All of the above as the app server is the foundation for integrating and operating all these things, or so the theory goes.
This may be the theory that BEA would like us to believe in, but it is far from proven. The semi-random market share figures are a good indication that we have few facts here.
What the sales are of the appserver piece, the e-commerce piece, the EAI piece, etc., etc., are buried in financials that provide no breakdown. BEA is nominally easier to read than IBM or Sun because the revenue at least isn't buried in a far bigger figure for hardware and other products. Were iPlanet a separate entity, we might have something comparable, but it's not.
Moreover, we are talking about markets here that are in some cases only months old. It seems fairly likely that there will be a robust market in appservers themselves since there is a broad perception that these are important, justified or not ... which could be another potential bubble if the whole Java thing fails to deliver. But, appservers by themselves, as I keep pointing out, don't make for good gorilla game material. Now, the Java market seems more friendly than many prior environments to buy rather than make for components and subsystems and, if that holds, there could be a lively market there with potential lock-in, proprietary features, and an associated value chain. But, so far, this is largely speculation ... sure, companies like BEA are betting a lot on that speculation, but the market itself is still in diapers, defintitely early adopter stuff. Whether this will carry across to the mainstream en masse, unlike any previous software environment, is still very speculative.
So, OK, BEA is growing nicely. One gathers that IBM thinks the market has potential since they keep pursuing it. Sun/iPlanet seems to think it is promissing and that certain products at least are selling briskly. But this is in no way a proven, established gorilla game with a known gorilla ... we don't even know if it is a significant market yet! |
