May 12, 2010

Quick reactions to SAP acquiring Sybase

SAP is acquiring Sybase. On the conference call SAP said Sybase would be run as a separate division of SAP (no surprise). Most of the focus was on Sybase’s mobile technology, which is forecast at >$400 million in 2010 revenues (which would be 30%ish of the total). My quick reactions include:

Edit: Right after I posted this, I saw email from Sybase clarifying that Sybase’s in-memory technology, while slightly influenced by some ANTs IP Sybase bought non-exclusive rights to, is essentially home-grown. That’s what I thought, but the call sounded like it was saying something different.

Further coverage of SAP/Sybase:

Comments

13 Responses to “Quick reactions to SAP acquiring Sybase”

  1. SAP – Sybase: Synergies? Suspect So. « Merv's Market Strategies for IT Suppliers on May 12th, 2010 10:48 pm

    […] small thing for a new management team hoping to get itself off to a good start. [added: Curt Monash believes other ADBMS acquisitions will follow. I […]

  2. BJacaruso on May 13th, 2010 7:07 am

    Any insight on collateral damage from this IE: Intuit has Millions of QuickBooks users on Sybase, and they use the portable replication agent to synch that data with their Intuit Partner Platform. Is there any need for Intuit to worry?

  3. Carl Kayser on May 13th, 2010 7:28 am

    “I don’t see anything in this acquisition that would revive PowerBuilder (Sybase’s Visual Basic competitor), Sybase’s CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) tools, and so on.”

    Definitely not my area of expertise but I thought that PowerDesigner was a technological leader and/or a market share leader. If “yes”, why would it (versus, say, PowerBuilder) need to be revived?

  4. Curt Monash on May 13th, 2010 10:29 am

    @bjcaruso,

    Through Business Objects, SAP owns Crystal Reports, which is OEMed to tons of SAP competitors. I haven’t heard a hint of trouble in that regard.

    So I wouldn’t be terribly worried about OEM issues for the products SAP is acquiring through Sybase either.

  5. Curt Monash on May 13th, 2010 10:32 am

    @Carl,

    I’ll confess to not having tracked database design tools for quite a while, but Sybase wasn’t even a market leader in the 1990s, the market wasn’t that big in the 1990s, and I don’t think any of the 1990s stalwarts except maybe Rational has kept any kind of business momentum.

  6. Further quick SAP/Sybase reactions | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services on May 13th, 2010 11:30 am

    […] quickly about the SAP/Sybase deal and related matters. Talking with Raj didn’t change any of my initial reactions to SAP’s acquisition of Sybase. I also didn’t bother Raj with too many hard questions, as he was clearly in […]

  7. Coté's People Over Process » Acquiring, everyone’s doing it – SAP Buying Sybase – Quick Analysis on May 13th, 2010 4:18 pm

    […] Check out Curt Monash for actual technical commentary on the database angle. […]

  8. Sybase Database Value to SAP – Long Term and Short « Merv's Market Strategies for IT Suppliers on May 13th, 2010 5:00 pm

    […] great posts: Dave Kellogg, Curt Monash, Dana Gardner, Dennis Howlett, show the skepticism and concerns we al have about execution, and […]

  9. Coté's People Over Process » Links for May 12th through May 13th on May 13th, 2010 6:55 pm

    […] Quick reactions to SAP acquiring Sybase | DBMS2 — DataBase Management System Services […]

  10. Mike Pilcher on May 14th, 2010 6:10 am

    I see this differently. I think all of us in th database market see this as a DBMS play. I think it is a mobile play. I have written about it here http://www.sand.com/thoughts-sap-sybase/ Mike

  11. Bruce on May 21st, 2010 6:53 pm

    “I don’t see anything in this acquisition that would revive PowerBuilder (Sybase’s Visual Basic competitor), Sybase’s CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) tools, and so on.”

    Definitely not my area of expertise but I thought that PowerDesigner was a technological leader and/or a market share leader. If “yes”, why would it (versus, say, PowerBuilder) need to be revived?

  12. Some thoughts on the announcement that IBM is buying Netezza | DBMS 2 : DataBase Management System Services on September 22nd, 2010 1:59 pm

    […] fuss about in-memory column store is getting me-too response from Oracle. Use your imagination about how that idea could be extended, […]

  13. SAP将以58亿美元收购 Sybase | 钱五哥の共享空间 on October 5th, 2010 2:58 am

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