SAP and Sybase Press Release on Enterprise Mobility Roadmap - August 19, 2010

http://www.sap.com/about/newsroom/press.epx?pressID=13780

Highlight:  The companies will integrate the SAP NetWeaver® Mobile component and SAP® BusinessObjects™ Mobile software with Sybase Unwired Platform to deliver a single mobile development and deployment platform with integrated analytics.

BOSTON, Mass. and FRANKFURT, Germany - August 19, 2010 - At a co-located event today in Boston and Frankfurt, company leaders from SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) and Sybase came together for the first time to share the strategy and joint product direction for the newly combined companies. In a bold move that brings together established industry leaders and changes the game for enterprise mobility, SAP announced its intent to acquire Sybase on May 12, 2010. In the few months since that time, the two companies have moved quickly to create product road maps and innovations to transform the way people and businesses work. The combined companies now represent the market-leading position in enterprise applications, business analytics and mobile infrastructure.


Recognizing the strength of Sybase’s existing business model, SAP confirmed that Sybase will be run as a separate, independent unit – and that customer investments in Sybase products will be preserved and supported. Setting the stage for their vision of an unwired enterprise and embracing the evolution of mobile as the new desktop, SAP and Sybase today also unveiled strategic product directions and planned co-innovations in three key areas: enterprise mobility, business analytics and enterprise information management (EIM).

Combined Companies Retain Core Strengths While Leveraging Synergies for Innovation

Outlining the first milestones since the close of the acquisition, SAP and Sybase today announced:

Within the next nine months, the companies will bring together technologies to deliver a leading mobile platform for business that is based on open standards, runs on all major mobile operating systems, and manages and supports all major device types. With this platform, customers and partners can build new mobile experiences on top of existing applications, such as SAP® Business Suite software. In addition, SAP will showcase mobile experiences for all products, including both SAP Business Suite and SAP® Business ByDesign™, similar to what is available for mobile sales for customer relationship management (CRM) today.

SAP and Sybase will present the industry’s broadest solution portfolio for EIM by porting, certifying and optimizing SAP Business Suite and other solutions onto Sybase data management servers – bringing customers a greater choice of database platforms for their SAP applications.

The companies will offer customers a complete and optimized high-performance business analytics infrastructure tapping SAP® BusinessObjects™ business intelligence (BI) solutions on data management servers to deliver end-to-end functionality from discovery (enterprise information management) to storage (calculation and storage engines for transactions, data marts, data warehouse) to consumption (query reporting and analytics, scorecarding, dashboarding, OLAP tools, mobile BI).

The companies will incorporate SAP's in-memory computing technology across SAP and Sybase data management offerings, enabling customers to instantaneously access any type of data, anywhere, any place in real time.

SAP Co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe shared their thoughts on today’s announcement: “The combination of SAP and Sybase is a significant game changer in the industry. Less than three months after this bold acquisition was announced, we are highlighting the first joint products that will transform the way people and businesses work. The product roadmap and go-forward strategy we are sharing today positions SAP to be the only company enabled to deliver a full suite of enterprise software and next-generation business intelligence on any device at any time. The coming together of SAP and Sybase is 100 percent a customer-focused move, delivering a value proposition for customers in mobility, analytics and information management that is unmatched and unique.”

“At Sybase, we have been successfully executing our ‘Unwired Enterprise’ strategy over the last eight years to become the market leader in enterprise mobility software,” said John Chen, CEO, Sybase. “Working alongside SAP, we will take mobility to the next level by extending analytics and bringing our technologies to new vertical markets. With SAP’s investment in Sybase’s technologies, we’ll be able to extend our existing solutions to an even broader audience, and more rapidly innovate as the market’s needs continue to evolve.”

Market-Leading Vendors Unwire the Enterprise With End-to-End Mobile Platform

Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2014, there will be a 90 percent mobile penetration rate and 6.5 billion mobile connections.1 This new generation of users demands immediate access to enterprise applications from any location, at any time. The Sybase acquisition allows SAP to bring customers a mobile platform that can support SAP applications and enable partners and customers to develop complementary applications to help them run their business better.

The extension of existing applications and the delivery of new applications will broaden the reach of SAP solutions across mobile platforms and devices and accelerate the pace of mobile innovation for enterprises. SAP and Sybase already have co-innovated and delivered Sybase Mobile Sales for the SAP® Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application and Sybase Mobile Workflow for SAP Business Suite.

The companies will integrate the SAP NetWeaver® Mobile component and SAP® BusinessObjects™ Mobile software with Sybase Unwired Platform to deliver a single mobile development and deployment platform with integrated analytics. New open standards-based technology from SAP that enables easy access to SAP Business Suite will accelerate the mobilization of SAP applications. SAP will also deliver industry-specific mobile applications built on this next-generation mobile platform.

Complementary Technologies Deliver a Complete Business Analytics Stack

With the combination of complementary technologies from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio and Sybase, the companies now offer a complete and optimized high-performance business analytics infrastructure. SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions are already certified on Sybase IQ 15.0 and Sybase ASE 15.0. Customers can take advantage of complete solutions – from business analytic applications; to reports, scorecards and dashboards; to data integration and data quality; to transactional storage, data marts and data warehousing. SAP and Sybase will also deliver business analytic applications that are optimized for industries such as financial services, consumer products, retail and manufacturing.

SAP in-memory computing technology is the driving force enabling business users to instantaneously access, explore, model and analyze transactional, analytical and Web-based data in real time in a single environment from anywhere, anytime, using any device. SAP and Sybase will incorporate SAP in-memory computing technology across SAP and Sybase data management offerings. SAP has already announced a high-performance analytic appliance as further innovation in the in-memory computing space.

SAP and Sybase Offer the Industry’s Broadest Portfolio for Enterprise Information Management

One of the highest priorities for organizations of any size and across any industry is managing the soaring quantity of data, and harnessing that information to improve their business. The combination of SAP and Sybase EIM offerings provides the industry’s broadest solution portfolio for enterprise information management, including data integration and data quality, master data management, complex event processing (CEP), real-time replication, modeling, application development and database capabilities. Sybase ASE is one of the leading database engines that support transactional and mixed workloads, and will be fully supported by the combined companies. SAP will port, certify and optimize SAP Business Suite, the SAP NetWeaver® Business Warehouse component, SAP® BusinessObjects™ Data Services software and SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions to Sybase ASE — giving customers a greater choice of database platforms for their SAP applications.

Vibrant Ecosystem Benefits From the Combination of Two IT Leaders

With this acquisition, new fields of opportunity are available for the SAP ecosystem. Across all partner types – services, ISVs, hardware and others – partners can participate in the new opportunities that come from the SAP and Sybase strategies around enterprise mobility, business analytics and EIM. SAP has also enabled its ecosystem partners to build and deliver new mobile applications on the mobility platform. Recently, announced on August 9, 2010, a series of Sybase partners launched innovative mobile applications for SAP solutions on the Sybase Unwired Platform. This growing ecosystem is significantly extending the reach of enterprise customers and applications, empowering millions of mobile workers worldwide. This ecosystem is further extended with the opportunity to engage and transact with four billion mobile subscribers, through Sybase’s messaging and mobile commerce services via reach to 900 mobile operators worldwide.


***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
twitter @krbenedict
Join SAP Enterprise Mobility on Linkedin - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.