Company officials on Wednesday preached BEA's blended mantra, which combines open source software with commercial offerings. They also stressed that dynamic scripting languages are not displacing Java but play a role in the enterprise.

Middleware, meanwhile, is not becoming a complete commodity. Successful middleware involves pulling together a lot of different products and technologies into a one solution, said Patrick Linskey, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) team lead at BEA, which is a middleware company.

BEA has been working on linking its WebLogic Server application server and EJB, he noted.

"The people who say that middleware is a commodity are the people who have commodity middleware," Linskey said. The reality is there is a lot of interesting innovation going on in this space, he said.

Innovation in IT continues, said Bill Roth, vice president of BEA's Workshop business unit. "In reality, we believe that innovation is everywhere," he said.