BEA announced disappointing financial results last night (Wed Nov 15, 2006 5:16pm ET) resulting in a sharp drop in their share price this morning. BEA announced sweeping changes to their Aqualogic product suite this quarter with availability in 2007. One has to wonder if the new product announcements have hurt sales of their current products. I believe BEA's SOA strategy is strong, but they need their products to catch up to their strategy.

IBM and Oracle just completed strong quarters, but remember much of their growth was based on acquisitions. BEA can get back in the game once SOA 360 is released in 2007. However, the complexity of the SOA 360 message seems to have hurt their current sales.

Merrill Lynch cut BEA Systems, Inc. - BEAS , a provider of business applications and server infrastructure software, to sell from neutral, saying the stock is overvalued. The broker noted that the shares are up 67% so far this year and said positive sentiment may not persist as evidence of decelerating license growth mounts. Merrill told clients that BEA's growth is being eclipsed by IBM and Oracle … and it is losing market share to these two heavyweights.

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As Chief Technologist and National Practice Director for SOA with Perficient, Inc., I get the opportunity to work with a lot of customers implementing SOA. See my bio page for my contact information or just post a comment if you want to talk about your SOA projects.

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