BEA prepares for the Java EE 5 battlefield

With the wide range of current acquisitions and announcements one can easily say that BEA is gearing up for Java EE 5 battlefield. With the Java EE 5 Reference Implementation expected this quarter, and the final release Q1 2006 it’s about time to take a stand. So what is BEA up to?

The race began a little while ago with the acquisition of Plumtree. The Plumtree enterprise portal solutions complete BEA’s offering in the field of collaboration and composite applications. Not long after that came announcements about extensive Eclipse support, and the merger of WebLogic Workshop’s best practices into the Eclipse plug-in space. The acquisition of M7 and their NitroX toolset fits this fact perfectly and now their most recent acquisition of SolarMetric, a well known Java persistence leader, potentially empowers the offering even more.

Also, let’s not forget the work that BEA is doing on the Eclipse Web Tools Project. They are spec lead and determined to bring the power of Eclipse to Enterprise level development.

Although Gartner analysts predict that only full stack vendors are gonna make it in enterprise development, I still see BEA as one of the most powerful and technological advanced platforms available today.

I do have one concern though: with Borland’s CEO Dale Fuller gone and Solarmetric being bought by BEA, what will be the future of JavaOne after-parties?