Oracle & BEA SOA perspective - Revisited

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In a previous post in January I analyzed the SOA perspective of Oracle's BEA acquisition. I predicted that Oracle's future SOA solutions will be dominated by BEA's SOA solutions. Some comments presented different predictions from mine.

According to The Register article published on June 5^th Oracle is splitting the BEA AquaLogic products line between Web 2.0 (originated from the Plumtree acquisition) and BPM (based on the Fuego acquisition). The Register also has learned from individuals close to the company that BEA's new owner Oracle is merging the AquaLogic and WebLogic professional service teams.

The AquaLogic Web 2.0 products probably will be overtook by Stellent Content Management which was acquired by Oracle on November 2006.

As described in previous post titled SOA & BPM, SOA and BPM are strongly related.

Another post tiled SOA and BPM: Too much Round Tripping? described an innovative product trying to extend this affinity beyond automatic BPEL based processes to include BPMN human based BPM.

Some comments on the AquaLogic line of products split suggest that AquaLogic BPM will be incorporated into Oracle Fusion Middleware and probably replace current Oracle offerings due to its superiority in human based BPM. (For example read Eric Roch's post).

The assumption is that the AquaLogic BPM will be incorporated into Fusion Middleware seems reasonable; however replacing current offerings is not the only scenario. Other possible scenarios:

• Choice between two BPM solutions

This scenario is reasonable for the short time, but I would doubt if Oracle keep dual BPM offerings for the long time.

• · AquaLogic BPM for development and integration of applications and Oracle BPM for Application Suites (e.g. Oracle Applications).

I still think that BEA's WebLogic will be finally Oracle's SOA Application Server.

The possible inclusion of AquaLogic in Fusion Middlewae together with merging AquaLogic and WebLogic professional service teams are first indicators supporting my prediction. Will other BEA"s SOA products included in Fusion Middleware keeping only the brand name and few components from the original Oracle infrastructure?