Sun Will Bundle BEA App Server With Solaris 9Sun Will Bundle BEA App Server With Solaris 9

Sun Microsystems plans to begin bundling a trial version of BEA Systems Inc.'s Java application server with its Solaris 9 operating system starting in January, potentially boosting BEA's market share in a middleware battle with IBM.

Sun says including BEA's WebLogic software for running Java 2 Enterprise Edition applications with its Unix operating system will give customers more choice in the software they run. Sun will include its own application server with Solaris as well. After a six-month evaluation period, customers will need to choose whether to run WebLogic 7 or Sun's competing product.

However, the Sun One application server holds only single-digit market share, compared with about one-third of the market for BEA and its chief competitor, IBM. The agreement with Sun is the second large bundling deal BEA has struck in recent months. In September, Hewlett-Packard began including WebLogic with its HP-UX Unix product.