"JBoss is an open source threat, but JBoss is also a commercial firm. BEA is trying to use other open source avenues, such as Eclipse or Apache, to promote their architecture, and thus gain an eventual commercial advantage with their products," Willett said.

BEA also plans to talk about its new enterprise service bus at the conference. The company in August began shipping its AquaLogic Service Bus product. But BEA officials on Friday would not discuss what the shipment volumes have been thus far.