InfoWorld: We’ve covered WorkSpace 360. WorkSpace Central, have we covered that one yet?
Levy: Workspace is the role-based set of tooling. SOA 360 is the governing approach. MSA is the underlying architecture. And those
three together are all in support of the SOA lifecycle.
InfoWorld: So with WorkSpace 360 and the WorkSpace Central, what’s the difference?
Levy: WorkSpace Central is central to WorkSpace 360. All of the four components of WorkSpace, for business analysts, for architects,
for developer, for IT, will all store and read the artifacts from the same WorkSpace Central. It’s kind of the hub.
InfoWorld: Does BEA really think this simplifies things? It seems pretty complex.
Levy: I’m not sure I agree. Again, I think the issue we always faced in the lifecycle is that each one of the pieces was done,
but done in a separate manner. Business people dealt with business issues with one set of tools, and architects dealt with
another set of tools, and developers dealt with another. We believe that in order to make SOA simple, we have to put all of
them in that cycle, and what connects that cycle is WorkSpace. You sort of think of reusability as the work before you.
InfoWorld: Where does WSRP [Web Services for Remote Portlets] enter into this? It was mentioned in passing like we all would have already
known that. There just seems like too many elements here to grasp.
Levy: WSRP is just a standard. [It is] one of the standards that govern the behavior of SOA.… I don’t believe people need to know
the standard, they just need to know that the products that they’re combining are all maintaining the same standard. Think
of cars. There’s only two standards [for] cars -- metric and inch… If you need tooling for cars, you can buy tools for cars.
The only thing you need to know is whether the car is following a metric system or inch system? Everything else is provided.
Our goal is to do the exact same thing. [We] provide you with a set of tools that supports those standards without you needing
to actually think through which standards does which and which standard does what. So in that respect we greatly simplify
SOA implementation, because all you really need to know from a user perspective -- this is now not from my side, the architecture
that comes from underneath -- but how a user sees it. All the user needs to know is based on the role in the cycle - which
tool they need to use. And the interface, by the way, all of them would be identical in behavior, different in function, because
obviously they’re different functions. So as you move in the cycle, all you have to worry about is picking up, logging into
your tool… You shouldn’t care about the fact that there’s something called a repository or WorkSpace Central. It’s just there
so you wouldn’t have to repeatedly ask for information from before.
InfoWorld: I understand there is going to be a modularization of some of the products that are out there now, like WebLogic Server?
Levy: Correct.
InfoWorld: How does that play into this?
Levy: Think about the deployment today of SOA on top of WebLogic. You get the full container regardless if you need all the functions
of the container or not. [With modularization, you] only pick the pieces that are really necessary for the solution that we
provided.
InfoWorld: Can you give an example of how somebody might pick a module of the app server as opposed to the whole product?
Levy: Well, sure. A lot of the products, the ESB (enterprise service bus), require some of the Java container services but dos
not require a full JVM (Java Virtual Machine).... If you’re really building full-scale applications on Java, you need [the]
full WebLogic Server. But if you only need the Java container, but not the JVM that’s run underneath that, then why not just
take that and package that with the ESB?
InfoWorld: So when will that happen?
Levy: It’s happening now.
InfoWorld: Can you give an example?
Levy: Sure. I mean tomorrow Mark [Carges, executive vice president of the BEA Business Interaction Division] is going to basically
show a WebLogic server and this.… It’s a slimmed-down version of the execution engine.
InfoWorld: What are you going to do with that?
Levy: You can execute Java without having the development environment or the creation environment, [where] the full WebLogic server
is. That is exactly what the AquaLogic product set is going to be [using].
InfoWorld: What’s the benefit of doing that?
Levy: Simplicity of installations, simplicity of administration, and of course, it allows us to spend less time trying to create
a [big] environment and be more agile in our response to the marketplace. So it’s good for us and it’s good for our customers.
InfoWorld: BEA’s still about $1 billion in revenue a year, correct?
Levy: $1.2 billion.
InfoWorld: It doesn’t seem like BEA’s been able to grow that in the past couple years. What is it going to do to finally get off the
mark there at $1 billion, or maybe it has gone up a little bit?
Levy: We grow both organically and through expansion. If you look at what we’ve done in the last year and a half, we’ve expanded
the reach of Java to areas where traditionally before we were not. One area, in addition to the RFID field, [is] to the communication
field, so people that are developing either RFID applications or communication applications to serve in VOIP, are now developing
under the same Java container that we supported before. We created WebLogic Real Time, which [extended the] standard Java
reach into places where Java didn’t exist before, so where traditionally people used C/C++ for real-time applications, now
they can use Java. So that’s another growth factor. And obviously, the whole AquaLogic product line, and the now SOA 360.
We believe that SOA is going to create a large wave that obviously allows significant growth.
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