I am now accepting bets for a pool to pick which date in 2012 the Sybase brand and organization is folded into SAP. Currently SAP says Sybase will be run as a separate company. Yeah right! (I say 2012 because it will be 2011 before the deal is even approved through all the regulators in the former European Union.)
"In memory" this and "in-memory" that. Steve Frank of Kendall Square Research, circa 1990, where are you?
One of the questions from an analyst was whether the in-memory OLAP and in-memory OLTP roadmap announced by previous management was still relevant.
- Easy answer: Yes.
- For more information: Listen to Hasso Plattner's keynote speech on Wednesday 5/19.
- A follow-up: Is the Sybase RDBMS -- that is the Structured Query Language -- relevant to in-memory this and that?
- Unspoken answer: Sure, don't mix up database technology with memory (or memory management) technology. Different levels of the stack.
How come SAP is talking so much about the Sybase acquisition? Whatever happened to "we can't comment" until the deal is approved? The CFO said he would wait until then but the marketing guy wasn't shy with some synergy blah blah blah.
There was a little hint in that synergy-blah-blah-blah answer to the very rarely mentioned statistic that a percentage of SAP's software-related revenue is pass-through of Sybase, Microsoft (MSFT) and even Oracle (ORCL) product revenue. So knock a couple percent of your estimates of SAP's total revenue. But they still stay the fourth largest enterprise software provider.
One SAP executive (I've now reached the point where I don't know any of these guys except John Wookey--but I knew him from Oracle) made a good point: SAP software as a service (SaaS) is not just Business ByDesign (BbD).
Another good comment was Sybase strength in telecomm and financial services. The old SAP had a real good understanding of its industry strengths. I don't know if that is true of the new SAP but I hope so.
Interesting question from one of the analyst about the extent to which SAP is committed to Microsoft (MSFT) .NET vs Oracle (ORCL) Java. The answer:
- Java is a thriving community.
- .NET is a strategic part of BbD
That's clear to me. I had hoped SAP would have settled the TomorrowNow suit with Oracle by now but I guess they will drag it on another year.
SAP is using a catchy tag line: OnPremise, OnDemand, and OnDevice. The trouble I am having with this and the news stream coming out of Sapphire is that I've heard all this before. How many times can you use Rubbermaid as a reference?
-- Dennis Byron
(no financial interest in companies mentioned)
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