BEA Pushes Java VM Advantage On Windows, Linux

By Richard Karpinski

BEA Systems on Monday said it has begun shipping its own Java virtual machine, optimized for Intel platforms, which it believes will help it sell application and portal servers on Intel-based operating systems including Windows and Linux.

In the past, in-fighting about which vendor had the best Java VM was limited the desktop. But BEA believes the market needs an "independent" virtual machine built by a vendor that doesn't have a vested interest in the underlying OS.

"The operating systems [that ride on Intel chips] don't have a good Java solution," claimedEric Stahl, BEA's director of product marketing. "[That segment] is overly dependent on Microsoft, Sun, and IBM to provide some of that plumbing."

The problem, said Stahl, is that those three vendors have bigger priorities than optimizing Intel platforms for Java. Microsoft is pushing it's own .NET framework, Sun focuses on Solaris, and IBM has a slew of legacy platforms to support (though it arguably has done much to advance Java on Linux and Windows).

All three vendors "want to promote their own hardware and operating system products," said Stahl. "BEA is in an attractive position. We're going to do everything we can possibly to deliver a strong VM solution on Windows and Linux."

Although the JRockit virtual machine could give BEA a point of differentiation to win all-important Linux and Windows business, it will remain a strong player on other platforms as well, said Stahl. For instance, the BEA WebLogic application server running on Sun Solaris is one of the most widely deployed app server/OS combos, Stahl said.

BEA WebLogic JRockit 7.0 runs across multiple hardware and operating system configurations, including hardware from Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Fujitsu, and others, as well as a range of operating systems but highlighted by tight integration with Red Hat Linux and Microsoft Windows.

Health care company McKesson uses JRockit -- as well as the WebLogic application and portal servers -- to build an executive dashboard for distributing information across the company. The JRockit VM helps McKesson to save money as it standardizes on Intel hardware, said Chuck Nettles, McKesson's chief technology executive.

Prior to JRockit, customers often ran multiple instances of BEA WebLogic Server to support enterprise-class Java applications, said BEA's Stahl, or they turned to more expensive RISC-based hardware. Now, they can run JRockit on affordable Intel Itanium-based systems and have the memory management and scalability they need to support large-scale apps, he said.

BEA WebLogic JRockit also includes a management console that conveys real-time information about server behavior and application resource availability. Customers can monitor the operating characteristics of the JVM and the Java application and be automatically notified of application changes and resource availability to mitigate imminent resource issues, such as memory usage or CPU utilization in time to help avoid possible system downtime.

BEA WebLogic JRockit 7.0 is immediately available for free download.