BEA Systems Inc. Thursday announced its third fiscal quarter earnings, reporting net income of $27.4 million on revenue of $234 million, which marked the first growth in the companys sales in more than a year.
For the same period last year, BEA posted a net loss of $90.1 million on revenue of $219.6 million.
BEA officials reported the company completed more than 2,500 transactions.
Officials said the company has been winning more business from key rival IBM. One official said BEA delivers software, while IBM sells “serviceware,” an often-used criticism from IBM competitors that the computing giant tends to focus more on services than on software. However, for its third quarter ended Oct. 31, BEA showed significant growth in service revenue, up from $93 million in last years third quarter to $107.9 million for this years third quarter.
During a conference call with press and analysts, BEAs chairman and CEO, Alfred Chuang, said BEA won deals with at least 325 customers who also were considering IBMs WebSphere application server. And, Chuang said, BEAs WebLogic application server actually replaced IBM in 56 competitive situations over the last quarter. However, many corporations use both companies products.
When asked about BEAs claims, an IBM spokeswoman said, “IBM is quite proud of WebSpheres 14 consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, which has made us the market leader.”
Chuang said he expects sales of BEAs software to continue to grow. For the fourth quarter, Chuang said he expects the companys revenues to reach between $238 million and $241 million.
Among the many announcements BEA made over its third quarter was the announcement of BEA Liquid Data for WebLogic, a technology that gives users several different views of their enterprise information from different data sources.