CMS Watch BEA Feed

Oracle trims portals in consolidation strategy

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Mon, 7 Jul 2008 05:42:00 -0400

Almost 6 months after Oracle announced a definitive agreement to acquire BEA, the company definitively stated its direction on the future of its four different enterprise portal products. Previously, the frequently-issued official statement indicated that all four enterprise portals would be kept. Now WebCenter is more clearly emerging as the portal of the future.

Combined under a new Oracle-specific definition of Enterprise 2.0, I'll highlight these two statements:

Oracle WebCenter Suite and Oracle WebCenter Services are Oracle's strategic solutions for developing Enterprise 2.0 enabled portals, composite, and web applications.
Oracle plans to continue to develop and support Oracle WebLogic Portal and Oracle Portal, and expects to converge these products with Oracle's strategic solutions over time

The former enterprise portals from BEA have now been renamed as Oracle WebLogic Portal and Oracle WebCenter Interaction (previously known as ALUI). For now Oracle Portal, WebLogic Portal and AquaLogic Portal are officially categorized as "continue and converge," which means that new customers are not steered in this direction, but support is maintained for 9 years.

Despite an apparent flip-flop from Oracle, the news comes as little surprise. Back in May 2007 I cautioned buyers that Oracle was shifting portals and placing WebCenter at the forefront with Oracle Portal edging retirement. Now that Oracle is being more open about the future of their portal products, new prospective Oracle customers should consider WebCenter, while existing licensees of the other three portals should already now build migration -- in some cases really outright replacement -- into their project plans and budgets.

[Update, July 9th: Clarified positioning of portal products, including ALUI)

Oracle erases criticism from their wiki

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Mon, 2 Jun 2008 19:31:00 -0400

It might come as little surprise that Oracle is very actively moderating their Oracle wiki, but a recent blog entry reminded me just how important culture is to wiki adoption.

The story is, a Denmark-based Oracle partner had posted something "not unambiguously positive about Oracle WebCenter" and was "immediately flamed by an Oracle product manager, and any trace of negativity edited out."

Of course, wiki owners always have a choice about how strongly they want to moderate, and that choice naturally will affect the culture of participation. Oracle clearly decided in favor of strong moderation. The Rules of Conduct on the wiki say nothing about excising mentions of product weaknesses, but WebCenter is certainly a hot topic at the moment with customers waiting for roadmap details after the BEA acquisition.

So, official wikis present a dilemma for vendors. Clearly Oracle made the edits in order to keep damaging material out of competitors' hands. Other vendors, like Microsoft, also limit who can post to their public wikis based on an application process. That's their prerogative. But as a customer, you should understand the rules of engagement are rather different than, say, Wikipedia, and evaluate the content accordingly.

(Thanks to Sten Vesterli from Oracle partner Scott/Tiger for the heads up.)

Oracle customers only need 1 enterprise portal

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Mon, 26 May 2008 00:30:00 -0400

At a closing panel of a European Commission internal IT conference in Brussels last week, Andrew Sutherland, Oracle EMEA VP Technology repeated the frequently-issued official statement that Oracle intends to keep all four of the enterprise portals it currently possesses. He then went on to say that it was important to emphasize that customers only need one of the four, and not multiple or all four.

This is an interesting remark:

Many customers find themselves with a combination of BEA and Oracle portals. Which one should they migrate to?
While the 4 products overlap to a large extent, there are also significant differences between them, e.g., WebLogic Portal versus BEA AquaLogic User Interaction. Should a new or existing WebLogic Portal customer really adopt the product for all their portal requirements?

I had the pleasure of sitting on the panel and used the opportunity to share my open question that WebLogic Portal might have had its final major release. The panel took an unexpected turn when the IBM representative took the microphone to defend Oracle, despite the fact the IBM has WebSphere Portal as their only portal product.

There are different ways to segment the portal market, but I still favor scenario-based analysis. While Oracle may have a track record for sustaining products they acquire, at the end of the day, license money from customers will decide which products survive. For those considering buying an enterprise portal from Oracle, I would recommend taking a closer look at WebCenter, which seems to be positioned as the product of the future.

BEA's last release of WebLogic Portal

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:00 -0400

In early March BEA announced the release of WebLogic Portal 10.2. The release was a bit delayed and focused primarily on enhanced Web 2.0 support, performance improvements, and enhancements to the developer experience. This will be the last release under BEA auspices, pending conclusion of their acquisition by Oracle.

According to a FAQ on the acquisition by Oracle (PDF), Oracle's Fusion Middleware will evolve as "the centerpiece of the combined companies' middleware offerings going forward". It continues to say "BEA products are expected to evolve into components of Fusion Middleware". I interpret that as good news for Oracle WebCenter Suite, but high-risk for customers of the other three enterprise portals (BEA WebLogic, BEA AquaLogic and Oracle Portal) in the mix here.

In other words, this is certainly the final major release before Oracle will be firmly in charge of the development teams. The question that looms for me -- and for you -- is whether this also represents the final major release of the product?

BEA's last release of WebLogic Portal

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Fri, 4 Apr 2008 11:58:00 -0400

Oracle and BEA: does two plus two really equal four portals?

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:01:00 -0500

A couple of months after the initial attempt by Oracle to acquire BEA, the two companies yesterday entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire BEA.

As described in more detail in the 2008 Portal Vendor Risk Profile, Oracle is firmly placed in the Turbulence sector. In fact, the portal strategies for both BEA and Oracle have been undergoing significant change for almost 2 years, with difficult choices for customers of both companies. BEA sells two portal products, WebLogic Portal and AquaLogic User Interaction, while Oracle also markets two products, Oracle Portal and Oracle WebCenter.

So with four portal products, Oracle will have to make some tough decisions, as they significantly overlap:

BEA AquaLogic and Oracle WebCenter both focus on SOA, and can offer a good fit for web application development
Both BEA WebLogic Portal and Oracle Portal bring traditional strengths in personalization and segmentation, and can offer a good fit for self-service applications
All four products offer only average content and document management features in comparison to other portal vendors

While I'd argue that many enterprises have diverse portal requirements that may call for different products, it seems hard for Oracle to justify continuing more than two parallel and overlapping engineering efforts. Of course, Oracle has done just that with other acquisitions, but here it still strikes me that two plus two is still equaling...just two.

Enterprise Portal Marketplace: 2008 Vendor Risk Profile

jb@boyeit.dk(Janus Boye) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:01:00 -0500

It is all too easy to identify vendors for your shortlist based on their supposed "leadership" status in the market. But CMS Watch contributing analyst Janus Boye argues that CIOs, procurement officers, and other technology leaders considering investments in enterprise portals should carefully examine the risk profile of prospective vendors to help identify the right "fit" for their needs.

BEA, the Patent Office, and the Future of JCR

kthomas@cmswatch.com(Kas Thomas) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:22:00 -0500

Ironically, one of the main roadblocks to widespread adoption of JSR-170 (the Java Content Repository standard, now more accurately referred to as JSR-283) may be Java itself. Certainly, the idea of being able to use a common API to access a wide variety of content repositories is a worthy one. But if the API mandates the use of one particular language (such as Java), the Holy Grail of universality immediately takes a hit. Not everyone uses Java, or wants to.

Another important aspect of JCR that bears remembering is that it's silent on the subject of federation. JCR is an API for talking to a content repository (a repository, singular). JSR-170 may enable federation, but it doesn't in any way specify it.

A recent patent filing by BEA Systems speaks to the federation issue as well as the language issue. It proposes the notion of a Virtual Content Repository (VCR), which is a federation of JCR and non-JCR repositories hidden behind a Service Provider Interface (capable of being implemented in any language). The SPI is kind of a meta-API layer (think ODBC). You talk to the VCR through the SPI.

Of course, the problem with this approach (if BEA gets the patent) is that it's patented. It becomes a kind of anti-standard.

If BEA does get the patent, it could be bad news for JCR, precisely because the VCR+SPI approach outlined by BEA is a natural one for achieving federation of JCR-compliant repositories in a heterogeneous IT environment. It's an architectural approach many big ECM vendors would probably want to take with JCR. If that approach is suddenly unavailable, JCR repository integration becomes problematic. And "problematic" is not a word JCR needs to be associated with, at this point.

Twelve Predictions for 2008

editor@cmswatch.com(The CMS Watch Analyst Team) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:01:00 -0500

It's that time of year again. The CMS Watch analyst team ponders what to expect next year, and offers 12 predictions that we think will shape content technologies in 2008 -- from Google to Microsoft, Web/Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Search, Archiving, and more...

Is Facebook in the Enterprise an Oxymoron?

tbyrne@cmswatch.com(Tony Byrne) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:02:00 -0500

Facebook is all the rage -- and consequently bringing Enterprise 2.0 to the fore. Is it time to revisit your Intranet platform? CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne looks at Facebook's benefits and demerits and concludes that your IT department could learn some important lessons about balancing employee enablement and control over information...

BEA remains independent and releases new portal roadmap

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:06:00 -0400

The offer from Oracle to acquire BEA expired this weekend, as BEA refused to meet the proffered terms and countered with a higher price.

This means that BEA remains independent, and, at least for now, still moves forward on important matters such as product roadmaps. In a series of blog postings from Josh Lannin, senior product manager, you can read interesting details on the future for WebLogic Portal, including more on content publishing, standards, single sign-on, customization, and much more. The roadmap extends to late 2008.

As a licensee, it is always quite helpful to know the roadmap for the portal product, given the somewhat turbulent landscape. Historically upgrades have been time-consuming and difficult. With proper roadmap information you can at least prepare and plan ahead. This open style of communication from BEA is quite welcome. The next few months will tell whether BEA will continue on its own or whether new owners may come in and change the course.

Will Oracle plus BEA really equal four portal products?

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 06:50:00 -0400

It's been a busy week for Oracle and BEA, since news got out that Oracle had made an offer to buy BEA. Despite falling license sales BEA decided to reject the offer as too low, but among BEA's largest shareholders now is Carl Icahn, a billionaire investor pushing BEA hard to sell and now hoping for a bidding war (though it remains unclear that other plausible suitors would join).

Oracle has already announced that they would continue supporting BEA products after any acquisition. The situation could become quite interesting for portal customers though, as Oracle would find itself in possession of four different portal products:

Oracle Portal
Oracle WebCenter
BEA WebLogic Portal
BEA AquaLogic User Interaction (formerly Plumtree)

These products substantially overlap each other. I've previously written about Oracle Portal woes and Oracle's ongoing portal switch, and this would further complicate the matter. Meanwhile, BEA's two portal products remain worlds apart in all but the company's marketing literature. Support for existing customers of all four products surely represents a wise business decision for Oracle, but to continue significant engineering investments in all of them seems quite unlikely in the long run.

If there is a silver lining at all, it is that prudent Oracle and BEA portal software customers have already been planning for potential dislocation going forward, given the transitions underway in both companies' portal product sets even before Oracle's offer. While we all wait for the next step in the acquisition drama, it seems worth revisiting those plans again.

Will Oracle plus BEA really equal four portal products?

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 06:50:00 -0400

Oracle Portal
Oracle WebCenter
BEA WebLogic Portal
BEA AquaLogic User Interaction (formerly Plumtree)

What's the future for enterprise portals?

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Wed, 3 Oct 2007 11:26:00 -0400

People often ask me about new trends beyond simply product roadmaps and flashy functionality. Like everything else in enterprise software, portals are indeed evolving.

I was recently prompted by a short but interesting perspective by David Sacks, covering a brief history of the public portal landscape and offering his take on its evolution. At first glance it's fundamentally a discussion of social software or consumer portals, but remember that enterprise portals, unlike other software segments (e.g., WCM), did indeed start out with a consumer focus (think: AOL, Yahoo!). And for better or worse, many employees come to enterprise portals from the perspective of their experience on large public portals.

According to Sacks the market has moved from a focus on browsing, then to searching (e.g., Google), and now to sharing (e.g., Facebook). I don't yet see that more contemporary notions of sharing have really penetrated the enterprise portals market, but it is certainly beginning to impact the enterprise software market, with IBM moving Web 2.0 to Center Stage or BEA Web 2.0.

Social information and interaction may very well move onto enterprise portal products in the near term, but remember that much of what the vendors have released so far is mainly consulting offerings and packaged prototypes. If you're looking to create Enterprise Portal 2.0, you'll most likely be an early adopter, so I'll urge you to start small and go for something with high impact, but low risk.

What's the future for enterprise portals?

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Wed, 3 Oct 2007 11:26:00 -0400

People often ask me about new trends beyond simply product roadmaps and flashy functionality. Like everything else in enterprise software, portals are indeed evolving.

The Portal - SOA divide

info@jboye.dk(Janus Boye) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:19:00 -0400

Alan Pelz-Sharpe recently cited a brewing backlash against SOA in the enterprise content management world. In the portal market I'm certainly hearing growing concerns about SOA from the user community. While some vendors, notably BEA, are continuing their year-long push for SOA, buyers are learning some expensive lessons. In particular the constant need for change management and the persistent performance problems are causing raised eyebrows. Portals can put a face to SOA, but still many vendors (e.g. IBM, SAP) with strong SOA marketing sell enterprise portals that only run on top of their very own software. As I point out in the Enterprise Portals Report, this would seem to contradict the idea of loosely coupled software...