SAP to acquire Sybase

SAP today announced that it was acquiring database vendor Sybase for $5.8bn in cash.

Sybase, founded in 1984, is famous for developing the original SQL Server source code and signed a deal with Microsoft to share the source code. The two companies went different ways some years later, and started developing their own versions of the source code.

More recently Sybase gambled on a move into the enterprise mobile space, and this may be the key reason for SAP’s interest in the company.

With a heavy financial services Sybase user base, SAP is now able to integrate its enterprise class applications to an increasingly mobile workforce. The avalanche of mobile devices like the iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices, is a clear sign that Enterprise is moving into this area.

Business Intelligence – Hot Skill for 2010

Wondering if your Business Objects skills will hold up in 2010?

Well have a read of Jon Reed’s excellent white paper about SAP career and skills trends in 2010.

Divided into two parts, take particular note of the table in Page 9 in the second part of the white paper. But don’t jump straight to this – the whole white paper makes for interesting reading.

Enjoy!

Goodbye Business Objects. Hello SAP Business Objects

Business Objects, an SAP company, is now called SAP Business Objects. This also applies to its products – e.g. SAP Business Objects XI, SAP Business Objects EDGE, etc.

If you try to access the http://www.businessobjects.com website, you now get redirected to http://www.sap.com/solutions/sapbusinessobjects/index.epx.

I actually like the new name.

There is also an article on the intelligent enterprise website which discusses the integration of the Business Objects sales force with the SAP sales force. In my mind that makes perfect sense. Both product suites tend to pitch at the same level in the enterprise, so it makes sense to discuss both SAP and Business Objects solutions in the same conversation.

SAP to retire overlapping BI products

A link to an Infoworld article which discusses which overlapping products from the merger it plans to phase out.

Performance Management tools appears to be a focus.

Support is still going to be continued for the next three years.

Business Objects User Group – 30th April 2008

The next Business Objects User Group meeting is due to be held on Wednesday 30th April at the Channel 4 offices in London. The agenda includes a discusson on Data Integrator and migration from v6.5 to XI.

It will be interesting to hear views on how DI is going to integrate with SAP, as SAP traditionally partnered with other ETL vendors such as Informatica and Ascential. Having bought BusinessObjects, will they now drop these partnerships and focus on providing DI as the one stop ETL tool for multiple data sources?

Also worth dicussing is how the integration between the SAP and BOBJ teams is going. Is BOBJ really going to be kept as a separate ‘business unit’ and how does this affect future development?

The next meeting is due in June 2008.