How Sybase rescued itself and became worth $6 billion

 Few companies get a chance at a second life. When John Chen signed on as CEO of Sybase in 1998, the database software vendor was, in Chen's own words, "a very, very dead company." Once a strong competitor to Oracle, Sybase had lost its way, in part because it missed the opportunity to enter the enterprise application market Oracle now leads.

Over the next decade, through the efforts of Chen and his team, Sybase turned around and reinvented itself as an enabler of the "unwired enterprise." Then, in mid-May, enterprise software giant SAP offered to aquire Sybase, citing Sybase's leadership in both mobile and in real-time analytics.

Sybase Announces Sybase Mobility Platform

Sybase is unveiling its Sybase Mobility Platform, a framework for bringing business applications and services such as banking and analytics to mobile devices. Many of those applications leverage SAP products such as SAP Business Suite, although Sybase executives are not saying how SAP’s recent $5.8 billion acquisition of Sybase will ultimately affect the Sybase Mobility Platform’s future roadmap. The Sybase Mobility Platform involves several components, including mobile servers, mobile applications, and mobile services.

Sybase unveiled the Sybase Mobility Platform, a framework for bringing business applications and services such as banking and analytics to mobile devices, on May 20. The platform features mobile servers, applications and services operating in tandem. The more prominently featured initial applications include Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM and Sybase Mobile Workflow for SAP Business Suite, reflecting the close partnership that eventually led to SAP’s recent bid for Sybase.

Tata Consultancy Services innovation network awaits its Siebel moment

The company’s COIN model, though making money, is yet to seea big hit six years after its launch

While Indian companies understand that innovation is the lifeline of business, they are only just realizing that the process is neither easy nor systematic. Six years after the model was conceptualized, much before the software industry took client-driven innovation seriously, the Co-Innovation Network (COIN) of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) has begun making money, but that one big hit remains elusive.

“At least 75 solutions developed jointly with start-ups in the last five years are now part of TCS offering,” said chief technology officer Ananth Krishnan. “The COIN model is generating revenue but I’m still searching for a Siebel-like success in India.”

Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications

 Bern Elliot, Steve Blood


Unified communications offers the ability to improve how individuals, groups and companies interact and perform tasks. Enterprise planners and managers should review how this emerging generation of communication software and systems can improve their business operations and processes.


Unified communications (UC) offers the ability to significantly improve how individuals, groups and companies interact and perform. UC also enables multiple communication channels to be coordinated. In some cases, separate servers may be consolidated, but, more frequently, UC adds functionality to existing communication applications. Key technologies include Internet Protocol (IP)-PBX, voice over IP (VoIP), presence, e-mail, audioconferencing and Web conferencing, videoconferencing, voice mail, unified messaging (UM), instant messaging (IM), and various forms of mobility. Another key capability of UC is that it offers a method to integrate communication functions directly with business applications; Gartner calls this capability "communication-enabled business process" (CEBP).