Relational Database Management System to be acquired by SAP
Wednesday May 12 SAP announced it has signed an agreement to buy database software maker Sybase for $5.8 billion. This acquisition is expected to diversify SAP’s product line, expanding its business intelligence and customer relationship management offerings into data management and analytics, in particular as related to mobile devices.
The announcement brought back memories of my first work with Sybase. Back when Microsoft was trying to get a foothold in the enterprise space, Sybase and Microsoft had an agreement to share the Sybase SQL Server source code, and Microsoft remarketed it as “SQL Server” on the PC platform.
The organization I was working with wanted to deploy client server computing and do it cheaply. While both Sybase and Microsoft offered an implementation of SQL Server running on the i386 platform, Microsoft’s implementation of SQL Server cost considerably less than the Sybase one, and we eventually settled on Microsoft SQL Server. At that time, the code was virtually identical, although even early on Microsoft – in its typical manner – added graphical utilities for ease of administration.
Going back to the partnership, Sybase and Microsoft had a rather messy “divorce” over revenue sharing, and split the code lines with each company going their own way. However, even today the shared heritage is evident in the Transact SQL language and the process architecture. Over time Microsoft has started moving away from Transact SQL, and Sybase may have its own changes under SAP.
