Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » Who wins if Oracle gets BEA?

October 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Who wins if Oracle gets BEA?

TAGS: Infrastructure

Man, what a wacky world software has become. Remember when $6.6 billion meant something? It's play money at this point.

Who wins and who loses if Oracle gets BEA?

Oracle: Probably
Oracle has never had a clear story about app servers and despite the successful "Fusion" branding it's never been totally clear on just what makes up Oracle's middleware offering. I think the big boost from buying BEA is that a large percentage of BEA users are also using Oracle. Oracle gets economy of scale out of their sales efforts and fills that piece of the puzzle.

BEA Customers: Maybe
Hard to tell. Weblogic is a good product (if very cumbersome) but I would be concerned that Oracle will just EOL the overlapping products (BPM for example) which BEA sold very hard to their existing user base. Hard to see this one having a happy ending but it seems like Oracle has mostly done right by their acquisition customers.

IBM: Yes
This is a big win for IBM, effectively leaving only small competitors for Websphere.

Red Hat/JBoss: Maybe
I am trying really hard to see this as a good thing for Red Hat. When you consider that the major JBoss server competitor will now be tied up for months as Oracle tries to absorb them it seems like the opportunity is there. On the other hand, it's starting to feel like Oracle is trying to kill Red Hat again. I like to think Red Hat can take advantage of this opportunity but it's a lot to deal with considering the JBoss machine hasn't been functioning on all cylinders. Add to that the fact that Oracle will now have a well-proven suite of SOA products and it gets a bit tougher.

Software Buyers: Nope
This is the biggest problem for me--the fact the choices in the marketplace are even slimmer than before with questionable benefits. It might be easier to buy from one vendor but that doesn't mean you'll like all the products.

Open Source: Yes
Anytime these behemoths get together there is huge risk for them screwing up the acquisition which means the door is open for open source.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on October 12, 2007 01:24 PM

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