A year ago I wrote about Oracle’s plan on how to combine BEA Weblogic and OAS.   A long time went by before any more information appeared – we met with our Oracle reps last week to figure out what the deal is.  The answer wasn’t much more clear than it was way back last year.  They do certainly want some kind of money to “upgrade” but it seems poorly thought through.

OAS came in various versions – Java, Standard, Standard One, Enterprise, and then the SOA Suite versions.  The new BEA, now “Fusion Middleware 11g” comes in different versions as well.

  • WLS Standard
  • WLS Enterprise – adds clustering, costs double
  • WLS Suite – adds Coherence, Enterprise Manager, and JRockit realtime, costs quadruple

But they can’t tell us what OAS product maps to what FMW version.

There is also an oddly stripped down “Basic” edition which noted as being a free upgrade from OAS SE but it strips out a lot of JMS and WS stuff; there’s an entire slide of stuff that gets stripped out and it’s hard to say if this would be feasible for us.

As for SOA Suite, “We totally just don’t know.”

Come on Oracle, you’ve had a year to get this put together.  It’s pretty simple, there’s not all that many older and newer products.  I suspect they’re being vague so they can feel out how much $$ they can get out of people for the upgrade.  Hate to break it to you guys – the answer is $0.  We didn’t pay for OAS upgrades before this, we just paid you the generous 22% a year maintenance that got you your 51% profit margin this year. If you’re retiring OAS for BEA in all but name, we expect to get the equivalent functionality for our continued 22%.

Oracle has two (well, three) clear to dos.

1.  Figure out what BEA product bundles give functionality equivalent to old OAS bundles

2.  Give those to support-paying customers

3.  Profit.  You’re making plenty without trying to upcharge customers.  Don’t try it.