You offer a compelling case by mentioning DBMS history. One can not forget the huge “integrated database” projects of the late 70′s and their promise. One also can not ignore the efficiency of having fewer copies of data and the customers currently seeking that advantage.

My view is that if enough customers are asking for a technology, then vendors should be looking at the business case.

I am watching the “single copy” theory to see if it gains traction with customers. Yes, history can repeat itself and in doing so with modern technology offer different results. The combination of ERP and DBMS products can deliver impressive efficiencies. It is all about vendor engineering teams understanding size, volume, workload and putting it all together in a package. As of now the state-of-the art concept is to let the client integration teams do this heavy lifting.

As to the new database concepts you mention, I look forward to seeing those implementations and the business cases reporting their success.

Merv and Mike thanks for offering insight into the dimensions of mobile applications and industrial strength cloud scalability.

From my perspective I will add a few thoughts also adding strength to the Sybase SAP partnership.

My observation is that some database architects are proposing transactional data, such as is found in ERP databases, be the same data format as the analytical databases or data warehouses. This thinking extends out to having a single database, a single data model and a single copy of the database serving transactional and analytical purposes. For a thoughtful paper on the topic see Barry Devlin’s work. For now, let’s call this “single copy theory”.

Where does this play out for IT buyers and SAP?

Should “single copy theory” emerge as an accepted principal, the adopting IT buyer significantly reduces the complexity of their infrastructure, hardware, software, human resources, while making transactional data immediately available for analytical processing. The value to operational dashboards and real-time analytics is immense.

Before the villagers chase me out of town with torches, some of these systems are in place and being used. I could feel the heat of those torches. Some IT architects never knew not to put transactional and analytical systems into different databases and on different platforms.

The phrase “size matters” applies to believability and implementation success.

Given current technologies, small to medium size companies find this “single copy” concept easier to implement. As company size and transactional volumes increase, the implementation becomes more difficult leading to higher implementation risk. If you doubt this, build and try a database with a few records. It works fine. To experience the other side of the coin, then build a database with several billion records servicing 100’s of millions of ERP transactions per day. Success lives in there somewhere, certainly not in the second case.

To make “single copy theory work”, the IT consumers need to press the ERP companies to lead the charge. The ERP companies will need to form close relationships with database vendors to build, package and support their sales. The efficiencies enjoyed by the companies implementing “single copy theory” will contribute to, if not completely justify, the business case supporting the required technology refresh.

This too is an opportunity created by the SAP Sybase partnership, both for the vendors and the IT community.

You’re not alone in observing that SAP will have much to do in bringing the Sybase portfolio into its own, integrating it and leveraging the opportunities. And of course, it’s far too early to tell exactly what they will do, and when, and how well they will succeed – it’s all speculative. For now, at least, I have to agree with their assertion that Sybase will make them money immediately. The accretive revenue is not trivial, and it’s a benefit before synergies kick in. And IQ will play a part in that.

One could make the same comments about marketing when discussing SAND, as you and I have in recent conversation. I’m looking forward to the impact you expect to make bringing it back out into the light again in the months ahead. Don’t be a stranger.

There is a lot of buzz surrounding SAP’s just-announced acquisition of Sybase. I’ve been asked a lot of questions about it — what it means for the column-based database market in general and SAND CDBMS in specific — and thought I would share my take.

SAP is a smart company. The acquisition of Business Objects was a good decision and well executed, and this latest move has the making of another well-timed purchase.

However, you can’t change a company’s core business overnight. It took Sybase over a decade to move from being a leading transactional relational database vendor to being a leading mobile software company. SAP’s business is rooted in enterprise software applications, but they know the future of enterprise software is in mobile. Many other companies are seeing this trend and are also scrambling to move their applications onto mobile platforms.

The ongoing disruption of modern computing is moving toward ubiquitously connected, very personal, mobile devices. Massive, cloud-based data stores feeding fully capable mobile devices with easy-to-use software is the future. Salesforce.com have done a great job of connecting the Enterprise Cloud with Enterprise Mobile. But Salesforce is also a relatively simple application with a homogeneous user profile, a recipe that has powered phenomenal growth. If only SAP were this simple.

SAP’s applications are highly complex and their users highly diverse. SAP’s core strength — managing tremendous complexity — has become their biggest challenge. Moving SAP into the cloud and connecting it to mobile applications is a major undertaking, but is the future of SAP. The acquisition of Sybase and their mobile suite of applications is a smart next step on this journey.

The question SAND has now been asked is this: With the drive toward mobile and Sybase’s stable of mobile products, what of Sybase IQ?

Sybase’s acquisition of IQ never really delivered any benefits. Sybase’s core business at the time was transactional, with sales and marketing arguments all about why transactional worked for everything.

They simply didn’t get column-based databases.

Under the leadership of John Chen, Sybase became a great mobile applications company, but IQ never made it either fully into the cloud or on mobile devices –- it was left hanging.

SAND is laser-focused on the belief transactional relational structures are simply the wrong data structure for analytic applications.

We’ve been proving this for the last 15 years. Driven by our customers and the genius of our visionaries, Ted Glaser, Arthur Ritchie, Richard Grondin, and Mike McCool we have taken the concept of column-based databases and built the most scalable, flexible, robust and easy-to-use column-based database in the market.

SAND is massively parallel and mobile deployable. SAND scales in the multi-hundred terabytes with 10,000+ users on one application.

(Yes, I said “on one application” not aggregated across instances like the numbers typically used by our competitors.)

SAND delivers scalability on demand, in the cloud, and with native connectivity that drives deep data integration. We’ve been doing this for more than a decade while others were sleeping or just getting their companies off the ground.

Perhaps SAP will re-purpose IQ or combine it with Sybase’s comparatively under-funded transactional relational product (remember that?) as they square off directly against Oracle. I believe SAP have a lot to do simply unpicking the myriad Sybase products and integrating them into the SAP product line of enterprise applications.

Already I have been fending off questions about what acquisitions this move will spark in the columnar space. I think none for now. SAP did not buy Sybase for IQ. The columnar market is growing like a weed, but isn’t on the radar of Oracle, IBM or other potential acquirers. Transactional relational vendors are throwing every argument, code line, and technology acquisition to create Frankenstein databases that the smart villagers are chasing out of town by torch light.

SAND customers know if you want scalable analytic data in the cloud for large data sets and access on mobile devices you need the right architecture for the task.

You don’t take a Hummer on a race track, and don’t use a transactional relational database when you need a Ferrari.