Analysis on sap's acquisition of Sybase

On October 13, major IT media published the title "sap purchased Sybase with $5.8 billion in cash to compete with Oracle". It seems that sap acquired Sybase to compete with a large Oracle database, in addition, the company acquired Sybase, a traditional database vendor. It was hard to believe that sap had to go through Oracle and build a big and comprehensive IT company through continuous acquisition. I was fooled by this question at the beginning. Does sap really want to do this? If this transformation is too big, will the risk be too high? Moreover, after being swallowed up by giant companies such as IBM and Oracle, there are very few great companies, and it does not seem interesting to continue doing so.

After carefully analyzing sap's strategy and the acquired Sybase, we found that sap's "drinking wine ".

First, let's talk about Sybase. Sybase is indeed a database vendor. can sap compete with Oracle databases when it acquires Sybase? Based on some simple experiences, we found that Sybase has almost no better technical advantages for Oracle, and many IT practitioners are loyal fans of oracle, the sybase database seems to have gradually become out of sight a few years ago, and Sybase's investment in its database, especially the investment in publicity, seems to have little progress or even little investment in the database, domestic vendors seem to be more concerned with Oracle, ms SQL Server, or open-source databases. The developer community has almost lost their attention to Sybase, And the sybase database seems to be on the edge, although Sybase continues to invest in database R & D, its performance in the market is not satisfactory. I have heard that many small companies in China that use Sybase's PB, Pd and other products have received Sybase's copyright phone number from time to time. Vaguely remembered that Sybase had moved to the mobile market a few years ago. Does sap take a fancy to this market? According to some information about Sybase in the mobile market, Sybase has already entered the mobile market, and it is more impressive than traditional databases. This further increases the suspicion of SAP's interest in the mobile field.

Next, we will study sap. SAP is a veteran ERP vendor with a high reputation in the world. In some places in China, the Elders even use sap as their own capital to show off their wealth. Indeed, sap has done a very good job internationally, and large enterprises in China seem to have done well, but the domestic market share, especially in recent years, it seems that most enterprises in China do not buy SAP accounts. High prices and high service fees are one reason. More should be because the old ERP vendor is too rigid in product and management. Recently, SAP seems to want to improve this situation, I have put forward some slogans targeting customer needs, but I don't know if these slogans can bring more benefits to the Chinese market. However, according to sap's recent management actions (recently replacing the president of sap in China) and SAP executives's explanation of the acquisition of Sybase, it seems that sap is very optimistic about the mobile market. It is true that the current mobile market has a wide range of user groups, but a wide range of customers can only be regarded as one of the many factors. The majority of customers seem not very interested in ERP in the mobile field, and it may be more inconvenient to operate ERP on mobile devices. Upgrading such a system may only bring about a lower ROI. After all, in most cases, some actions on the ERP system are not so important, and the mobile networks in China are not very stable at present. The 3G networks of major manufacturers are only in the initial stage. To put it back, even if some sales personnel really need some information, with the current technology, there is no need to make another ERP upgrade for mobile devices. Maybe it is more suitable for products like portals.

However, even if the mobile market is not doing well, Sybase is once brilliant. Its Sybase Database, PowerBuilder, powerdesign and other products seem to still earn a lot of cash each year for Sybase, this may be another reason why sap selected Sybase.