Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers, 2Q08

A Magic Quadrant represents Gartner's judgment of vendors' ability to execute and the completeness of their vision in a technology market (in this case, the EAS market). The Ability to Execute criteria reflect the staying power and record of execution of vendors in the market. The Completeness of Vision criteria reflect vendors' ability to understand market trends, influence them, and follow them with agility and consistency.

Vendors that are strong in their execution and ability to follow and influence the market are labeled "market leaders." The most recent players in the market that have a limited record of execution, and well-executing vendors that are overly cautious on innovation and risk, are less likely to be leaders.

The Magic Quadrant can be seen as an arranged "long list" of vendors for a given market. Devise your own shortlist based on your organization's specific circumstances and requirements. Use this Magic Quadrant as one point of input, not as the sole deciding criterion.

Users and vendors in the EAS market are driven to support enterprise-class software development projects. These projects often differ broadly in scope and specific requirements, as well as user circumstances. These differences lead users to a variety of solutions, and this range of demand supports broad supply options: This is a multibillion-dollar market that has dozens of notable vendors. Gartner rates 29 vendors in this Magic Quadrant, and we are tracking more, which may be added to future Magic Quadrants.

Users' requirements for products in this market are continuously changing. Formerly optional features (such as support of service-oriented interfaces and interoperability) have become essential, and formerly obscure innovations (such as grid orientation, microkernel-style plug-in and multitenancy) have become important commercial differentiators. Some features, regulated by standards bodies and available from most competitors, become near-commodity (that is, they support basic Web services protocols and APIs). Other features remain guarded vendor differentiators (such as XTP-oriented extensions). Evaluation criteria for the EAS market change every time we revisit the market to reflect its current state-of-the-art and evolving priorities.

Gartner has recently revised its approach to identifying markets for Magic Quadrants and other research. The change affects the market definition for this year's EAS Magic Quadrant. We have established a new category of markets — those based on prevailing use patterns or prevailing user project types (rather than vendor product packaging). To that end, in 2007 we published a set of Magic Quadrants on project-requirements-driven markets heavily using EAS technology along with other technologies, such as user interaction, composition tools, communication middleware and others (see "Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for New Service-Oriented Business Application Projects, 2Q07" and "Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Composite-Application Projects, 2Q07"). Those markets are populated by vendors that offer complete end-to-end technology support for named project types, and by users that look to attain such full end-to-end technology support from one vendor.

EAS technology is rarely a complete answer to a project's end-to-end requirements. Organizations and projects evaluating an EAS on its own merits are typically looking to assemble a best-of-breed suite of technologies, potentially from multiple vendors, to fulfill the total requirements of a project. This Magic Quadrant is targeted at such best-of-breed initiatives — the evaluation criteria and ratings are designed to model the best-of-breed approach to technology selection, leaving the "one vendor for the entire project" technology evaluations to the use-pattern-driven category of Magic Quadrants.

The EAS market is populated by vendors that offer a system software product of the following minimal characteristics:

Offers a "container" implementation for the execution of application software modules (SM):
- The container provides a "programming model" (a set of APIs for use by the SMs).
- The container deploys as a long-running server operating system (OS) task (OS "daemon").
- SMs are programmatically addressable on request remotely through services that are associated with the container.
- The container allocates and uses OS resources (memory, threads, tasks) on behalf of the individual SMs, freeing SM code from the necessity of direct interaction with the OS.
- The container provides resource pooling (database connections and network connections), and the pools are shared by the SMs.
Supports distributed computing (load balancing and failover clustering between container instances).
Provides an API or other means for authentication and authorization by the container.
Provides an API or other means for monitoring the status and minimal management (such as start and stop) of the container instance(s).
Provides an API or other means to access a file system by an SM.
Provides an API or other means of access to a relational DBMS (RDBMS) by an SM.
Provides an API or other means of invoking SMs by an SM:
- Within the same container instance
- Across like container instances
- In other unlike container types
Provides an API or other means to demarcate an atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability (ACID)-style transaction by an SM.

Leading EAS products typically have additional subsystems, such as those for message queuing, publish-and-subscribe messaging, integration adapters, business process management (BPM), rules management, system management, multichannel access and hardware grid. These are important (and many are considered in our ratings), but not definitional.

Advanced application servers enable plug-in replacements of subsystems and software-as-a-service (SaaS)-oriented features (such as support for multitenant deployments), and they support ultra-high-end transaction processing (TP) features. These, too, are important, but not definitional.

Basic application servers are similar products with a lesser set of features (transaction management, external interoperability and other features listed above are not required at all, or are required in reduced configurations). The EAS market is a collection of vendors that offer products that meet the requirements listed above.

A vendor is included in the Gartner EAS Magic Quadrant if it meets the following criteria:

Offers an EAS product that matches the market definition above.
The minimal EAS product is delivered by the vendor (the definitional features must be available directly from the vendor as the vendor's own intellectual property or under an OEM agreement; the extended features may be available through partners).
Product support for the minimal EAS product is available from the company or a partner.
A major release or a point release of the minimal EAS product had been delivered in the past 12 months, or the vendor has publicly committed to delivering one in the next three months from the Magic Quadrant's publication date.
Enough information is available to Gartner from the vendor and its customers for the possibility of a fair rating.

This Magic Quadrant includes two open-source organizations (Apache Software Foundation and OW2 Consortium) that do not offer support for their technology projects and are not technically vendors, although they are technology providers. To rate these for the EAS market, we must take into account not only the technology of the named organization, but also the available support options. The supporting vendors are not named in the rating (in part, because there are multiple options), but their offerings are still rated and evaluated as essential to the ability of the open-source technology to compete in the commercial EAS market.

Salesforce.com — Introduced Force.com, which is an application-platform-as-a-service (APaaS) offering implemented using an internal SaaS-enabled EAS
SpringSource — Acquired Covalent Technologies to initiate an active offering of Spring Framework and Tomcat combination.

Adobe — Exited the EAS market with retirement of JRun.
Mobicents — Acquired by Red Hat.
Recursion Software — Exited the EAS market, selecting to focus mostly on mobile computing.
Aumega Networks — Not enough information available to rate.
Zend — Exited the EAS market, selecting to focus mostly on user-facing technologies.
Borland — Ceased active participation in the EAS market.
Cordys — Exited the EAS market, selecting to focus mostly on composite application platform suites.
ObjectWeb — Reorganized under the name OW2 Consortium.

The fundamental indication of a vendor's ability to execute is its attained industry and market presence and reputation; its record of business and technical execution; and the degree to which it has delivered the essential core functionality expected from a competitive product.

We consider the following product characteristics as fundamental requirements for well-executing vendors, rated under the Product/Service criteria:

Interoperability and standards compliance
Product maturity
Platform coverage
Breadth of add-ons and applications from the vendor company
Product viability and installed base
Ability to innovate with minimal disturbance to users (backward compatibility)

The fundamental indication of completeness of vision is the degree to which a vendor anticipates and influences the prevailing market trends.

We consider the following product characteristics as fundamental indications of a well-established market vision, rated under the Offering (Product) Strategy criteria:

Advanced service-oriented architecture (SOA) support
Event-driven architecture (EDA) support
Tracking the latest and most impactful Web innovations
XTP features
Innovation in programming models and the use of metadata
Innovation in administration/management technologies
Innovation in internal architecture
Support for SaaS-style deployment of applications (such as multitenancy, metering and other features)

Leaders in the EAS market combine insightful understanding of the realities of the market, the ability to influence the market's direction, the ability to attract a following and the capacity to lead. Leaders have the proven ability to deliver on their vision and to support their customers through periods of stability, as well as periods of change. The leaders control most of the market's business activity and are the primary influencers of market evolution.

However, a leader is not always the best choice for a particular user's project. Many are spread too thinly in their offerings, channels and geographies, which can cause them to fall behind the more narrowly focused smaller vendors in support and commitment to individual mainstream customers. With some notable exceptions, leaders are typically large vendors with long-term industry records. They represent safe choices, but they are not necessarily best-of-breed vendors in all circumstances.

In 2Q08, the leaders in the EAS market are:

BEA Systems — Distributed transaction processor (DTP; components of the WebLogic family of Java-based software)
IBM — DTP (WebSphere Application Server family and additional components of the WebSphere family of Java-based software)
Microsoft — Collection of technologies fulfilling the function of an application server, although not offered as a named and priced EAS product, including .NET Framework, components of .NET MSAP, IIS and some components of Windows Server
Oracle — Oracle Application Server and additional components of Oracle Fusion Middleware suite
Red Hat — JBoss application server technology

At the time of this Magic Quadrant's publication, BEA Systems is an independent company, but Oracle has announced a definitive agreement to acquire BEA. The acquisition is expected to close in mid-2008. In rating Oracle and BEA for the EAS market, we took into account a degree of uncertainty for both of their product sets, as well as the inevitable period of challenge during transition — should the acquisition be successfully approved. However, we also recognize that both product lines have a substantial installed base and are likely to persist for the period between publication of this Magic Quadrant and its next refresh, so the independent standing of the two offerings will remain relevant to many users during this period. Our ratings are, therefore, based on the merits of the two product lines, mostly because they are preacquisition.

Challengers excel in their ability to attract a large user following, but owe that ability to a relatively narrow focus on a particular use pattern, vertical industry, geographic location or other specialization for EAS technology. These vendors often trail the leading-edge industry innovations and lack a broad industry appeal; however, they excel in their dependable execution. Some of these vendors are conservative followers of older and well-proven technologies, whereas others offer a specialized focus. The conservative challengers are the best choice for similarly conservative users: Their time-proven technologies and support networks may carry certain guarantees that are not available elsewhere. The focused challengers excel in their chosen patterns and are the best choices for a subset of EAS users, while lacking some of the capabilities for the requirements of others.

In 2Q08, the challengers in the EAS market are:

BEA Systems — TPM (the Tuxedo family of TP technologies)
Fujitsu — Components of the Interstage family of software
IBM —TPM (including CICS transaction server [TS], IMS transaction manager [TM] and TP facility [TPF] — all mainframe-based TP monitors)
SAP — SAP NetWeaver Application Server and additional components of the SAP NetWeaver family of technologies

Most of the vendors in the Visionaries quadrant are relatively small innovators, invested in excelling with a highly differentiated variation of an EAS offering, usually at the expense of a lesser breadth of the total offering when compared with established, comprehensive products. Some vendors are attempting to introduce a radically new approach to the market, while others are addressing some limitations of mainstream options.

Some of the visionaries will eventually be acquired by the leaders or merge with their peers; few may grow to become market leaders themselves. Others will limit their target markets to focus on their core vertical or geographic competencies and become niche players, or they will grow to be challengers. Some will exit the market. Visionary vendors usually have relatively small numbers of customers and production deployments and, therefore, represent higher long-term risk; however, they offer the greatest opportunity for differentiation for users looking for the competitive use of IT.

In 2Q08, the visionaries in the EAS market are:

Appistry
GigaSpaces
jNetx
Kabira Technologies
Majitek
OpenCloud
Paremus
Salesforce.com (the Force.com EAS as a service offering)
SpringSource (the merged Apache Tomcat and Spring Framework offering)
Sun Microsystems
WareLite

Niche players operate well in a vertical industry, a geographic segment of the EAS market or the OEM market segment. Niche players are often specialists in their areas, and may represent the optimum choice for some projects and for some IT organizations by offering the specialized expertise, more-relevant support practices, flexible terms and conditions, and greater dedication to a particular market segment and its customers.

Some niche players look to grow their businesses to challenge the leaders. Others discover innovative solutions that attract interest beyond their target market segments and emerge as visionaries. However, most niche players are focused on serving their market segments and customer bases, and they generally limit their ambitions to maintaining their segment excellence. Most niche players serve their historic customer bases and lack the ability or the interest to invest in carrying these customers forward. As their investment in the market declines, some of them will be dropped from Magic Quadrant coverage because they are no longer viable, competitive options for new users.

In 2Q08, the niche players in the EAS market are:

Apache Software Foundation (Geronimo)
Caucho
Hitachi (components of the uCosminexus family of software)
Iona (Orbix family of CORBA-based products)
Kingdee
Micro Focus
NEC (WebOTX application server, components of WebOTX family of software)
OW2 Consortium (Jonas)
Pramati Technologies (Pramati server)
Sybase
TmaxSoft — DTP (the Java Enterprise User Solution family of Java-based EAS technology)
TmaxSoft — TPM (the Tmax family of transaction-processing technologies)

Open-source business model and community support provide a viable foundation for growth and a channel for adoption.
Excellent business reputation adds credibility to otherwise modestly known technology.
Business endorsement, support offering and embedded use by IBM WebSphere division open an enterprise adoption channel and encourage growing "mind share" for the project.
Early support of the latest Java specifications, including Java EE 5, attracts prospects looking for the latest technology and is evidence of the company's commitment to standards.

Its small and slow-growing enterprise installed base is hard to accelerate in a mature and largely saturated Java EAS market.
Limited adoption of IBM WebSphere Community Edition based on Geronimo negates some of the advantages of IBM's backing and challenges IBM's business commitment.
Late to the Java EAS market, although the leading innovation is evolving away from Java EE and toward XTP and APaaS.
Strong competition from the more established and more visible JBoss Application Server and, increasingly, from GlassFish.

Leading-edge, grid-based application platform (Appistry Enterprise Application Fabric [EAF]) targeting transactional and analytical applications.
High-profile, large-scale (more than 400 CPU cores in one case) and business-critical deployments in large, Global 2000-class companies.
Support for .NET and Java environments.
Aggressive "razor and blade" strategy (Appistry Open Distribution) based on free Appistry EAF use (development, testing and production) and sales of add-ons for management, large-scale deployments and energy saving.

Ability to invest for growth in the mainstream market is limited.
U.S.-only commercial operations make the company less appealing for non-U.S.-based and multinational companies.
Limited number of customers in production (approximately 20).
Limited, albeit growing, support from system integrators and independent software vendors (ISVs) developing applications and tools for Appistry EAF.

Large installed base, including strong presence in mission-critical business software, extensive partner ecosystem and market leadership in the fast-growing IT market in the People's Republic of China.
Industry-leading implementation of Java EE specification in business and engineering terms is first among leading vendors with the full production implementation of Java EE 5.
Comprehensive suite of middleware technologies, while retaining application and platform neutrality, establishes BEA as the leading independent player in the application infrastructure market.
Market-leading technology vision, including advances in cloud computing, virtualization, XTP, event processing, microkernel architecture, standards support, support and the use of open-source resources.

Although it is clear that some BEA technology will become part of strategic Oracle offerings and some will be well-supported for the near future, the pending acquisition by Oracle casts doubt on long-term viability of products, and predicts some period of realignment and shifts in strategy, investment and personnel.
Gradual, but persistent, commoditization of the core Java EE market challenges BEA to excel in new markets or lose its leadership position in business software infrastructure.
Prices deemed too high by the majority of users and prospects, and limited diversity of offerings, hinder the company's ability for bundle-price discounting that is available to its competitors.
Limited differentiation in development tools and modest adoption in programmer-productivity-sensitive projects.

Excellent reputation of Tuxedo with its large installed base of high-end, mission-critical projects creates opportunities for upsell of software and services.
Excellent high-performance, event-driven internal architecture of Tuxedo — visionary for its time — still delivering market-leading performance and QOS, which ensures continuing market presence.
Architecture is well-fit to participate in new SOA initiatives, enabling continuing use of Tuxedo-based applications in modern SOA and event-driven designs.
Certain to continue to be well-supported post-Oracle-acquisition given the impressive list of high-end users, strong adoption in the People's Republic of China, limited ongoing R&D costs and dependable long-term revenue stream.

Lack of support of Java and the use of the now proprietary programming model of XTMI render the product legacy for most technology planners, thus reducing the product's appeal for new projects.
Slow and incremental R&D investment by BEA sealed the product's legacy status, and change of ownership to Oracle will likely prompt further doubts about long-term product prospects.
Small and declining ecosystem of partners reduces the completeness and appeal of the "whole product" technology and services offering.

In business for more than 10 years, Caucho has built up a large installed base of Resin EAS, which it claims exceeds 7,000 organizations, including CNet, Kodak and salesforce.com.
Reputation for high-performance technology (including challenging performance of the popular Apache Web Server and Apache Tomcat) helps spread the word and improve name recognition.
Creative use of open-source and supported closed-source product distributions broadens channels.
"Clean room" implementation of PHP 5 (Quercus) over a Java Virtual Machine uniquely enables colocation of PHP and Java software, and claims to exceed performance of the popular Zend PHP engine.
Unique high-performance, binary Web services protocol (Hessian).

Not certified for J2EE or Java EE, thus lacking assurance of portability for alternative Java EAS and limits mainstream user appeal.
Majority of users are leading-edge IT and use only the high-performance subset of the product, including the Web server and the servlet engine, as part of best-of-breed infrastructure assembly, thus limiting mainstream presence or record.
Focus on few core innovations distracts the company from tracking most mainstream computing innovations (SaaS, event processing and XTP), further limiting mainstream relevance.
Minimal investment, record or skill in product marketing leads to poor name recognition beyond the narrow circle of the leading-edge engineering teams.

Interstage Application Server has an established track record in high-end, mission-critical use scenarios (proven zero-downtime durability and linear performance scalability).
Established channels to Global 1000 enterprises in the U.S. by Fujitsu's group business (such as in hardware) and Interstage Application Server-based comprehensive application infrastructure suite, including strong capabilities in repository (CentraSite) and BPM.
Mainframe-integration-friendly support (mainframe-operation-class batch application framework and COBOL support).
Corporate commitment to increase revenue (including Interstage brand) from global business revenue.

Number of certified engineers from partners is still limited outside Japan.
Lack of support for XTP; not enough support for SaaS and EDA/complex event processing (CEP).
Limited industry-specific solutions outside Japan.
Limited recognition as an EAS vendor outside Japan.

Fast-growing company, more than doubling revenue every year since 2003, with a rapidly expanding customer base (approximately 100) in financial services, telecom, Web commerce, online gaming/gambling, defense industries and in the OEM market.
Sophisticated XTP-oriented, grid-based platform based on distributed caching technology and OSGi deployment architecture.
Support for popular open-source technology (Tomcat, Spring Framework, Hibernate, Mule, MySQL and dynamic languages) makes it appealing to mainstream enterprises and ISVs.
Progressive vision for cloud computing (multitenancy, support for Amazon EC2, metering and billing), event processing features (such as continuous query), integration with Microsoft technology (.NET, Spring .NET and Excel) and Web 2.0 technologies (support for dynamic languages).

Small company size limits GigaSpaces' ability to invest for growth in the mainstream market.
Complex, technology-rich platform in rapid evolution may prove challenging to deploy and manage for less-technically savvy users.
Fast growth in multiple geographies may create support issues, given the company's relatively small support organization.
Market awareness and third-party support, albeit improving, is still significantly lower than that of the more established EAS vendors.

uCosminexus Application Server has proven, stable, high-quality products, along with strong consulting (SOA) methodology capabilities and strong data layer capabilities.
Synergy with strong access channel to Global 100 via storage business outside Japan.
Established track record in high-end TP for mission-critical use, with strong management capability for 24/7 operations and aggressive support for XTP.
Comprehensive application infrastructure coverage.

Limited support for SaaS and EDA/CEP.
Limited presence of Cosminexus brand outside Japan.
Small number of solution partners outside Japan.
Limited premium professional services/support outside Japan.

Vast installed base, ample third-party support and widely recognized brand for WebSphere Application Server (WAS) EAS technology.
Extensive WAS product line that covers a wide spectrum of market segments, from low-end, open-source-based (Apache Geronimo) Community Edition to high-end WAS for z/OS.
Comprehensive WAS-based, SOA-enabling application infrastructure portfolio, including portal, EAS, enterprise service bus, BPM technology, composition tools, repository/registry, development tools, security and management.
Advanced XTP, CEP and virtualization capabilities (WebSphere Extreme Scale and WebSphere Virtual Enterprise) incrementally adding to standard WAS.

Reputation of more-complex and harder-to-deal-with products than primary competitors.
Late to introducing certified support for Java EE 5 throughout the entire product line (Java EE 5 is currently supported only in WAS Community Edition 2.0). Cross-family Java EE 5 certification is expected to be completed in 4Q08 as part of WAS 7.0.
Limited ISV support for WAS Community Edition, WAS z/OS and WAS on System i (ex AS/400).
Relatively small, albeit growing, installed base (approximately 100 customers overall) for WebSphere Virtual Edition and WebSphere Extreme Scale.
Vision for SaaS-style application deployments is still in the early stages of evolution.

Large, loyal installed base for IBM's TPMs: CICS TS, IMS TM and TPF.
Large, profitable and still growing TPM business ensures long-term viability and support from IBM.
Enterprise-class scalability, availability and manageability of IBM's TPMs are still unmatched by mainstream Java-based and .NET EAS products.
Incremental injection of modern technology (Java, XML, Web services, middleware connectivity and event processing) makes IBM's TPMs first-class citizens in SOA initiatives.

Growing user concerns about future availability of CICS, IMS and TPF skills.
The high cost of entry (hardware, software and skills) for IBM's TPMs for new users inhibits expansion of the installed base.
The growing number of successful mainframe migration/replacement projects encourages IBM's TPM users to consider shifting to alternative software/hardware platforms.
User activity related to IBM's TPM-based applications is primarily focused on maintenance and incremental evolution. Most new TP projects (although often requiring integration of IBM's TPM-established applications) go to Java EE or .NET-based platforms.

Loyal installed base for the Orbix CORBA-based line of EAS technology, especially in telecom, financial services and transportation.
Mature product proven in large and business-critical SOA initiatives and embedded applications.
Available on a variety of hardware platforms, including IBM z/OS mainframe.
Support for native interoperability and integration with IBM's CICS TS and IMS TM.

Static Orbix business, mostly driven by upgrades and maintenance revenue from established users.
Popularity and industry support for CORBA rapidly declining in most vertical industries.
Orbix customers' activity mostly focused on incremental evolution of existing applications. Few new Orbix project starts.
Slow erosion in Orbix customer base because CORBA projects are reaching their end of life.

jNetX N(x) is one of the few commercially available implementations of the JSLEE standard specifications (JSR 22 and 240) for Java-based, event-driven EAS, and the product is also being progressively integrated with mainstream Java EE platforms.
High-performance, event-driven EAS that provides high-availability, nonstop operations and multitenancy capabilities.
Rich set of development, rule engine, resource adapters (protocols), monitoring and management tools addressing the needs of the telecom service provider market.
High-profile production installed base (between 20 and 30), especially in European telecom companies, and a growing number of system integrator, ISV and telecom equipment provider partners.

Slow, limited following challenges long-term viability of the entire JSLEE specification.
Undivided jNetX focus on servicing the telecom market inhibits adoption from users in other vertical sectors looking for an XTP-style, high-performance EAS that would otherwise be potentially interested in N(x).
Risk-averse telecom companies are still skeptical about the viability of Java-based platforms for carrier-grade network applications, which may slow mainstream adoption.
Mounting competition from software megavendors (BEA Systems, IBM and Oracle) that offer basic Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) servlet-based products in the telecom market.

Good installed base (more than 100) in telecom, financial services, and defense in North America and Europe.
Proved and leading edge; high-performance, event-driven application platform — Kabira Transaction Platform — that also supports high-availability requirements.
Go-to-market strategy focused on telecom and financial services market, including the provisioning of protocol adapters, connectors and Kabira's own packaged application solutions.
Advanced technology and strong vision for XTP, event-processing and metadata-driven (UML) application development.

Small company size limits Kabira's ability to invest for growth in the mainstream market.
Although productive, the company's UML-based development environment is unusual for most developers.
Current lack of support for popular programming models (such as .NET, Java EE and Spring) inhibits adoption by mainstream enterprises and ISVs until the release of Java support in 2H08.
Limited support from ISVs developing applications and tools for Kabira Transaction Platform.

Aggressive implementation of Java platform specification (first Chinese middleware vendor to obtain J2EE certification and JEE 5 certification [fourth in the world]) to Kingdee Middleware (The Shenzhen Kingdee Middleware Company) Apusic application server.
Proven track record in demanding segments, such as banking.
Significant penetration in government industry, and large installed base of ERP applications in People's Republic of China.
Aggressive support for SaaS and open-source-based development.

Lack of support for SaaS, EDA/CEP and XTP; not enough support for open-source software.
Limited partners (solution-design skill/product skill) and resources outside People's Republic of China.
Lacks a powerful vision/execution to significantly increase its presence outside the Chinese market.
Limited global support.

Majitek's EAS (Majitek GridSystem), one of the first examples of an XTP platform, is focused on providing dynamic high-availability and massive scalability for Java-based applications.
Product based on leading edge, but increasingly popular, open-source technologies, such as Spring and OSGi.
SaaS-oriented capabilities for fine-grained billing and role-based security.
High-profile partnership with Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent focused on select high-growth geographies (such as the Middle East); massively investing in the development of "greenfield" IP-enabled communities (towns, airports and ports).

Small company size limits its ability to invest for rapid growth and geographic expansion.
Commercial operations in only Australia and the Middle East make the company unappealing for U.S. or European organizations.
Small (less than 10) installed base of production customers for GridSystem.
Out-of-the-box support only for Web services and Java Messaging Service requires development of custom adapters to connect through other interoperability protocols.

Solid reputation as a reliable provider of enterprise software for IBM mainframe COBOL-based environments.
Large installed base and third-party support for core Micro Focus COBOL technology in large and midsize organizations.
Long-standing experience in providing CICS-compatible platform middleware products used for development/testing and runtime execution of CICS/COBOL applications.
EAS offering packaged to support plain COBOL applications (Micro Focus Server for COBOL), SOA-enabled COBOL (Micro Focus Server for SOA) and CICS/IMS COBOL migration (Micro Focus Server Enterprise Edition) is designed to appeal to midsize and large organizations.

Go-to-market strategy is mainly focused on CICS- and IMS-based application modernization (SOA enablement and replatforming), which narrows Micro Focus EAS appeal primarily to IBM-mainframe users.
Minimal investments in building mind share.
Limited vision for emerging architectural paradigms, such as EDA, XTP and SaaS.
Small, albeit growing, production installed base for Micro Focus Server for SOA and Micro Focus Server Enterprise Edition.

Massive installed base and large community of developers and ISVs makes Microsoft's nonstandard EAS offering (including .NET Framework, parts of MSAP and IIS) a de facto standard.
Visionary plans for SaaS platform technology and modeling-based software engineering ("Oslo") use vast company engineering and business resources to try to catch up with and surpass leading competitors.
Deep integration with Windows OS optimizes performance, improves ease of deployment and use, and, in some cases, reduces the costs of engineering and the deployment of business applications.
Long-standing commitment to developers and ease-of-use has produced a near-dominating position of Microsoft EAS with small and midsize software projects.
Growing adoption of MSAP in mission-critical enterprise projects and improving Microsoft practices in support of high-end IT organizations.

Exclusive Microsoft reliance on Windows OS limits users' deployment options to a single OS and a single vendor for much of the software infrastructure portfolio.
Microsoft does not identify its EAS capability as a distinct product. Technology representing the functionality of an EAS is spread across several products, confusing some users and complicating competitive positioning against Java EAS vendors.
Late entry into the SOA market (despite the early lead with Web services) and limited professional services business holds back Microsoft's share in enterprise SOA-focused projects.
Strategic focus on the mass-market is the core of Microsoft's business success, but leads to delays in adopting important high-end enterprise initiatives (such as XTP, EDA and SOA).

Strong, established presence of WebOTX application server in telecom and other ubiquitous areas.
Established track record and advanced features for high-performance/demanding, mission-critical areas.
Strong capability of standard specification implementation.
Strong focus on evolving and selling WebOTX Java EE application in select deployment scenarios.

Lack of support for SaaS, EDA/CEP and XTP.
Expanding globally to create closer partnerships with global vendors that have products that conflict with WebOTX may limit NEC's application server product presence/opportunity outside Japan.
Narrowing NEC's product portfolio may limit opportunities to expand sales/marketing strategy and organization, especially inside/outside Japan.
Little presence as an SOA platform vendor outside Japan.

Rhino is one of the few expert implementations of the JSLEE standard (JSR 22 and 240) — advanced specification for event-driven EAS.
Promising business model of initial strong focus on the telecom vertical market, combined with early presence in other industries in preparation for later leverage and broadening of the target market.
High-performance technology architecture differentiates Rhino from common mainstream EAS.

Relatively small installed base of Rhino (fewer than 10 deployments in production) challenges product viability with prospects.
Slow and limited following challenges long-term viability of the entire JSLEE specification.
Limited ecosystem of ISV and system integration partners reduces available breadth of channels.
Lack of support for the mainstream EAS model of Java EE discourages mainstream adoption and forces OpenCloud into the role of missionary sale of the little-known JSLEE specification.

Large and growing installed base for Oracle EAS technology, comparable to that of major competitors.
Successful indirect sales strategy. Oracle sells more EAS technology through partners than any of its competitors.
Visionary acquisition of distributed, caching technology specialist Tangosol paves the way for strong Oracle entry in the XTP market.
Oracle EAS technology is at the core of the Oracle Fusion Middleware strategic application infrastructure stack, which, in turn, is meant to be the foundation for the upcoming Oracle Fusion Applications next-generation business applications suite.
Poised to gain strength in high-end enterprise projects, as well as leading Java EE (WebLogic Server) and Java Platform, Standard Edition (JRockit) products through the acquisition of BEA Systems.

Although growing, industry support and market awareness of Oracle EAS technology is still lower than for its primary competitors.
Oracle EAS technology doesn't have the same amount of large, business-critical projects in production as its primary competitors.
Late in delivering support for Java EE 5 to be introduced with Oracle Application Server 11g R.1 (not before 3Q08).
Announced acquisition of BEA Systems creates dualism in Oracle's EAS strategy between proprietary Oracle Application Server and leading, popular BEA Systems' WebLogic Server.
Vision for SaaS-style application deployments is still in the initial stages of evolution.

Open-source business model and community support form an agile foundation for the long-term project evolution.
Long-term support by Groupe Bull ensures financial support and commercial backing to business initiatives.
Partnership initiatives in People's Republic of China might open a large new market for the product and the organization.
Recently rearchitected the core of the product for native support of the OSGi standard, which promises advanced flexibility and extensibility of the product.

Minimal installed base and name recognition discourages community growth and delays the proof of technical viability of the product.
The merger with China-based Orientware shifts some of the organization's focus and resources away from its traditional partnerships and channels in Europe and North America.
Slow R&D investment from limited-backing organizations challenges the project's ability to compete with increasingly aggressive open- and closed-source alternatives.
Lack of investment in emerging EAS trends, such as XTP, SaaS, model-driven programming and CEP, hold back the project's ability to differentiate in a saturated market.

Early entry in the XTP market with one of the first grid-based application platforms (Infiniflow Service Fabric).
EAS strategy originally based on industry standard technologies, leveraging OSGi and a service component architecture.
Support for multiple Java development frameworks, including Spring Dynamic Modules, Google's Guice and Apache iPOJO.
Open-source-driven development and go-to-market strategy (CodeCauldron-Newton project provides an open-source implementation of the core Infiniflow technology).

Ability to invest for growth is limited by its small size.
Geographic coverage concentrated on the U.K. and New York limits the company's ability to support multinational organizations.
Small (five to 10) production installed base.
Limited, albeit growing, support for Infiniflow from system integrators and ISVs.

Lightweight (small footprint), simple characteristics of Pramati Server (for embedded use).
Stable revenue stream with powerful OEM partners.
Keeping resources in India for low operation cost.
Small and simple organization due to OEM business model (little resources for marketing and sales) to focus on R&D.

Lack of support for SaaS, SOA Inside, EDA/CEP and XTP.
Limited coverage/scope of features, with limited support for standards.
Limited number of OEM partners.
Basic set of application development tools providing limited support for complex, enterprise-class applications.

Clear leadership in the open-source EAS market, with the largest installed base and largest partner following further enhanced by the backing by Red Hat — the industry-leading Linux vendor.
Excellent technical reputation of the core JBoss EAS technology.
Effective business strategy of separating JBoss.org (the pure open-source "sandbox") and JBoss.com (enterprise-oriented, supported and certified technology suites) makes the technology available and appealing to open-source enthusiasts and mainstream-business technology buyers.
Acquisition of Mobicents gives Red Hat's middleware portfolio and platform of high-performance computing, especially optimized for the telecom market, the only open-source implementation of the JSLEE standard.

Potentially conflicting priorities between the company's Linux business and the OS-independent JBoss middleware business.
Growing presence of competing open-source EAS offerings from Apache and Sun Microsystems, both ahead on standards support in Java EE.
Reputation and user expectation of low costs limits the ability of Red Hat to grow income by price increases and forces the company into adjacent businesses, including low-margin professional services.
New business leadership reassesses the overall company business strategy and will likely challenge the established JBoss culture of software experimentation and innovation in favor of business priorities.
The challenge of transforming JBoss momentum from the established, but narrow, application server market to the broader, but essential, application infrastructure market requires a new marketing, sales and business outlook.