Database kingpin makes next target leadership role in application server software arena

Database kingpin Oracle expects to overtake market leaders IBM and BEA Systems in the highly lucrative application server software arena next year.

Thomas Kurian, Oracle's vice-president for its application server business, said this market shake-out would follow the consolidation that had started in this segment of the global software industry.

'We have set out to be No 1 in this space, too,' he said, adding that Oracle 9i application server, which was released in June, 'is already the fastest-growing product line at Oracle, ahead of even our database software and other enterprise applications'.

Oracle's ambition to be the world's leading vendor of application server software will require a huge leap in demand for its product, based on recent market estimates. A study by Gartner's Dataquest unit showed BEA's WebLogic held a 41 per cent share of all new direct-licence revenue in the application server software market last year. Its closest competitors were IBM's WebSphere, with a 31 per cent share, Sun Microsystems' iPlanet, with 13 per cent; and Oracle 9i application server, with 4 per cent.

Oracle, the world's leading supplier of database software used to collect and manage network data, only formally entered the application server mark last November after years of product development.

An application server runs in an organisation's distributed network computing environment to provide the business logic for an application. It is the middleman residing on an intranet server that helps a user's business applications run between the Web browser-based front-end, usually at a personal computer or workstation, and the system back-end, made up of database and transaction server programs.