Sybase sets the pace on mobility

Rethink IT, Oct, 2004

As most of the large software houses tinker with their mobile enterprise strategies, Sybase continues to set the pace, this week with a program geared towards early adopters of RFID smart tagging technology. Along with a couple of larger names, notably IBM, Sybase is not just pinning its future on mobility but is helping to accelerate and create the marker, a role that would be ambitions even for a larger player.

The new Sybase RFID Early Adopter Program follows a pattern the company has already set with wireless Lans and mobile middleware, working with customers and technology partners to encourage early pilots and to jumpstart the uptake of RFID enterprise applications--in the process, boosting the acceptance of Sybase's mobile middleware and database products. Now tinder the umbrella brand of Unwired Enterprise, these represent the most important aspect of the company's growth plans and a rare instance of Sybase pioneering and leading the market, rather than living in the shadow of larger rivals such as Oracle.

Sybase is currently developing an RFID platform for developing and deploying applications using the wireless smart tags, which provide a more sophisticated replacement for barcodes, storing significant amounts of information about the items (or even people) to which they are attached. Typical applications will be supply chain management, retail stock management, theft prevention and asset tracking. The Sybase project will integrate such facilities into its mainstream wireless architecture, combining RFID with Wi-Fi and other wireless links and with its core middleware.

EARLY PARTNER

An early partner is AeroScout, which is working with the larger company on an application that combines RFID, Wi-Fi and location aware capabilities. Data is collected from the AeroScout 'active RFID' application, or from passive tag devices, is held in databases such at Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise, and distributed to mobile devices over the company's middleware, previously known as iAnywhere.

Sybase knows that mobility is its best chance to avoid the fate of becoming a second tier database maker, confined to niches such as financial services and increasingly sidelined by the major players. Although it has had a strong reputation for technology, it has consistently failed to take a market leading position--a situation it is determined to change with its early and bold moves into wireless enterprise platforms.

The launch of the iAnywhere division at a very early stage of the mobile enterprise market was a masterstroke and last year the company integrated this company into the mainsteam, shifting the focus of the whole organization towards mobility. CEO John Chen reiterated the message at last week's TechWave user conference in Florida, admitting that Sybase had lost the battle to be a tier one database player and was now focused on mobile infrastructure.

GAINING AN ADVANTAGE

The installed database base is important to finance the development of the mobile strategy and gives Sybase some advantages over pure play mobile middleware offerings, in terms of technology and understanding of corporate projects. "When you go through which messaging systems you need to sit on top of your datable to facilitate a message watchdog, you quickly get into data stores, data movement, replication and the whole data management side of the house," said Chen at TechWave. He sees the advantage as particularly strong in RFID, because of the massive amounts of data and messages that the tags will generate, which will in turn need to be analyzed and organized.

The challenge for Sybase is to maintain its early lead even though, as Chen put it, "you have to assume that IBM and Microsoft always eventually get it right". The approach is two-pronged--to take the technological lead and to create a base of customers, OEMs and resellers that will be hard to dent. Sybase has fled about 20 patents surrounding its technologies for peer-to-peer networking, security and online/offline working.

The ongoing program is to pull together all its data management and middleware options into a tightly integrated package called Unwired Server, while Unwired Toolkit does the same for Sybase's development tools.

Though the database business is widely seen as a cash cow to finance mobility, Sybase needs to keep up with the rimes, and last month made a bid to dominate the Linux database marker by making the Express Edition of its Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) version of its database free on Linux.

It hopes to entice developers and independent software vendors to use the free license for development and even deployment and then to buy more advanced versions of the product later.

The company also points out that new projects will be more likely to get approval for experimental applications if it is on free software and is encouraging enterprises to use ASE experimentally.

The company already claims that even when paying for a license, the Sybase ASE on Linux offers the lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) over Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. ASE Express Edition is free for development and production use, though it is limited to one CPU processor configurations with just 2Gb of RAM, and 5Gb of disk storage. The software can be downloaded front Sybase's web site.