January 21, 2022

Larry Goldman, Senior Director, Product Marketing 

The SAP Sybase ASE product line has seen challenging times of late. It seems not long ago we speculated about the Future of Sybase (Spoiler: it wasn’t looking very good in mid-2019). Shortly after, we dug in deeper by sponsoring third-party research to reveal what actual SAP Sybase / ASE customers were considering. At the time – prior to SAP’s end-of-year announcements regarding the Sybase product roadmap – many organizations told us they were still weighing their options. 

  • Flash forward to the start of 2022, where we continue to see signs that we interpret as an erosion of SAP’s support for the product line:  
  • Layoff of the North American ASE engineering team 
  • Retirement of Peter Thawley, long-time Head Engineer 
  • ASE 15.7 reached End of Mainstream Maintenance (EoMM) 
  • SAP dropped the Edge license model from their price list 
  • No announcements for Replication Server or IQ, other than the launch of the cloud version 
  • End-of-support of the current ASE versions on 12/31/2025 

And yet Sybase customers remain intensely loyal to their long-term investment in these products. They are now waiting patiently on confirmation of the end-of-year 16.1 release. The bad news seems to be that uncertainty is still the overall mood of the market. 

The good news is that Sybase customers have plenty of strategic choices, perhaps more than they may realize. 

So, What Options Do You Have? 

Sybase UncertaintyOn January 13, we explored “5 Options to Address Your Sybase ASE Uncertainty” in a live webcast led by Peter Dobler, the former CEO of Dobler Consulting and our new VP of Data Engineering. With decades of experience working directly with SAP, Sybase products, and hundreds of Sybase customers, Peter is one of the top recognized Sybase experts in the world.  

So, in this time of uncertainty, we asked him to share his outlook on the Sybase market, where he sees Sybase today, the primary challenges Sybase customers face, and – most importantly – the strategic options that customers should consider. You can view the resulting discussion and Peter’s timely recommendations in the on-demand recording (45 minutes). 

Spinnaker Support: We Know Sybase 

With the acquisition of Dobler Consulting in the fall of 2021, Spinnaker Support now boasts one of the largest teams of Sybase DBAs and engineers in the world. Their wealth of experience with the entire product line – ASE, IQ, Replication Server, and more – has brought us a deeper understanding of the Sybase market and the possibilities of what Sybase customers can choose to do.  

If you have Sybase-related questions for Peter Dobler or any of our SAP and Sybase professionals, reach out today for a conversation.