Real-Time JVM (JRocket Real Time). All of these products remain available separately, but also now together... just what customers have been asking for ;)
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Message #260197
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Re: When was the survey conducted?
The survey was conducted last week, which would be after the quiet period, unless it JUST ended, I suppose?
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Message #260199
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BEA acquisition
The survey was conducted last week, which would be after the quiet period, unless it JUST ended, I suppose?
The quiet period ended last Wednesday, 25 June; before that, there would have been no official announcement nor communication. Thomas Kurian's announcement on the Fusion Middleware strategy was yesterday, 1 July.
There are a lot of unfortunate restrictions that come with being a public company. At Oracle, there is always an email and intranet portal warning when the quiet period is starting, with clear explanations as to the types of things that cannot be discussed. Even outside of the quiet period, there are many topics that cannot be discussed, e.g. anything that could cause a revenue recognition issue.
At any rate, WebLogic is in good hands now, in a company that truly appreciates the value of having the leading application server in the market. Thomas Kurian (SVP for Fusion Middleware) and Steven Harris (the Oracle manager overseeing the WebLogic team and product) were two of the primary reasons why we selected Oracle in the first place as the home for our Coherence product and our Tangosol team. There will undoubtedly be hurdles that we will face as we work to integrate teams, product lines and all the while take care of our customers, but if there's any company that knows how to make acquisitions work, it's Oracle. (The irony is that BEA used to be known as "Built Entirely by Acquisition" ;-)
Peace,
Cameron Purdy
Oracle Coherence: Data Grid for Java and .NET
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Message #260202
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Re: When was the survey conducted?
But the "BEA welcome and Oracle's middleware strategy briefing" webcast, which will provide Oracle's FMW product roadmap including BEA, was just presented yesterday...
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Message #260322
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Facts instead of FUD
Lots of information for Oracle and BEA customers here:
http://www.oracle.com/products/middleware/bea.html
Developer downloads of legacy BEA products here:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/ias/bea_main.html
As you will find if you go through this information, Oracle is very serious about key BEA technologies like WebLogic, Tuxedo, JRockit and others. During the short time I've been part of Oracle I've been impressed by the depth of understanding they have for BEA products both from a technical and a business perspective. If anything, BEA customers are in better hands now since Oracle has the financial muscles for an aggressive and sustained investement in product enhancements.
Henrik Ståhl
Director PM, Oracle JRockit
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Message #260361
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Re: Facts instead of FUD
I think it's interesting where your slide states that BEA products will be combined with the Oracle products into the Fusion Architecture with as little change as possible to those BEA products (or something to that effect). Having worked with all of these products, even doing some comparison bakeoffs for TSS (when owned by Middleware Research), I can only say that this should be an interesting experience for the customer who has to configure and manage all of this.
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Message #260468
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Re: Facts instead of FUD
"only say that this should be an interesting experience for the customer who has to configure and manage all of this."
Hi John,
Oracle already has a tool : Oracle Enterprise manage Grid Control to manage the complete Application Infrastructure that includes managing/monitoring WebLogic Server beside Oracle databases and Oracle Application Server.
Please look at http://gcmw.blogspot.com for detailed instructions to discover/manage WebLogic Server. It can also manage IBM WebSphere and JBoss :)
regards
Debu Panda, Oracle
Author:EJB 3 In Action
Blog:http://debupanda.com
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Message #262326
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Re: Oracle faces skeptical BEA customer base
Skeptical - yes, but only as much as we should be. I would rather classify my reaction to the "public webcast" as cautiously optimistic. "Optimistic" because I like what I heard and "cautious" because the vision is yet to be executed - and we need to give the combined ORACLE/BEA team some time for the same.
Unreasonable - no. I would like to believe that most of the people understand the complexities of M&A of this magnitude.
As for myself, I would like to give ORACLE full marks for a very well laid out plan for "integration" of BEA products into ORACLE Fusion Middleware family of products.
I've always felt that ORACLE/BEA product suites could benefits immensely from each other & if integrated correctly - could provide significant differentiating factors in comparison with some of their major competitors.
For the following topics of interest for me (& my employer) - The Weblogic App Server, Strategy around multiple Portal offerings, Business Process Management and SOA Suite; I was glad to hear a reasonable amount of clarity of vision/roadmap for these products. Where there are changes - they were communicated well. And, where there were gaps on either side (ORACLE or BEA) - I heard clear strategy for bridging those gaps.
I've also read somewhat negative reaction on existence of two modeling tools in the BPM arena. ORACLE BPA Designer and ALBPM Designer. First step towards unification of these process modeling products - is to make them interoperable in terms of modeling as well as "roundtrip simulation". BPA Designer offers an organization the ability to perform "Top-Down Analysis" & device an Enteprise Business Architecture. The ALBPM Designer should be able to import the (leaf-level) process models (prepared using ORACLE BPA Designer) as a starting point. Once finalized (& implemented), we should be able to bring the enhanced models back into ORACLE BPA Designer for further analysis with an eye on "continuous improvement".
Having said that, somewhere down the road I expect to see ORACLE BPA Designer and ALBPM Designer becoming one - thus enabling "Abstract Process Modeling & Analysis" as well as Process Modeling with the intent for "What you model is what you execute" notion - within a single product.
Expecting the best from an "Acquisition Savvy" ORACLE,
Kunal R Shah
Senior Architect, BPM Platform
Citi
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Message #262490
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Actually I see More Opportunities
As group leader for the Northeast BEA AquaLogic I've been paying close attention as to just what support will be available and so far I've been pleasantly surprised.
There have been several outreach sessions and we have been introduced to several support and sharing opportunities.
I am looking forward for our AquaLogic group to broaden our knowledge base with our new associates at Oracle.
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Message #262491
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Re: Actually I see More Opportunities
As group leader for the Northeast BEA AquaLogic I've been paying close attention as to just what support will be available and so far I've been pleasantly surprised.
There have been several outreach sessions and we have been introduced to several support and sharing opportunities.
I am looking forward for our AquaLogic group to broaden our knowledge base with our new associates at Oracle.
Evelyn Schichner
User Group Leader, Northeast BEA AquaLogic Products
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