Sybase Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have teamed up on a system for data-intensive small and midsize businesses that need industrial-strength data processing power without the high-end price tag, the companies announced Wednesday
The vendors’ iForce Solution for Economical Data Management is designed to bring enterprise-strength data management, analytical functionality, and disaster recovery functionality at PC server prices. It is based upon Sybase’s Adaptive Server IQ Multiplex enterprise analytical engine and Sun Fire V480 and V880 servers from Sun.
“It brings that high-end capability into the lower-priced servers so that it provides very strong industrial-strength capability at PC prices,” said Jay Halloran, business development manager for volume systems products at Sun.
The companies intend for the combination to be used by companies with between US$100 million and $500 million annual revenue and also by ASPs. Pricing starts at US$70,000 including hardware and software.
Processing power is delivered by combining Sybase’s data compression and indexing technologies and Sun’s latest Sun Fire servers, which are powered by 64-bit 900MHz UltraSparc III processors, Sun Fire Plane Interconnect technology, and expanded memory capacity.
Deborah Harrington, general manager worldwide IQ operations for Sybase business intelligence, said the offering is targeting a market that IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft have tried unsuccessfully to tap.
“When you look at the capability [from competing solutions] … by the time you’re at a reasonably low entry price, you have a fairly limited number of users than can use the system and the amount of data it can handle is really quite small,” she said.
BizRate.com implemented a similar Sybase-Sun solution to provide transactional efficiencies for both buyers and sellers. Sybase’s IQ Multiplex enterprise analytics engine combined with Sun Fire V880 servers enables the company to manage more than 15 million customer data sets in a flexible data warehouse that is capable of processing continuous, multiple ad-hoc queries from participating merchants.
Sun and Sybase have created a solution that packs a large amount of data processing and analytical power into a small footprint, making it a realistic investment for small and midsize businesses, said Henri Asseily, CTO and founder of BizRate.com. Sybase’s tight architectural integration with Sun technology provides BizRate.com with the assurance the technology foundation of the data warehouse will scale to meet future needs, he added.
Sun is online at http://www.sun.com
Sybase is onine at http://www.sybase.com
