Page Two

Sybase also announced it has joined the Wi-Fi Alliance, a non-profit organization formed to consolidate wireless LAN standards. Sybases officials said the goal is to deepen the companys involvement in the Wi-Fi market—a market where it is already strong. Sybase owns AvantGo, a set of wireless communications information channels, and also markets SQL Anywhere Studio—a mobile database with strong market share—under its subsidiary, iAnywhere Solutions Inc. "Most people think hardware when they hear Wi-Fi, but innovative infrastructure and application software are equally important to making Wi-Fi work for the enterprise," said Marty Beard, Sybases senior vice president of Corporate Development and Marketing, in a statement. "Enterprise applications that are not designed for challenges such as intermittent network access, limited device battery power and frequent security issues will not be successful—no matter how sophisticated the hardware. Based on our leadership in mobile database and middleware technology, Sybase plans to collaborate with other members of the Wi-Fi Alliance to help solve the challenges that are inherent in Wi-Fi networks." TechWave showgoers on Thursday will hear from Raj Nathan, Sybase senior vice president, as his keynote focuses on database management, new developments and the product direction for ASE and Replication Server. Nathan told eWEEK that to be successful in todays challenging business environment, data managers have to keep two things in mind: 1) Data management is no longer merely a store-and-access functionality; and 2) databases must manage data for its entire lifecycle, not just store and access it for a given transaction. "Data is exploding, in terms of the amount of data being stored either due to regulatory requirements or business requirements," he said. "These elements and the fact that data must be available all the time are driving us toward looking at broadening the storage and access functions." To store and access data, database technology innovators have focused on four things, Nathan said: speed, memory, disk storage and limited bandwidth. With the exception of bandwidth, those limitations have been, to a great extent, lifted, Nathan said. Hence, its time to focus on data management throughout the entire enterprise. To make that real, the next major version of ASE, 15.0, will beef up self-management and TCO aspects, Nathan said. Specifically, that release will feature enhanced XML capabilities, for management of unstructured data throughout the enterprise; multiple temporary databases, to facilitate query sets; and support for Linux in a longer list of platforms.