I rate WebLogic Suite a nine out of ten.

I have hands-on experience with WebLogic Suite, and I've used the solution for the last twelve months where I work on it, manage the projects, and propose the use of WebLogic Suite and various versions of it for the last fifteen to seventeen years.

The organization I work with is a partner of WebLogic Suite.

My team has worked with different versions of the solution, but because of modernization, digital transformation, and cloud migration, customers want to upgrade to the latest version of WebLogic Suite.

Maintaining WebLogic Suite doesn't even require one full FTE if you have one production server and a handful of non-production servers. Partial FTE effort is more than enough after you implement the solution. One person can take on the role of a WebLogic Suite admin, a database admin, an operating system admin, and an application admin. In this way, you can effectively utilize one person. WebLogic Suite isn't that demanding in terms of required effort. It's a simple solution.

My advice to people looking into implementing WebLogic Suite is that many compare this product with some open-source product available online or on the market, and you shouldn't do that because you can't compare a licensed product such as WebLogic Suite with freeware or open-source type of products. What you have to do is to assess your requirements and compliances properly, including the security aspects, maintainability, administrative aspects, and scalability of the solution. After that, you can start comparing WebLogic Suite with other products in the same class or level, for example, with enterprise-class and modular suite types of products. Once you finalize it, then you can move forward. In terms of performance and administration, WebLogic Suite is a good product, and its only shortcoming is that the license cost for it is a bit high, but it's on an enterprise-level, and if you're focused on compliance, reporting, features, and standards, then better go with WebLogic Suite as it works across all industries.

I would rate WebLogic Suite nine out of ten.

People who want to use the solution must research the tool and get trained to benefit from it. I am not familiar with all of the features of the product yet. I do not know whether the solution is platform-dependent or platform-independent. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Cloning and replication of WebLogic instances isn't exactly a rote science. Because the stacks become secured against the hosting environments, encapsulating and re-configuring a working installation into a new set of hosts (with differing names and IP addresses) involves several procedures to re-secure, re-encrypt and reinstate the software to hardware trust certificates. While this process is relatively encapsulated for WebLogic in eBusiness Suite, sometimes it's faster to simply re-install WebLogic on the new hosts, than attempting to re-configure from a backup from a different host set. This is differentiated from the process of scale-up or scaled-down of a cluster, which is a well-defined process by comparison (and automated as an Oracle Enterprise Manager provisioning process.) Once deployed, most change management involves the deployment of application services between instances, and not replication of the WebLogic environment itself.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate WebLogic Suite a nine out of ten.

I don't give anyone a ten but from an app server perspective, WebLogic is definitely going to be a 9 to a 9.5 because they've been in my opinion one of the leading app servers on the market today. They've been around for so long, they're proven. I shouldn't say all but a great majority of all the Fortune 2000 have either worked with WebLogic in the past. Because they have such a large footprint, such a large adoption path, they've got dedicated teams, product engineers that are working on a lot of great features. A lot of customers have been very pleased with WebLogic.

The only improvements we'd like to see is a little bit more enablement on the cloud stuff because obviously like we said, WebLogic works in the cloud but we'd like to see things like enablement in the Amazon EC2 cloud where a lot of customers are working very heavily in those environments.

Cloning and replication of WebLogic instances isn't exactly a rote science. Because the stacks become secured against the hosting environments, encapsulating and re-cconfiguring a working installation into a new set of hosts (with differing names and IP addresses) involves several procedures to re-secure, re-encrypt and reinstate the software to hardware trust certificates. While this process is relatively encapsulated for WebLogic in eBusiness Suite, sometimes it's faster to simply re-install WebLogic on the new hosts, than attempting to re-configure from a backup from a different host set. This is differentiated from the process of scale-up or scaled-down of a cluster, which is a well-defined process by comparison (and automated as an Oracle Enterprise Manager provisioning process.) Once deployed, most change management involves the deployment of application services between instances, and not replication of the WebLogic environment itself.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

I am a subcontractor to Vodacom, and the company I work for is a vendor, and they are an approved vendor with Oracle.

It is difficult to offer advice because every scenario is different, but I would suggest that you use the available expertise. There is a lot of expertise, don't try to do it all alone.

I wouldn't go back to WebSphere and for me, I would say it is the market leader.

I would recommend this solution and I would rate this product a ten out of ten.

It's highly expensive and there are other much, much better products out for the cost of peanuts.

We just like Oracle products.

If you take the time to go through the documentation of this product and its features you'll become familiar with the enterprise standards. It's a good path to becoming familiar with enterprise architecture. Even from an academic perspective, learning and using this application server can be a good start to understanding what can be achieved with an enterprise application server. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

For installing or looking at the database, I would say look at the components that you need within the database. What we generally find is that most of the features that we want, or most of the features that are available in Enterprise Edition, we actually wouldn't use. So take time and you might actually see them only by using Standard Edition.

I don't remember the exact version number of the solution we are using, but it's around version 12.

I'd suggest other companies shop around. There are other competitors. The cost and the actual purpose of the application should be considered before choosing any solution. 

However, we can recommend this solution considering the stability and scalability that we have seen over the last five years.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

If you are serious about it and you have the money to spend, then spend it on a winner. There's all kinds of open source stuff out there. Stuff is changing constantly. If you're trying to run an enterprise business, it's sounds great, it's great for proof of concept. But, when it comes down to it, you don't want to build your own car. You want to buy something that's got some standards, has a big name behind it. That's what I suggest.

I don't give anything a perfect rating. This is software. It's constantly changing. Again, the breadth of services that are provided, and the support, again, is key to us.

You need to consider the licensing and upgrade costs. In addition, it will help to have a dedicated administration team.

I'd suggest those considering implementing the solution to move to the cloud. It's very simple and easy.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Before you configure anything for Oracle, make sure you start the WebLogic admin console on the primary web servers.

If you are unsure about your decision, run a POC with authorization from Oracle through a partner like NEC. Trial and test it for 30 days and see if it meets your requirements. Ensure you have a WebLogic administrator to help guide you through it.

Understand the recommended requirements for the apps and assign the correct memory. This will allow you to achieve a good user experience. The High Availability and high performance provide a solid foundation for application hosting. The apps teams see the benefit and stability when they start using it.

I would say out of the servers that we have used - one is an Apache Tomcat which is Open Source, which we typically use for demos and other things; and then the WebLogic, and then the Oracle Application Server. These are the three things we have used. I rate WebLogic at least a nine out of 10.

I would say I'm very happy with it and I would recommend using this product. However, if you want to use Oracle Apache Tomcat, that is also something which works great. The only thing with Open Source is, as long as long as it's working great, it's great. But, there is a possibility that if something goes wrong you will need support. The support will cost as much as buying WebLogic.

It's always better to go with Oracle, where you know what you are getting and you will get good support. That way, I would recommend WebLogic.

It gives good performance, but we still have to use third-party tools for monitoring. You should take that into consideration when deciding whether to purchase it.

My advice to others would be: don't complicate things. Keep it simple. On a scale from one to 10, I rate this solution a seven. I think the support could be much better. So perhaps the developers can work on that. Also, the WebLogic management console could be more intuitive or more up to date, because it's still the old console from version 10. Bring us up to enterprise manager or cloud control, which has been in design and very intuitive.

I rate this solution as a seven out of 10, because it is not fully satisfying our needs. It is good in specific areas, but it's not satisfying all of our requirements. It is not a one stop shop.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• It is affordable.
• Easy to use.
• Ready documentation, training, and examples.
  

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

The client is happy and there are some issues sometimes with the scalability but it's probably because of the users. Otherwise, we don't have any other problems. Sometimes there are issues with the reports. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

If you don’t want any outages, you want peace of mind, and your application running smoothly, I would say go for WebLogic. Why would you want a painful experience? It's smooth.

This is a straightforward application. It's easy to set up and use if you have the proper documentation, it's not overly challenging. There is a lot of documentation available and what you really need is the technical know how. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We use the on-premises deployment model.

It's a good product. I'd recommend it to others. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.