BEA Systems kicked-off its new fiscal year in familiar style Wednesday, with a continued fall in new licensing from its core WebLogic business.

It reported a 3.4 per cent drop in business from new licensing to $116m for the first fiscal quarter while services continued their quarterly ascent, jumping 16.2 per cent to $165.7m.

The company saw an overall improvement in business with net income growing 34 per cent to $34.1m on revenue that increased seven percent to $281m. Earnings per diluted share grew two cents to eight cents for the period to April 30.

Chief executive Alfred Chuang called BEA's results "balanced", noting that performance in the Americas was its strongest for three years.

But the results failed to satisfy Wall St analysts, who want to see a return to licensing growth. Wall St had expected $275m in sales and profit of nine cents per share.

In a conference called, Chuang fielded a range of questions on new BEA products and the competitive landscape, notably the challenge posed to BEA's application server from IBM's purchase last week of open source start-up Gluecode. He said he didn't expect to see competition from Gluecode. ®

Related stories

Tough times for BEA
Beehive pollinates Eclipse
IBM moves onto JBoss turf with Gluecode buy