Sybase porting to Linux

Sybase on Monday unveiled plans to port all of its software to Linux by next year and launched a Linux Competency Center in New York for customers to learn more about its products.

The company already offers Adaptive Server Enterprise, an enterprise-class relational database management system, as well as Enterprise Application Server, Replication Server and a few others for Linux. By next year, all of the rest, including the Sybase IQ highly scalable analytical database, Enterprise Portal and Sybase Integration Suite, will be available for Linux, according to the company.

"This is really motivated by customers' interests," said Raj Nathan, senior vice president and general manager of Sybase's Infrastructure Platform Group. "This is not an academic exercise. Customers are beginning to see it" as a good fit for their businesses.

Jim Johnson, an analyst at The Standish Group in West Yarmouth, Mass., called Sybase's broadening support for Linux "a good thing for Sybase and for Sybase users. They'll benefit from it."

The coming applications will give businesses a chance to run even more mission-critical work under Linux, he said. "I'm surprised, if anything, that it took so long in this case."

Johnson said research from The Standish Group has shown Sybase to have among the lowest total cost of ownership among similar products. "Linux is becoming the alternative, I think, to Windows in the enterprise more and more," he said. "This is another step in that movement."

Dushyant Shahrawat, an analyst at TowerGroup in Needham, Mass., said Sybase's move to run all its apps on Linux is "very positive for the Linux community." For every vendor such as Sybase that jumps on the Linux bandwagon, there are perhaps 50 to 100 major user companies that gain Linux as an option, he said. "Overall, I think it's a very good move ahead from a major software vendor."

In a related announcement, Sybase said it has broadened an existing agreement with Linux vendor Red Hat to certify the latest Sybase enterprise-class data management applications on Red Hat Enterprise Linux server operating systems.

Among the newly certified applications are Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5, Replication Server 12.5, Open Client 12.5 and Open Server 12.5 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Under the deal, Sybase and Red Hat will collaborate on engineering development, training and support and will exchange technology road maps to coordinate activities in serving customers. The two companies will also jointly provide support to customers for the applications.

"Working with Sybase is critical to our pursuit of the global expansion of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform," Mike Evans, vice president of channel sales and development at Red Hat, said in a statement. "Sybase's participation in our Premier Partner program and certification of its data management solutions on Red Hat Enterprise Linux gives customers more options when deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux in their organization."