The agreement starts with BEA’s bundling Adobe’s FlexBuilder 2 software and the Flex SDK with BEA Workshop Studio. In effect, it gives BEA’s recently converged development environments capabilities for developing rich internet applications using the Flex framework, which Adobe is about to open source through the Mozilla Public License.
It provides new platforms for Adobe’s Flex framework, which could be run on apps deployed through WebLogic and AquaLogic product families. For instance, an application developed using AquaLogic BPM could now sport Web 2.0-style front ends using the Flex framework.
In turn, Adobe will distribute an evaluation license of WebLogic server with its own LiveCycle Enterprise Suite. LiveCycle is a J2EE-based Adobe product that manages the workflow and digital rights management (DRM) of PDF documents, covering document workflow approval cycles, security management, and form and document generation. Although this is not the first release of LiveCycle with WebLogic Server support, it provides LiveCycle customers a nudge with deployment that should likely be simpler.
Workshop Studio with Adobe Flex Builder 2 is scheduled to be available as a bundled product by the end of the year, while Adobe LiveCycle with WebLogic Server bundled is planned to ship in early 2008.
Our View
The synergy for both players is palpable, although BEA probably gets the better end of the deal because Adobe’s PDF document format is far more ubiquitous than WebLogic is in the Java world. Although bundling of lite versions doesn’t guarantee market share, it’s difficult to argue against getting your product in front of more eyes when it’s attached to a dominant platform (such as PDF is in the electronic document space).
