The Dozen 2004
BEA Systems Inc.
San Jose, Calif.
Compared to its behemoth competitors, BEA is an adolescent: a sapling striving for sunlight in a forest of tall evergreens. However, as a French wine enthusiast might say, BEA is maturing where there's good terrior. BEA's first growth spurt came when demand for Unix-based transaction processing tapped its standards-based technology. Next came the fast and furious dot-com years, which highlighted BEA's Web application server solutions. Today, Web services and business integration (application, data and process) draw strong interest in BEA's direction. And to the company's credit, it has responded.
"The enterprise software market is not just about what's new," says CEO Alfred Chuang in an interview on BEA's Web site. "It's about what's already there — legacy." With the 8.1 release, BEA, unencumbered by any "vested interest in protecting the existing legacy proprietary approaches," has tilted its WebLogic Enterprise Platform in the direction of demand for standards-based integration. Led by Chief Architect Adam Bosworth, BEA has articulated well that service-oriented integration must be core to all software development projects.
Expanding its vision, BEA's Liquid Data for WebLogic was one of the better product introductions of 2003. Liquid Data is attracting attention from those who foresee a future, driven by XML, where data and process considerations come together. With adept solutions, BEA could soon stand as tall as the competition.
