Like Bill Gates` Microsoft, BEA Systems as a scrappy young company is taking on giants like IBM -- and the investment community thinks the new company could emerge a winner.

Coleman, BEA Systems` co-founder, chairman and chief executive and his wife, Claudia,will give $250 million to the University of Colorado over five years. The gift will fund research into technologies to help people with cognitive disabilities, such as cerebral palsy and Downs syndrome. The Colemans have a niece with a cognitive disability.

Coleman founded San Jose, Calif.-based BEA Systems with principals Ed Scott and Alfred Chuang in 1995. Though still young, the company has the rapt attention of several in the investment community. BEA Systems makes software that outfits mainframe systems for online use. Its main money maker, the WebLogic division, provides application servers -- Java software used to bestow online commerce abilities into older networks.

BEA boasts a current market value of about $24.3 billion. Coleman`s stake in BEA alone is valued at about $600 million.

In 2000, the 1,900-employee company posted a $19.6 million loss on $464.4 million in sales -- a one-year sales growth of close to 61 percent.

BEA`s e-commerce application component division has 140 people in Boulder, another 200 people at Denver Tech Center and 80 in Colorado Springs. Coleman said the company is planning growth in Colorado.

The financial tide is turning for the young firm. In the third quarter, the most recent reporting, the company made $8.2 million, or 2 cents per share, compared with a $1.9 million loss in the year-ago period. Sales for the quarter almost doubled to $224 million. The company credited soaring demand for WebLogic. Analysts who follow the firm anticipate earnings of 9 cents per share for the fourth quarter. And they think 2001 will be even better: profit of 24 cents per share.

On Jan. 3, Salomon Smith Barney initiated coverage of the stock (Nasdaq: BEAS) with a price target of $70. The stock closed at $61.13 Tuesday. The firm states it thinks the company will have $1.2 billion in sales next year.

"We believe BEA Systems could become the next big enterprise software company due to its well-established position in providing software that enables companies to extend computing functionality in a distributed environment," Salomon analysts wrote in the initiation report. Salomon analysts say the company is on track to being a software powerhouse in par with Microsoft and Oracle. The global market for e-business platforms is expected to grow to $37.3 billion by 2004 from $11.3 billion in 1999.

The only thing standing in BEA Systems` way seems to be the competition: Once compared to other upstarts like Englewood`s New Era of Networks (NEON), analysts now say the biggest competitors are goliaths -- IBM and Sun Microsystems. In a December interview with BusinessWeek, Coleman didn`t seem daunted by the massive competition: "This is all about market share right now. This is truly a gorilla game: In the end, there can only be one."

Prior to BEA, Coleman was an executive at Sun Microsystems, where he held several positions including founder of SunIntegration Services. Prior to Sun, Coleman co-founded Dest Systems and was an executive at VisiCorp and GTE Sylvania. He started his career in the Air Force, where he was chief of satellite operations in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. He holds a bachelor`s degree in computer science from the U.S. Air Force Academy, and a master`s in computer science and computer engineering from Stanford University.