And then there were four again. Sybase’s announcement of its new complex event processing product is interesting, not least since it sheds some new light on the merger of Aleri and Coral8.
Sybase had previously hedged its bets on CEP by partnering with Aleri, StreamBase and Coral8, although we suspected that wouldn’t last forever. Rather than acquire a CEP vendor, the announcement provides a clue that Sybase has elected to license the technology for its new Sybase CEP product from Coral8: “SQL-like CCL language for application development”.
When Marc at the Magmasystem blog noted that “a large database company had purchased a source code license for Coral8” Sybase was always the likely candidate, and that deal no doubt had a significant influence on Coral’s decision to sell and Aleri’s decision to buy.
Coral8 is the complementary choice given its focus outside Sybase’s preliminary target of financial services (only 45% of Coral8’s customers are in capital markets), although Coral8’s recent acquisition by Aleri means Sybase will be using the CEP technology to compete directly with its new owner.
I am still somewhat surprise that Sybase decided it didn’t want the technology and sales expertise that it would have got from an acquisition rather than a licensing deal, especially since Sybase also plans to use the CEP technology to target the telecommunications, healthcare and government sectors.
Additionally, Aleri insists that “The licensing arrangement allows Sybase to embed CEP capabilities within and ONLY WITHIN Sybase products such as RAP. Sybase is NOT allowed to offer or sell a standalone CEP product. A Sybase customer can use the embedded CEP engine ONLY within Sybase RAP.”
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