Today's announcement that SAP will acquire Sybase is a major event in the software world, but it will not fill key gaps in SAP's integration capability.  If the $5.8 billion deal goes through SAP will gain strong mobile integration and database features, but the existing shortcomings of NetWeaver PI in the areas of application and process integration in heterogeneous environments remain. 

NetWeaver is a credible solution for integration challenges between numerous SAP business applications, but it has proven to be inadequate for solving integration between SAP apps and apps from other sources (both home grown and other commerically available business applications).  The Sybase acquisition does not alter this fact.

For a deeper look into the challenges faced by SAP customers when trying to rely on NetWeaver for their non-SAP integration needs, refer to our May 5th document entitled, "It's Time To Tame The ERP Integration Beast".

As always, your thoughts are welcome.  Drop me a line at kvollmer@forrester.com.

Thanks,

Ken