BEA is planning more packages of WebLogic Server similar to WebLogic Server Process Edition, announced this week, so customers with specific project needs do not need to download or install the full Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform.

Pricing and packaging will be determined later this year, company vice president of product marketing Vittorio Viarengo told ComputerWire.

News of the packaging approach comes as BEA is prepares to take WebLogic further into provisioning and management of Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs).

The next version of WebLogic, codenamed Diamond, will feature a Service Manager and Message Manager as part of BEA’s Liquid Computing SOA strategy and the QuickSliver Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), both unveiled this week at BEA’s eWorld developer conference.

Message Manager and Service Manager will be managed, along with the rest of the WebLogic Platform through metadata that is served up to a planned portal-based management console, or IT cockpit.

Viarengo called Message Manager the core of QuickSliver, saying it will use web services but also support legacy middleware such as IBM Corp’s MQ Series. Service Manager will enable administrators to define Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between different services and define security policies.

Despite BEA’s increased focus on management, Viarengo denied that Message Manager, Service Manager and the portal-based management console represented a move by BEA into management frameworks. Instead, he said, BEA’s software would plug-into existing frameworks, such as IBM’s Tivoli.

Commenting on the move to greater modularity, Viarengo said BEA would follow-up on WebLogic Server Process Edition. We are getting increasingly modular in the ways we package every aspect of the platform, Viarengo said.

WebLogic Server Process Edition packages WebLogic Integration’s Business Process Management (BPM) designer and engine, and leaves out Integration’s broker and adaptors. Viarengo did not provide details of planned packages, but said: We will package the platform in the way the customer wants.