The SAP acquisition writes the New York Times puts SAP into the database software market, where its products will overlap with those of longtime rival Oracle in the intense competition to gather, store and analyse the huge amounts of sales, customer and employee data being produced by modern companies.

SAP and Sybase intended to focus on creating new types of number processing software that rely on Sybase’s strengths in transporting data to and from the smartphones of customers. Like phone operators such as T-Mobile US, data is seen as the real revenue growth engine thanks to next-generation smartphones.

“This will literally connect the shop floor to the corner office,” said Bill McDermott, the co-chief executive of SAP. Under the terms of the deal, SAP plans to pay $65/share for Sybase through a tender offer. SAP will also assume Sybase’s debt of $400m.

California based Sybase will operate as a stand-alone unit within SAP under its current management. Assuming a majority of Sybase shareholders tender their shares to SAP, the deal is expected to close in 3Q. SAP, based in Walldorf, Germany, will finance the deal with cash on hand and a €2.75 bn ($3.5bn) loan arranged by Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank.

SAP traditional role is selling complex business software that help companies deal with their every day payroll, inventory tracking and sales computing.  Recently Oracle, acquiring smaller companies, has been invading the SAP sector as have IBM and Microsoft which sell data base products that need to connect with business application, putting SAP on a back foot in partnering with competitors.

Sybase with 3% of the market, follows 43% Oracle, 24% IBM and 19% Microsoft according research firm Gartner. But acquiring Sybase and its database business may change this for SAP when both their database products work together, as SAP has spent years working on a new type of data-handling technology that it claims will run jobs much faster than standard databases.

The aim would be to create a fresh breed of business software that blends software from SAP with Sybase and uses this technology as its underpinning.

While Sybase trails its competitors, CEO John S. Chen, points out that Sybase has a key position in the mobile business software market and now handles the short message (SMS ) traffic for around 4bn mobile phones and links the message systems of the phone companies.

Another strength has been its success with investment bank customers, stock exchanges and insurers. Last year, Sybase sold about $800m worth of database software, increasing software licenses 22 % during the recession.

SAP and Sybase are already talking about involved mobile applications that will give remote workers access to floods of information. Gartner analyst Yvonne Genovese is quoted describing this mobile technology as “a big deal.” Large companies already push their standard business software out to mobile phones, and are trying to do more with the data that returns from these devices.

Chip design IP focus
Cadence Design Systems’ strategic move to acquire chip IP design verification specialist Denali is because software IP and not the manufacturing process is the key differentiator in chip design, writes Richard Wilson in Electronics Weekly.  The Cadence acquisition of California-based Denali  will add hold IP for PCI Express, USB, NAND flash and DDR SDRAM subsystems to the Cadence portfolio

“Semiconductor firms are asking us to integrated hardware and software elements of design in a way that has never happened before,” says John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer at Cadence, and  sees that increasingly system-on-chip designers see their role as enabling applications using standard silicon platforms.

In March, a program with an initial offering of the process silicon on insulator (SOI) IP was provided by IBM (embedded dram) ARM (memory compilers, I/O libraries, power management) and Cadence Design Systems and more IP added by Boeing and Synopsys, with an invitation extended to other developers to add to this growing SOI IP ecosystem.




In the current EDA market, Cadence plans to expand the amount of third party design IP it offers customers. Denali’s strengths are seen in Memory Models, Design IP, and Verification IP optimised for supporting third party simulators, supporting Cadence wider plans for design IP.

Bruggeman believes in this way it is possible to reduce qualification, acquisition and integration of IP cost into SoC designs that “can account for as much as 25% of total hardware design cost”.