I sure wouldn't want to count out iPlanet. The breadth and depth of their offering goes way beyond that of BEA and is really only approached by IBM. My expectation is that people will move from buying appservers as separate products to buying solution environments. BEA has a lot of catchup to do there.
Thomas, actually if this is true, at least to my form of deductive reasoning, it actually increases the gorilla case for BEAS. If BEAS is offering less functionality but still winning the marketshare wars then BEAS is obviously providing value superior to iPlanet and WebSphere that is coming from someplace beyond just the basic software product. Ie, BEAS value chain is making its product offering that much more valuable that it enables it to outsell even demonstrably superior technical software.
This is best illustrated by DOS/Windows outselling the Apple OS when even Bill Gates himself would admit that the Macintosh environment was superior to the early Windows and even later Windows versions - at least technically, and certainly via user experience. Yet the MSFT value chain created so much total product value that it did not matter. So if your contention is true about iPlanet and WebSphere my confidence in BEAS grows.
However, I don't think this is the case. Unfortunately I lost the report I had, but I was interested in BVSN about a year or so ago. In my DD I followed the history of BVSN and learned of why it was such an expensive stock for so long. It seems that at least the analysts had the impression that BVSN would become the industry standard application server platform, at least through 1999 it was thought. Turned out, however, that BEAS incorporated patented technology that enabled its products to blow BVSN out of the water in both terms of scaleability as well as processing speed. The BVSN platform was just outclassed. Apparently BEAS platform does the same to Oracle's offering. I make no comment with respect to iPlanet or to WebSphere. So contrary to what one might expect, it is possible BEAS is winning this market currently based upon superior product performance. If so that still makes BEAS a non-gorilla, and therefore less preferrable. We still have a lot of work to figure this one out. But either BEAS is building gorilla power so that it can outsell superior technical solutions, or BEAS is the superior technical solution.
But as for iPlanet. If memory serves, something like 80% of WebLogic's installations take place on Sun servers. If iPlanet was so feature rich and offered so much value over BEAS, then why is Sun even hesitating in bundling iPlanet on its servers?
I think the reason is, is that people don't just go out and buy a Sun server and then choose an application server. I think what is happening is that people choose an application server and then go buy a server to run it on. Bundling iPlanet would weaken Sun's total product value. This is also why Intel is going out of their way to make certain that WebLogic runs on Itanium and its successors. People buy the server to run the preferred app; The applications sell servers, servers don't sell applications. {PLEASE NOTE: The INTC:BEAS agreement is not exclusive. But then again neither is the INTC:MSFT relationship nor the INTC:WIND relationship}.
But just some loosely organized thoughts and I'll try to recollect them more coherently and with better research in the future.
Tinker
P.S. I am still unclear on whether or not one dominant enabling platform must exist in this market. If so, it seems pretty clear than WebLogic will be that platform. But businesses like Charles Schwab actually run both WebLogic and WebSphere in their enterprises.
Paul Philip responds that is because the market is still too immature and WebSphere fills in niche functionality where it might perform better for some applications. Or it could be that different IT managers chose different products, for different purposes, and that as of now there is no great conflict between running the two systems. Kind of like having both a UNIX and NT environment.
But again, I'm running on. Still much needs to be worked out in this analysis. And I do agree, if this does turn out to be a gorilla market, BEAS is the most certain thing (as gorillas go) to be the next Oracle and perhaps, maybe, maybe, a mini-Softie. But that is far from a far-gone conclusion here. But definitely worth a purchase here IMHO (or at least I purchased a very good chunk today} |
