Web Application Server Vendors in a War of Attrition

by Dan Burger

Right at the heart of the e-business applications infrastructure, regardless of the company, is the Web application server. It is perhaps the most critical of all components in devising an e-business strategy. Why? Because in the future most custom and packaged applications will run on the application server. The vendors who compete in this $3 billion market--including IBM, BEA Systems, Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and Sybase--are scratching and clawing for each customer that they can capture.

You might be tempted to guess that the Web application server wars would be decided by features and functionality. But Lance Travis, vice president of the Core Research Group at AMR Research says users are basing their buying decisions on much more than that. AMR recently released a report entitled Application Servers: Technical Parity Shuffles the Market Landscape. In that report, AMR foresees no more than four of the Web application server vendors noted above finishing the battle with significant shares of the market. Those players--BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle--will dominate not because of features and functionality, but because of early dominance in the market and developing momentum that won't be overcome. Here's why AMR sees it that way.

Those on top are best prepared to stay on top. AMR believes this is partially because of the role played by third-party vendors. Analysts at AMR say the application server will become a key part of the overall infrastructure, and third-party vendors are convinced enough to make AMR part of their application infrastructure portfolios that include portals, integration, business intelligence, caching, personalization, and development tools.

Those application vendors are drawn toward the application server companies with the major share of the market. Naturally they want to sell to the companies that already have a big market share. Application vendors will port their products there first, which plays a vital role in maintaining the momentum that was already established.

"The application really drives the purchasing decision," says Peter Urban, senior research analyst at AMR Labs. The research points toward customers choosing to go with one of the larger vendors, because "in the future when you buy applications they will more likely be supported by an application server."

Less than 10 percent of the companies in the AMR report run prepackaged applications on an application server today. "Most people are still building custom-built applications," Urban says. Support for the prepackaged apps may not as important today, but it will in the future."

Although features and functionality were downplayed in the research results regarding which companies will actually dominate the application server market, AMR analyst Urban says the development environment should not be forgotten in the decision-making process. The interoperability of development tools and the capability to develop in multiple languages are a significant factor. Urban says users are looking for tools that can port to multiple application servers. In many instances there are four or five different development tools being used to complete a project. Making those tools interoperate is a big hassle.

IBM's Eclipse environment is designed to help this situation by allowing multiple development tools to be plugged into a single environment. Urban says one of the most intuitive environments on the Java side has been developed by one of the smallest vendors: SilverStream Software .

"We are hearing (in the conversations with application server customers) that on the Java side it is really difficult to develop," Urban says. "Java is really powerful, but it is complicated. There are people looking for an easier solution."

Microsoft, he says, will be a major player because the development environment is relatively easy, and it will promote its ease-of-use development tools to differentiate their application servers. However, as the AMR research points out, the selection between Microsoft and J2EE vendors most often depends on existing infrastructure, application requirements, and IT skills--not on application server features and functionality.

Claims being tossed around by all the vendors in this mix make it difficult to sort out the much of the wheat from the chaff. The best advice that can be given to those facing the vendor sorting process as it related to Web application servers is to engage in a prototype project, which allows testing for development, deployment, and performance of a real application component. After a first round of presentations from all the viable vendors, choose two or three to create a prototype project and then make judgments based on what comes from those projects.