Products executive vice president Wai Wong told ComputerWire during a recent interview that BEA is going into new sectors to help grow the business, moving to the next stage in its life as a $2 billion to $3 billion revenue company.
As head of products, Wong is in charge of executing on at least two major themes in BEA’s 2005 roadmap – verticals, and web services and Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs).
BEA plans launches through winter, spring and summer for the next version of WebLogic Server, Portal, Workshop and JRockit Java Virtual Machine (JVM). WebLogic Server 9.0 will tackle improved reliability and uptime, reducing need to take servers down, with improved federation in the portal, multi-container portability for Workshop and diagnostics offered in JRockit.
After a difficult year, in which BEA has seen WebLogic revenues consistently slide, BEA is also moving into new sectors. BEA sought to combat declining revenue in 2004 by launching packaged versions of the main WebLogic Platform serving specific needs like Business Process Management (BPM) with WebLogic Server Process Edition.
BEA plans during the next 12 months to extend the drive around verticals and specific needs, with plans for a Radio Frequency Identity (RFID) Edge Server along with a version of WebLogic for telcos to provision voice over IP (VOIP) services.
BEA believes it can innovate itself out of trouble with these products, with CEO (CEO) Alfred Chuang saying he believes WebLogic 9.0 would positively impact revenue during the first quarter.
Wong, a 16-year Computer Associates International Inc veteran, said growing BEA to the next level – making BEA a $3 billion revenue company – could only be achieved through more than one channel and selling to more than one target audience.
Wong, though, insisted BEA remains committed to the product that helped turn BEA into a $1 billion revenue company during its most recent trading year – the WebLogic application server. That’s despite the fact many believe the application server market is becoming commoditized, and BEA is experiencing price pressure from free alternatives such as JBoss.
Chuang said of BEA’s new line-up: When business grows it’s about going into new markets and making sure you have all the cylinders going – having a strong products with good revenues. There are many other things we can leverage on the application server… it doesn’t not mean we are giving up the application server.
