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SYNERGIESTAKE TIME
With SAP's planned $5.8 billion acquisition of Sybase, two main areas should interest IT leaders. One is the combined companies' ability to provide better mobile access to enterprise applications. The other is blending SAP and Sybase data management technologies, including in-memory analysis, column-store databases, and complex event processing.
SAP clearly covets Sybase's mobile capabilities, which include the Sybase Unwired mobile client development platform and Sybase 365, its mobile messaging and mobile commerce services business. Sybase 365 is an "interoperator," passing messages among more than 700 network operator customers, including AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and Vodafone.
Mobile accounts for about a third of Sybase's $1.2 billion in revenue, but it's the fastest-growing part of the company. Sybase gives SAP "first-mover advantage in delivering the real-time, unwired enterprise," says SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott.
Sybase and SAP already have a 14-month-old partnership whereby SAP's mobile apps...