Sybase Turns Data Into Economic Value

Sybase Inc. is looking to promote its concept of "data liquidity," the ability to efficiently transform data into economic value. One way in which Sybase aims to improve the flow, speed, and quality of data to employees is through its latest portal solution called Enterprise Portal (EP) 5.0, announced yesterday at a Sybase customer luncheon in New York. EP 5.0, a third generation release, is designed to provide simplified and integrated development, deployment, maintenance, and monitoring to lower time and money spent on portal projects. New to the solution is rapid portlet development, deployment, and maintenance in a point-and-click environment; technology to enable easy capture of Web content by end users; a redesigned graphical user interface (GUI) that improves ease-of-use and overall productivity; and advanced built-in security. End users can create their own portlets specific to their own interests within minutes, according to Sybase. Corporate professionals can build personalized interactive portlets using elements from various information sources, including Web, XML, JSP, HTML, and databases. Using Portal Studio, developers and administrators can develop portal objects. The solution comes in three flavors: The Information Edition, designed for a workgroup environment, enables information and content aggregation, such as consolidating content from multiple internal Web sites. The Application Edition, meant for SMBs or departmental implementations, builds on the Information Edition by including search and a J2EE-compliant application server for creation and deployment of portal applications. The Enterprise Edition, built for large corporate enterprise deployments, provides more security, high-end scalability and failover capabilities. The Information and Application Editions will be available in December with pricing starting at under $10,000. The Enterprise Edition is currently available for $85,000 per CPU. At the luncheon Sybase executives also started creating some buzz around its enterprise application integration (EAI) and business process integration (BPI) solution, code-named Ohio. The solution, which is slated for a January release, is designed to enable organizations to act on analysis derived from real-time business performance and industry shifts. The solution aims to enable business analysts to plan and manage integration efforts by consolidating sales and marketing information for CEOs, providing changes in product delivery schedules for factory managers, and enabling customer support representatives access to customer and product information. "PeopleSoft, Oracle, Siebel, and SAP may sell you a CRM application, but [companies] have multiple applications, such as sales force automation, database applications, and marketing applications. One vendor can't give one solution for CRM. We can integrate the data from Siebel and from flat files to give organizations a 360-degree view of their customers," says Karen Pursch, senior director of strategic marketing at Sybase. Additionally, the product provides an open standards--based solution that allows companies to integrate internal and external Web services applications and provide businesses with the ability to analyze and act on information in real-time, says Billy Ho, senior vice president and general manager for Sybase's e-Business Division, in a statement.