BEA underpins corporate Web 2.0 platforms

Middleware giant seeks role among businesses using consumer web technologies

Web 2.0 technologies are to get some enterprise underpinning with a suite of products from BEA Systems. The BEA move highlights the way businesses are turning to the consumer web to revamp the way applications are used, and to attract new talent to the workplace.

The middleware giant’s AquaLogic Pages, AquaLogic Ensemble and AquaLogic Pathways are intended to give firms the usability and interactivity of social software without loss of administrative control. The releases support mashups, widgets, user-generated web applications, social bookmarking, search and activity analytics while providing security and provisioning controls.

The AquaLogic programs were largely developed by Plumtree, acquired by BEA in 2005. By combining them with its own process management tools, BEA expects to support flexible knowledge-management systems and simpler ways to discover how data is being accessed and by whom.

“There’s a lot of information locked up in people’s brains,” said BEA technology evangelist Martin Percival. “Companies don’t just rely on systems but interact socially, for example by finding the expert in the group. That plays into the hands of the social-computing revolution and there’s a new generation of people who are more used to these concepts than the ones used by the old fogeys.”

However, the new tools require monitoring, he said.

“There’s been a temptation for users to go off and find their own solutions. Once you do that, you lose control and [a rule such as] Sarbanes-Oxley comes to get you.”

Many business software developers are now taking a cue from the consumer web to add new user interfaces, user-generated content, mashups, blogs, wikis and other tools.

IBM earlier this year released Lotus Connections, a tool for business users to explore and advertise areas of expertise, while Microsoft added wiki functions to SharePoint. Startups such as SuccessFactors in on-demand employee performance management, and Corizon in creating mashups of new front-ends on ageing business applications, are also taking advantage of the new technologies.

However, some warned that the novelty of Web 2.0 technologies is demanding a high price for skills.

"Traditionally, a solid app developer could do the job, now you need far more client end skills, such as JavaScript and Ajax, and they are not easy to come by," said Ged Waring, chief technology officer at Seatwave, an online ticket marketplace.

IT staffing trade group Atsco said web developer rates are up by over 25 percent year on year as firms turn to poaching in order to compensate for insufficient graduate talent.