Oracle Purchases Collaxa, Launches Oracle BPEL Process Manager

"A couple weeks back, we brought word that Oracle planned to make a JavaOne splash by acquiring Collaxa and that is exactly what the company has done today. Oracle has secured Collaxa's business process management software for an undisclosed sum. The deal has seen Collaxa's BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) Server product turn into Oracle BPEL Process Manager overnight. The new software is being sold either as an add-on to Oracle Application Server 10g for $10,000 or as a standalone product for $30,000." reports Ashlee Vance for The Register.

Collaxa is a very well respected startup based just down the road from Redwood Shores and is run by Edwin Khodabakchian, former CTO of AOL's eCommerce division. What Oracle are getting out of this is Collaxa's business process management tools, which will now be sold as a Oracle BPEL Process Manager, an add-on for Application Server 10g, or available as a standalone product for use with other J2EE application servers. According to Rochelle Garner from CRN:

"Oracle on Tuesday stepped up its services-oriented architecture efforts the easiest way possible. It bought the underlying technology, the product and company operations of business process management (BPM) pure-play, Collaxa.

Terms of the acquisition for the privately held business process management vendor were not disclosed. Both companies are based in Redwood Shores, Calif.

As of Tuesday, Collaxa's BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) Server will be sold as Oracle's BPEL Process Manager. The software is available as a $10,000 option for Oracle Application Server 10g, or as a $30,000 standalone. Both are priced per CPU.

Collaxa, and now Oracle, claim the business process management server is the only native BPEL production engine available. That "native" adjective is important because it enables processes written and monitored on Oracle BPEL Process Manager to run on any J2EE-compliant application server.

Other vendors, such as BEA Systems and SAP, have announced plans to support native BPEL in their integration software, but those products have not been released."

BPEL is defined as "an XML-based language designed to enable task-sharing for a distributed computing or grid computing environment - even across multiple organizations - using a combination of Web services. Written by developers from BEA Systems, IBM, and Microsoft, BPEL combines and replaces IBM's WebServices Flow Language (WSFL) and Microsoft's XLANG specification. (BPEL is also sometimes identified as BPELWS or BPEL4WS.)" and Collaxa's BPEL server and developer tools are generally seen as being the 'best of breed' in this new market sector.

Oracle purchasing Collaxa is a bit of a coup, as it allows them to jump ahead of SAP and BEA who are only just starting to introduce BPEL functionality into their servers. According to the CRN article, "There's a higher level of business process management and monitoring with Collaxa than with typical BPM," said Rob Cheng, product marketing director, Oracle Application Server and Tools. "This was a real opportunity to bring BPM into the data center of enterprise customers."

This of course isn't the first aquisition Oracle have made to beef-up their Application Server offering, with close to twenty of HP's old Bluestone developers being recruited last year to build up Oracle's XML handling capabilities. According to Ashlee Vance again for The Register:

"When HP's ill-fated Bluestone adventure ended last year, a number of investigators in the industry went in search of the application server IP and developers. Oracle and HP had engaged in talks over the Bluestone assets, but a deal was never completed. Time passed, and the Bluestone crew was forgotten. Oracle has since picked up some of the ex-Bluestone team, paying particular attention to the group's XML tool experts. "When they were available, we took advantage of that," said John Magee, vice president of Oracle9i Application Server marketing. "We set up an office in New Jersey for about twenty of them."

However there are conflicting noises coming out of Oracle about XML and web services:

""Oracle would be interested in bulking up its XML handling capabilities and tools," Governor said. "This is a critical area in the middleware war against BEA, IBM and Microsoft. So far none of these vendors "owns" the XML tool market, so it is very likely Oracle is investing in this area as a potential differentiator. Oracle9i Developer Suite is already a powerful environment for Java and model-based development, which stands comparison with offerings from the likes of IBM and Borland. So XML is a potential differentiator."

"Oracle tends to be a little conflicted when it comes to XML and Web Services," he said. "Larry Ellison still argues strongly that the only way to deliver interoperable applications is to base them on a common data model and architecture. XML on the other hand, is associated with broader notions of interoperability based on API standardization, business document parsing, message passing, and just in time translation. It is intriguing therefore that the XML project is placed in New Jersey, about as far from the Redwood Shores campus as the U.S. continent allows"

Last word again to Ashlee Vance. "It could be a bit embarrassing for Sun Microsystems when Oracle announces the news at Sun's JavaOne show. Sun has been trying for years to regain share against IBM and BEA in the app server market and has so far failed to do so. Oracle, on the other hand, has made steady gains. At last check, IDC showed Oracle holding 19 percent market share in app server revenue behind IBM's 29 percent share and BEA's 26 percent share. Sun was still in a holding pattern at 3.5 percent share."

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