Why software giants are hooked on middleware glue

Oracle is pushing to take market share from BEA. At the same time BEA is more interested in trying to maintain a lead over IBM. IBM is looking over its shoulder at iPlanet and Sybase.

All of these are keen to see that Microsoft's proprietary system doesn't gain a strong foothold.

Why should you care? After all, vendor spats are nothing new.

What's at stake is the application server market, and users need to know about it because application servers will determine entire ebusiness strategies.

Essentially a new form of middleware, application servers could be what creates an ebusiness from existing legacy systems. They serve up applications (mostly written in Java) to the internet, enabling sophisticated business over the web.

Which vendor a user chooses will have a fundamental affect on how companies get involved in B2B and B2C ecommerce for a long time to come.

To make this decision, IT managers need to be 110 per cent sure vendors they plump for aren't about to (a) go bust or (b) change their mind about being in the market in the first place.

Oracle so far has been unable to convince the market that (b) doesn't apply to it. After today's announcement, no doubt, it will insist the proof is there. It's in it for the long term.

However, the benefits of following Oracle are hard to see. For an existing Oracle database customer - plenty of whom are out there - using an Oracle application server will make sense. And Larry Ellison wants every Oracle customer to be only an Oracle customer. He says he can provide everything they need.

But coming from a heterogeneous IT environment, users may do better to look around. Part of the point of middleware is that it allows best of breed products to be tied together, an IT concept Ellison fundamentally doesn't agree with.

If he's going to stand any chance in this space, he needs to accept this quick.