SAP buys Sybase – one of the remaining database vendors in the market. This will heat up the competition in the ERP market and will lead to more consolidation (read oligopoly) in the DB market. With most of the DB software are in the hands of the biggies (M$, IBM, Oracle and now SAP) small customers and ISV’s might find difficult to pay the increased costs.
All this augurs well for cloud vendors as increasingly cost conscious customers might switch to cloud. Also it helps to escape fromthe clutches of big vendors - already Oracle is designing strict license terms for ompatible hardware for its poducts.
Among the major ERP vendors SAP is the one which dont have its own DB. Always they had to depend on their rivals DB’s. Now this lacuane is filled. Ironically SAP does not support Sybase DB (yet). SAP sources mention it might take six months to one year to enable the same.
Looks like a good move for Sybase – once SAP is enabled in it DB all they can see is uptick only. This is the advantage of being a “product” company. Even after trailing the major DB vendors by a big margin and even in the recession they made a sales of about $ 800 M and was able to find a attractive buyer ..
