BEA sees Java virtualization approach as differentiator
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(InfoWorld) - Middleware vendor BEA Systems Inc. will lay out its Java virtualization strategy later this week in China, an approach the vendor hopes will differentiate it from its competitors. At its BEAWorld user conference in Beijing from Wednesday to Thursday, the company will announce a product road map for software due out in 2007 and aimed at optimizing how enterprise Java applications run in virtualized environments. The move has been driven by customer demand, according to Guy Churchward, vice president of WebLogic products at BEA. Users are looking for ways to improve on the more general-purpose server virtualization capabilities already provided by vendors such as EMC Corp., XenSource Inc. and Microsoft Corp. "Customers were running into challenges around efficiency, optimization and performance," he said. Come the first quarter of next year, BEA plans to release WebLogic Server Virtual Edition (WLS-VE), a version of its Java application server that includes the vendor's new Liquid VM technology. Liquid VM is a BEA-specific Java Virtual Machine that enables Java applications to run directly on a hypervisor without requiring an operating system to be present. Initially, Liquid VM will work only with VMware's ESX Server hypervisor, but BEA plans to support other hypervisors in future including those from XenSource and Microsoft, Churchward said. Being able to run Java applications virtually without recourse to an operating system will enable users to substantially reduce the amount of computer power, enabling them to lower the hardware costs per application. Drawing a comparison betweenÂ VMware's current approach towards application virtualization and BEA's new take, Churchward gave an analogy about moving house. VMware's like a removal firm that comes in and packages up the entire contents of a person's house and transports it using massive trucks. "Once you open the boxes at your new place, you discover you don't need 60 percent of it," he said. BEA's approach resembles an individual taking the time to go through all their possessions prior to moving and throwing away what they don't need, therefore requiring smaller vans to transport their belongings. "BEA's approach directly targets Java infrastructure flexibility, which has not always been the platform's core strength," James Governor, analyst with RedMonk, wrote in an e-mail interview. He believes the vendor is the first among the major middleware vendors to go down this path, but points to smaller companies Cassatt Corp. and DataSynapse Inc., which are already pursuing what he terms "a virtualize/automate/WebLogic strategy." Due out in the summer of 2007 is Liquid Operations Control (LOC), BEA software to manage and control Java applications running on virtualized infrastructure. While users can combine LOC and Liquid VM to improve their WebLogic virtualization capabilities, BEA intends to widen LOC's scope so it can be applied to all enterprise Java applications, Churchward said, including support for the Apache Software Foundation's Tomcat technology. Moving to manage other Java application servers is a course BEA has already begun to pursue, Governor wrote. "It's the right strategy, which BEA could dramatically accelerate by purchasing Covalent," he added. Open-source company Covalent Technologies Inc. provides products and services for Tomcat and other Apache software including the Axis Web service framework and Geronimo application server. Â
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TechWeb - The company offers its JBoss BlackTie.org project over BEA's software to emulate transaction-processing monitors that connect large servers.
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An investor's guide to service-oriented architecture
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BEA Systems Inc. chose the opening day of competitor Oracle&#39;s annual user conference in San Francisco to talk about its next version of the BEA WebLogic Application Server platform.
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New BladeSymphony models can be linked into multiprocessor systems or subdivided with virtualization.
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To make it more palatable for independent software vendors (define) to adopt BEA Systems&#39; (Quote, Chart) middleware software suite, the company released WebLogic Platform ISV Edition, an &quot;SOA in a box&quot; solution tailored to meet specific application
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TechWeb - IBM and BEA Systems are expanding their consulting services for companies ready to build service-oriented architectures.
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BEA Systems is set to release a new all-in-one package on Monday to help software partners create and install Web applications more quickly.
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(InfoWorld) - BEA Systems' planned next-generation application platform, called Project Genesis, will feature an open source component and accommodate scripting languages such as Ruby and Perl, BEA officials said at the BEAWorld San Francisco conference on Tuesday. Open source has been great for proliferating knowledge in the marketplace, said Alfred Chuang, BEA chairman, CEO, and president. In addition, he mentioned that development technologies will be open-sourced as part of Genesis and that BEA already offers open source technologies to the Eclipse Foundation. "We also believe that we likely have to be grooming and starting up a new community," he said. Genesis is intended to enable quick development of applications without requiring new infrastructure. It will feature tools that take collaboration, social tagging, and business process management and integrate them with existing enterprise applications. New sets of applications can be built, including mashups and composite applications as well as business processes. Wikis, blogs, and RSS feeds also are to be part of Genesis, said Rob Levy, CTO at BEA. The company announced Project Genesis earlier on Tuesday. Chuang, however, cautioned against going open source for the sake of going open source. "I think open source for open source's sake has been useless," Chuang said. "Some companies have taken multimillion lines of operating system code and open-sourced it," he said, critically. Although sometime-BEA rival Sun Microsystems did this with its Solaris OS, Chuang said his comment was not specifically targeted at Sun. Others have done this as well, he said. Genesis will support Java code as well as scripting languages, Chuang said. He cited scripting languages as an area where BEA historically has not had much involvement. A specific product plan for Genesis is set to be unveiled at the BEAWorld Shanghai conference in December. BEA officials stressed some components of Genesis, such as BEA's enterprise service bus technology, already exist. New products are to include a rules engine technology, as well as offerings for data manipulation and structured mapping. "Genesis is sort of where ultimately we want to take AquaLogic for this new generation of applications," Chuang said. AquaLogic is a BEA middleware platform. Genesis will support SaaS (software as a service) methodologies in that ISVs could use Genesis to build applications, which they could then offer via a SaaS format, Levy said.
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(InfoWorld) - BEA Systems at the BEAWorld 2006 San Francisco conference this week stressed SOA as a core technology and unveiled its SOA 360 platform. Comprising multiple BEA products, some of which have yet to be released, the ambitious SOA 360 strategy features multiple role-based offerings for IT as well as a services architecture and modularization of existing BEA products. InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill spoke with Rob Levy, BEA executive vice president and chief technology officer, at the conference about SOA 360 and BEA's growth as a middleware company. InfoWorld: Would you explain the concepts of SOA 360 WorkSpace 360, WorkSpace Central and microService Architecture? Levy: Sure. Letâs start with the highest level, which is SOA 360. SOA 360 is a governing approach to modeling, creating, developing and deploying a full lifecycle SOA application. It is a unifying methodology between all the product lines we have, as well as connecting it to other products.â¦ In that respect, think of it as a governing approach that is supported by a set of products, by a common architecture and by a set of standards that govern the lifecycle. So if you drop [down] from that, either to the bottom or the top, depending on how you want to look at that, on the bottom youâre going to need a common architecture that allows you to build those SOA applications across this lifecycle. [This is] mSA, microService Architecture.â¦ Think of mSA as using the SOA practices to componentize our platform and our product line. You take the basic services that exist inside each one of our product lines and you componentize them so they can be reused with all of our products, not just in single products.... To do the SOA lifecycle correctly, the common architecture will also have to have a common repository, [a] catalog of services, where basically each one of the roles contributes a different portion of the knowledge and expertise that is necessary to move forward in the SOA lifecycle. Now letâs leave that for a second, and again Iâll jump back out now this time to the roles. Itâs a multiple view of the same problem, itâs all starting from the SOA lifecycle domain. Take WorkSpace 360, and WorkSpace 360 is the tool, or the set of tools, that allow each one of the roles to participate in the SOA lifecycle. The business analysts, the LOB [line of business], have a very specific set of things that they are concerned about. From the application -- from the business process to maybe ROI (return on investment) metrics that they need to measure to the definition of the business requirements. All of these artifacts need to be stored somewhere, and theyâll now be stored in the central repository. InfoWorld: Which is what product? Levy: Itâs using the Flashline product we just acquired, what is now called AquaLogic Enterprise Repository.â¦ You move forward in this workspace, which is again following the lifecycle, then the next level will be an architect, right? Because you [wrote] the business requirements then you go to the architects. Architects translate business requirements into global architecture. They will have issues like architecture diagrams and flow diagrams, things the developers can use. They would also need access to, again, some sort of a central repository where they can look up to see if some of the services that are being required to build a new application already exist. If they find that they [do not], then we can define the parameters for definition of the new services. All that is done on our side though the AquaLogic product. And as you go into development, developers if they choose to develop in Java, then theyâll go into Workspace 360 for Developer, which will be the tooling sets required to physically build products on either WebLogic or on Tuxedo. With Tuxedo also we made an announcement of something called SALT (Services Architecture Leveraging Tuxedo), which basically allows you to take Tuxedo services and expose them as Web services. So youâll be either using Tuxedo services or build brand new ones on top of a J2EE platform, WebLogic. Those would have the specific parameters, again, that define [where] they are. So now youâre talking policy artifacts (etc.).â¦ Those will again be put in the central repository. When youâre going to the deployment cycle, when people start worrying about things like SLAs, the network definition underneath, which services to deploy on, what provisioning parameters are necessary, levels of operating systems.â¦ Thatâs where the Workspace 360 for IT will come in. And people will do two things. One, theyâll control the deployment cycle, moving it from test to production. And the other one, once itâs in production, will control the manageability, so finding things like -- is it up, it is running, whatâs the response time? Whatâs the availability? Is it meeting the SLAs that were defined originally by the business users? And thatâs how you create a closed-loop lifecycle. [We have] a set of tools that allow each one of the roles to participate. SOA 360 is an approach that governs how you do it. And underneath is an architecture of product components, mSA, that allows you to build those products from scratch. Each one of the customers will compose their own pieces of mSA that they need to provide a complete solution. InfoWorld: Weâve covered WorkSpace 360. WorkSpace Central, have we covered that one yet? Levy: Workspace is the role-based set of tooling. SOA 360 is the governing approach. MSA is the underlying architecture. And those three together are all in support of the SOA lifecycle. InfoWorld: So with WorkSpace 360 and the WorkSpace Central, whatâs the difference? Levy: WorkSpace Central is central to WorkSpace 360. All of the four components of WorkSpace, for business analysts, for architects, for developer, for IT, will all store and read the artifacts from the same WorkSpace Central. Itâs kind of the hub. InfoWorld: Does BEA really think this simplifies things? It seems pretty complex. Levy: Iâm not sure I agree. Again, I think the issue we always faced in the lifecycle is that each one of the pieces was done, but done in a separate manner. Business people dealt with business issues with one set of tools, and architects dealt with another set of tools, and developers dealt with another. We believe that in order to make SOA simple, we have to put all of them in that cycle, and what connects that cycle is WorkSpace. You sort of think of reusability as the work before you. InfoWorld: Where does WSRP [Web Services for Remote Portlets] enter into this? It was mentioned in passing like we all would have already known that. There just seems like too many elements here to grasp. Levy: WSRP is just a standard. [It is] one of the standards that govern the behavior of SOA.â¦ I donât believe people need to know the standard, they just need to know that the products that theyâre combining are all maintaining the same standard. Think of cars. Thereâs only two standards [for] cars -- metric and inchâ¦ If you need tooling for cars, you can buy tools for cars. The only thing you need to know is whether the car is following a metric system or inch system? Everything else is provided. Our goal is to do the exact same thing. [We] provide you with a set of tools that supports those standards without you needing to actually think through which standards does which and which standard does what. So in that respect we greatly simplify SOA implementation, because all you really need to know from a user perspective -- this is now not from my side, the architecture that comes from underneath -- but how a user sees it. All the user needs to know is based on the role in the cycle - which tool they need to use. And the interface, by the way, all of them would be identical in behavior, different in function, because obviously theyâre different functions. So as you move in the cycle, all you have to worry about is picking up, logging into your toolâ¦ You shouldnât care about the fact that thereâs something called a repository or WorkSpace Central. Itâs just there so you wouldnât have to repeatedly ask for information from before. InfoWorld: I understand there is going to be a modularization of some of the products that are out there now, like WebLogic Server? Levy: Correct. InfoWorld: How does that play into this? Levy: Think about the deployment today of SOA on top of WebLogic. You get the full container regardless if you need all the functions of the container or not. [With modularization, you] only pick the pieces that are really necessary for the solution that we provided. InfoWorld: Can you give an example of how somebody might pick a module of the app server as opposed to the whole product? Levy: Well, sure. A lot of the products, the ESB (enterprise service bus), require some of the Java container services but dos not require a full JVM (Java Virtual Machine).... If youâre really building full-scale applications on Java, you need [the] full WebLogic Server. But if you only need the Java container, but not the JVM thatâs run underneath that, then why not just take that and package that with the ESB? InfoWorld: So when will that happen? Levy: Itâs happening now. InfoWorld: Can you give an example? Levy: Sure. I mean tomorrow Mark [Carges, executive vice president of the BEA Business Interaction Division] is going to basically show a WebLogic server and this.â¦ Itâs a slimmed-down version of the execution engine. InfoWorld: What are you going to do with that? Levy: You can execute Java without having the development environment or the creation environment, [where] the full WebLogic server is. That is exactly what the AquaLogic product set is going to be [using]. InfoWorld: Whatâs the benefit of doing that? Levy: Simplicity of installations, simplicity of administration, and of course, it allows us to spend less time trying to create a [big] environment and be more agile in our response to the marketplace. So itâs good for us and itâs good for our customers. InfoWorld: BEAâs still about $1 billion in revenue a year, correct? Levy: $1.2 billion. InfoWorld: It doesnât seem like BEAâs been able to grow that in the past couple years. What is it going to do to finally get off the mark there at $1 billion, or maybe it has gone up a little bit? Levy: We grow both organically and through expansion. If you look at what weâve done in the last year and a half, weâve expanded the reach of Java to areas where traditionally before we were not. One area, in addition to the RFID field, [is] to the communication field, so people that are developing either RFID applications or communication applications to serve in VOIP, are now developing under the same Java container that we supported before. We created WebLogic Real Time, which [extended the] standard Java reach into places where Java didnât exist before, so where traditionally people used C/C++ for real-time applications, now they can use Java. So thatâs another growth factor. And obviously, the whole AquaLogic product line, and the now SOA 360. We believe that SOA is going to create a large wave that obviously allows significant growth. InfoWorld: Where BEA headed? Obviously, SOA is the big push for you. Levy: SOA is a huge push for us, as well as completely we agree with the statements made by Shaygan [Kheradpir, CIO of Verizon] this morning. I think what weâre going to see Web 2.0 fully in the enterprise and SOA pushing out into the consumer. And when that happens itâs going to be just like in the beginning age of the Internet, when in order to make Internet successful, you really needed the technology and the infrastructure for this new world of sort of consumer-based development. Youâre going to need an infrastructure that will allow you to push out the execution or the composition of the applications into this peer-to-peer world. And thatâs where weâre going. InfoWorld: Why do see SOA in the consumer world? Levy: You look at SOA-based applications, theyâre about composition. People are looking to be able to compose the application at runtime, not at design time. So what did [Kheradpir] call it? At the speed of needâ¦ That would require a new type of infrastructure.SEE ALSO:BEA executives preach atop SOA 360 soapbox
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A Linux developer has come up with a virtualized I/O system that allows competing virtualization software to use one mechanism for handling storage and other virtual devices.
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BURLINGAME, CALIF.-- BEA Systems is expanding the open source Beehive initiative but still has no plans to participate in the Eclipse open source tools organization, despite the embrace of Beehive by Eclipse.
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Diane Greene, president of VMware, said she wonders how effective an operating systems-based approach to virtualization can be.
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SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- (http://bea.com/more_info.jsp?p%8&amp;r=1.4.6 ) -- BEA Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:BEAS), the world&#39;s leading application infrastructure software company, today announced
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BEA Systems yesterday unveiled Version 9.0 of its WebLogic Server application server, code-named Diablo, with the promise of simplified development of service-oriented applications.
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BEA has entered the event-driven architecture market with a product geared for SOA in Java environments.
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A version of BEA Systems Inc&#39;s WebLogic Platform for ISVs is expected today which the company believes will help boost overall sales of its platform.