BOSTON — Calling mobile devices “the new desktop,” SAP officials said that, within nine months, the enterprise applications provider will release a platform for mobile applications based on technology from Sybase and SAP’s own in-house innovations.
SAP recently closed its $5.8 billion acquisition of Sybase, a leading database and enterprise mobility provider, and this week laid out its plan for integrating the two portfolios by augmenting SAP’s enterprise applications and business intelligence capabilities with Sybase’s mobile application platform and in-memory database technology.
Bill McDermott, SAP co-CEO, opened a press conference here on Thursday with an assurance to existing Sybase customers that SAP will support and develop the acquired company’s products, and that Sybase will be run as an independent entity within SAP, overseen by Sybase’s CEO, John Chen. Chen emphasized that the two companies were philosophically aligned well before the acquisition announcement. “SAP and Sybase have been working on a common vision for about three years,” he said.
“We believe that we are in the middle of one of these once-in-a-generation transformations,” said Vishal Sikka, SAP’s chief technology officer and executive board member. SAP is intent on connecting existing systems to mobile devices, he said, to “make the real-time pulse of your business available on these devices.”