SAP

Describing Sybase ASE as "an integral part of the SAP solution stack," SAP said that the tight integration between SAP and Sybase means that customers will be able to engage with a single partner and that SAP will provide "attractive licensing and maintenance terms and conditions."

This is clearly a shot at increasing SAP's independence from Oracle in particular - a co-opetitor if ever there was one (and a very fierce one, to boot).

There is an irony in this: if SAP hadn't written R/3 to require Oracle's 'row-level locking' feature some 20 years ago, then Sybase could well have been the default choice for running SAP today. At the time, Sybase was in the ascendant in many fields - notably financial services - thanks to features like its performance-enhancing "stored procedures." But it just couldn't run R/3, and was loth to change its product for SAP - at the time still largely unknown outside of Germany.

Today, all serious relational databases do row-level locking (and stored procedures). But even with credible alternatives from IBM and Microsoft, Oracle has remained the dominant platform, supporting well over half all SAP installations, thanks to its unmatched scalability and performance to this point. But now, buying from a single vendor will have its attraction for some SAP customers who are willing to a Sybase offering as part of SAP. This has the potential to erode Oracle's share - especially in sectors like banking who are looking to deploy SAP and who already use ASE on mission-critical systems. At the least, it's an intriguing alternative for CIOs and architects to consider, if only to help push down the prices when negotiating a new deal with Oracle.

About the author:

Peter has over 10 years of experience in the SITS industry. He joined Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) in 2001. He serves as the managing director of PAC's U.S. operations and its partners in Latin America. Peter is also the founder of PAC's global SAP & Oracle Services research teams programs.

On the consulting side, he is involved in U.S. and global projects for software suppliers pertaining to ecosystem assessment, competitive benchmarking, go-to-market strategy in emerging industries, and analysis, planning, and execution of localized partnership strategies.

Peter is often quoted in both IT news and major publications for his views on the application software market. He is also a frequent speaker at IT conferences and PAC Webinars.