The acquisition of Sybase by SAP will bring the latter several additional levers to pull in the enterprise marketplace, not least in its database and analytics portfolio of products. But perhaps the most important opportunity to spring from the deal still lies out in the future – the integration of the mobile client base as the ultimate access point between businesses and end users, be they road warrior executives, production line operatives, business partners, suppliers or, of course, customers and consumers.
According to Sybase CTO, Irfan Khan, mobile access is set to be the next big thing. “Just as `e’ was the big driver behind the development of the internet now it is `m’-commerce, `m’-everything,” he said. The potential changes coming down the line in mobile clients – not just hardware but also the software needed to manage the delivery of far richer services to the users – map closely onto the capabilities of cloud-based services, creating an environment for what he calls a major cultural change that is coming down the line.
He sees two stages to this development, with Sybase well-entrenched in the first one and plans for the second already well-advanced. Stage one is where we stand today, with reasonable levels of access for users via connection agreements between a large number of different network carriers around the world. The next stage, however, is the one that will bring what Khan sees as the most dramatic changes.
This is the coming developments of Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX), which will radically change the way that one user connects to another – for example how one business connects to a customer or vice versa – while at the same time completely changing the richness and complexity of the applications and services that can be delivered.
In the here and now Sybase is already a significant player in the linking of different networks, and has a SaaS business that produces $200m revenue a year servicing the message carrier business. In order to get mobiles on different networks to talk to each other there has to be an intermediary between them because the network architectures are proprietary. The Sybase 365 service has a number of Network Operations Centres around the world which bridge these gaps, servicing between some 800-900 carriers around the world.
“For every message transmitted from one carrier to another, we take a brokerage fee for passing that message on. We handle approximately 1.2 billion messages a day - some half a trillion messages a year of all types,” Khan said. “This is a very under-utilised business protocol network to tie businesses and events together. If there is an alert or request reply, or if there is a mechanism that can be initiated from the application – A to B messaging as it is called – then you use Sybase 365 to ensure the message is delivered and have the end point take responsibility using mobile middleware to interpret the message and manage what should then happen.”
He sees the market as being not quite ready to leverage the infrastructure Sybase currently offers, and yet there is still a missing piece – the applications. “If you look at the two schools of thought about applications in the mobile space they are either volume based or value based. If you are volume based you don’t care about the infrastructure, but if you really want users to have the native experience of an application, then we must transition architecturally to the next generation.”
In a typical business application this can be a difficult enough job, but the moment mobile access is added to the equation there can be hundreds of thousands of un-scheduled activities going on in the datacentre that will need to be scaled for. This is then multiplied by the number of carriers.
“There will be a lot of grappling to try and get some uniformity so that everything can be integrated,” he said. “So our philosophy is that we have partners or acquire the necessary constituents to go from datacentre to device centre. So, do you wait for one vendor to come forward with an end-to-end solution or are you going to put things together? The dominant approach here is to figure out what you need for the now. But there is a lot of re-investment needed when going back to update parts of it. So we’ve taken a holistic view. The underpinning part is that unless you have the data management in place to allow mobilisation to take place you are effectively dealing with the veneer level of integration. That is our approach of manage, analyse and mobilise.”
He indicated he feels there is a cultural change occurring in the way mobile devices will be used in future, and the functionality they will offer. For example, he talked of the Apple iPad. “I think middle management, the people who have to make decisions based on fast access to information, will get terrific value from this type of device.”
Delivering the full value potential is the big problem for the future, and Khan sees IPX being a core part of the solution. “This gives an IP address for every end point that can exist. This gives tremendous access potential,” he said. “You can extend application access to an end point that is no longer tethered to a datacentre. This raises issues about what type of application users will want to run on a mobile device that they can get instantaneous value add from, without having to be tied to their network.”
His example was a business reporting application such as Business Objects. Here an information exchange has to take place to serve up the data to a mobile device, so users can then consume it. If the device has to be connected it is, he suggested, almost like having a car permanently in a filling station connected to a pump, or you can go for a while but have to fill up again. But with IPX the users won’t be tied to a particular network or hotspot. They become an end point that can be connected at any time.
“IPX is still in working group stage. What we have now is global reach but only via carrier-to-carrier connection. IPX will remove the carrier to carrier agreements and users will get ubiquitous access. Once those restrictions are removed it becomes a real game changer,” he said.
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