Sybase Plans Five Biz App Platforms, Buys Intellidex
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Newsbytes has reported that Sybase, Inc. plans to integrate technology from newly acquired, Massachusetts-based Intellidex Systems into a new data warehousing platform, one of a series of five new "business application platforms" slated for rollout starting in March. In a conference call with Newsbytes, Eric Miles, Sybase's senior VP for product operations, said that Sybase will use technology from Intellidex for a meta data manager to be deployed in an upcoming series of prepackaged data warehouses, to include enterprise as well as "personalized" data marts.
Sybase foresees use of the smaller, "personalized" data marts by departments as well as individuals, Newsbytes was told. Miles added that the data warehouses will constitute one of five new " business application platforms" from Sybase. The five platforms, he asserted, will be aimed at moving Sybase beyond its current extensive array of offerings in the database, middleware, and tools categories, into packages of products and services aimed at solving specific business problems. Sybase will begin to detail its new data warehousing platform in March, according to the senior VP.
The four additional business application platforms to be announced by Sybase will include "Web computing;" mobile, or "occasionally connected " computing; enterprise application development; and enterprise data management.
The new enterprise application development platform will be based around Powersoft tools. On Sybase's forthcoming data management platform, the new "meta data manager" will be used for managing "data about the data," he continued. Customers will use the meta data manager for tasks like identifying data to be placed in the DSS (decision support system), and selecting the "currency," or frequency, for updating the DSS.
A customer might want to update a DSS used for inventory purposes on a daily basis, whereas a DSS used in financial reporting might only need refreshment once a week, he said. Prior to purchasing Intellidex earlier this week, Sybase already had tools for data access, replication, and all the other functionality envisioned for the new data marts, according to the Sybase exec. "The one thing missing was the meta data manager."
Added Miles: "We were not the only one interested in establishing a business relationship with Intellidex -- and we were not even the highest bidder."
Intellidex decided to merge with Sybase because Sybase offered "the best opportunities for success in the evolution of their product," Newsbytes was told. Jack Sweeney, president and CEO of Intellidex, will now become VP and general manager of Sybase's Data Warehousing business unit.
All of Intellidex's 13 other employees will also join the Sybase staff. The employees will remain in Massachusetts. They are moving, however, from Intellidex's previous headquarters in Winthrop to Sybase's facilities in Burlington, according to the Sybase senior VP.
More information about Sybase is available on the WWW at http://www.sybase.com