Sybase, IBM Team to Bring ASE to Power-Linux

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Database maker Sybase has been delivering a version of its relational database management system for the open source Linux operating system since 1999, but it wants to ride the Linux wave in an attempt to take market share away from competitors Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. That is why the company has formed an alliance to deliver its Adaptive Server Enterprise database on IBM's OpenPower Linux-based servers.

Sybase might have a relatively early start on Linux, but it's no easy thing to compete with the open source MySQL and PostgreSQL databases among Linux shops, who tend to prefer these databases for the kind of infrastructure and Web application environments that Linux still typically runs. That said, David Jacobson, senior director of database and tools marketing at the company, says that more than 10,000 copies of ASE for Linux Express has been downloaded since a free, production version of the database was launched in September to compete with MySQL and PostgreSQL. But companies are becoming more willing to pay for databases on Linux platforms, which is good news for Sybase. Forrester Research reckons that companies will buy about $300 million in commercial databases for Linux in 2004, and that will grow to $500 million in 2005 and $1 billion in 2006. There is a lot of money at stake for Sybase and other players in the Linux market.

Sybase's enthusiastic adoption of Linux is not just about getting new customers, but keeping old ones. Sybase has a big installed base of customers on the Solaris Unix platform, particularly in the telecommunications and financial services business, and with many of these customers contemplating the move from Sparc/Solaris to Lintel systems, Sybase has to position itself to run on Sun Microsystems' Solaris/Opteron servers, any other X86 iron running Solaris, Linux, or Windows, and now IBM's OpenPower Linux boxes.

Big Blue launched the OpenPower Linux servers back in mid-September. The OpenPower 720 is a 4U machine that comes single core, dual core, and quad core options. (IBM's Power5 chip has two Power cores, and a Model 720 can have one or two Power5 chip modules, depending on the configuration). The machine is essentially the same as an eServer p5 550 server, except that the OpenPower 720 cannot support AIX and it has significantly lower prices for the hardware and for commercial Linux licenses. A configured two-way OpenPower720 costs half as much as an identical p5 550, and a four-way configuration is about 35 percent cheaper. (These comparisons do not include the cost of the Linux and AIX operating systems, which skews it even further.) IBM is expected to launch a two-way, 1U OpenPower box early next year.

While Sybase and IBM will be jointly marketing and supporting Sybase ASE for Linux on the OpenPower machines, Brian Conners, vice president of IBM's Linux on Power initiatives, says that the agreement calls for the ASE database to be sold and supported across IBM's Power server line, including the p5 AIX and i5 OS/400 servers (which can run Linux within logical partitions) and the PowerPC 970-based JS20 blade servers for the BladeCenter chassis. All of these platforms offer binary compatibility for applications such as Sybase.