On July 30, 2010, Jeff Pryslak, Sybase ASE Senior Manager posted the following on his blog:
http://blogs.sybase.com/database/2010/07/elephants-and-ants-a-corporate-fable/
In short, Mr. Pryslak makes a
poor analogy between a children's fable about an ant and elephant and our
relationship with IBM. In the process, he manages to spin a tale that is
insulting, accusatory and factually inaccurate. Mr. Pryslak goes as far as to accuse
ANTs of stealing customers and ironically, he does this while painting Sybase
ASE as a flourishing brand.
Well, Mr. Pryslak, in defense of
our little company, I'd like to make an analogy of my own. Your blog post
reminded me of one of Aesop's great fables called "The Lion and the Statue".
It goes like this:
A man and a lion were discussing
the relative strength of men and lions in general. The man contended that he
and his fellows were stronger than lions by reason of their greater intelligence.
"Come now with me," he cried, "and I will soon prove that I am
right." So he took him into the public gardens and showed him a statue of
Hercules overcoming the Lion and tearing his mouth in two.
"That
is all very well," said the Lion, "but
proves nothing, for it was a man who made the statue."
The
moral of this fable - We can easily represent things as we wish them to be.
So, with that in mind, I'd like to point out
for our readers that Mr. Pryslak's desperate ramblings are not that surprising.
After all, Sybase ASE is a sinking ship and he's their standard flag bearer.
Just how desperate are his
comments? Let's break them down....
Mr.
Pryslak writes: "ASE customers are
the most happy and satisfied (92%, according to a recent survey) in the
business. Some of our Wall Street users have been with us for more than two
decades. They aren't going to switch simply because of the Siren Song of
Short-Term Savings.
The reason? No matter how great the
migration tools are claimed to be, it still takes a huge amount of work and
investment to recreate a well-running database on another platform. And you
still end up with an additional layer of complexity where things can, and
often, mysteriously, go wrong.
Smart IT managers recognize this. That's
why such 'solutions' "never seem to sell well", says analyst Curt
Monash."
Where should I begin? First,
saying that Sybase ASE customers are some of the happiest in the industry is
laughable. Customers in the field are telling us that Sybase ASE is just old code
and lacks functionality. There is a general feeling among their customers that
Sybase ASE has been living off its installed base for years and customers have
gotten nothing in return - specifically - no major enhancements from Sybase for
years but no shortage of high fees.
The numbers speak for themselves!
According to IDC, Sybase is in a distant fifth place with Oracle, IBM,
Microsoft and Teradata above them. According to IDC, they have what I would
call an embarrassing DMBS market share of less than 3%.
But Mr. Pryslak is not quoting
IDC or any of the leading analyst. He is quoting independent analyst Curt Monash.
Let me start by saying that we
have had a long relationship with Curt Monash. Over the years we kept him
apprised of our progress and our successes. A few years ago we made a conscious
business decision not to continue working with him and turned our focus on
deepening our already strong relationships with top-tier analysts like Gartner,
Forrester, IDC, Bloor Group and The 451 Group. Mr. Monash has not had the
opportunity to speak with ANTs, Wyndham Hotels or any of our more recent
customers in the past few years. We have not provided him information about
product roadmaps or our alliance with IBM. He is obviously out of touch with
ANTs and our business.
But just to set the record straight,
Forrester Research, one of these top tier analysts, has a different view about
the type of solution that ANTs bring to the table:
“I
estimate that so far, some 300 companies have migrated their databases using
the database compatibility layer, and this is likely to become the standard
approach for database migrations in the future.”
http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=3058&blogid=25
Let's
move on to another misrepresentation from Mr. Pryslak:
He writes "ANTs
two years ago tried to spin itself as a Sybase-to-Oracle solution, a strategy
ANTs' CEO admitted was a failure."
Really? I urge our readers to
find any instance in the article he is citing where I called that effort a
failure. Sybase to Oracle went into production at Wyndham Hotels in 2009 and
proved to us and the rest of the database industry that ACS not only worked
outside the lab but its performance was outstanding. That being said, we
decided to refocus our attention on the best partner: IBM ... and we did it
while fully preserving 90% our intellectual capital and redeploying in a new
and enhanced DB2 offering that obviously has Mr. Pryslak running scared.
Here
is another gem from Mr. Pryslak...
"A senior IT official from one of
the big banks that was allegedly switching from Sybase to DB2 e-mailed me after
the IBM/ANTs announcement in May. There was no migration activity at all, he
said, adding that translators such as IBM/ANTs 'Skin' "usually cause more
trouble than they are worth."
This is by far one of my favorite
quotes from Mr. Pryslak's blog. It's very hard to defend yourself when your
competitors are citing unnamed senior IT officials. My guess is that he is
quoting one of the few ASE customers that actually accepted the 80% discounts
Sybase has been desperately offering to keep customers from jumping ship?
Finally...
Mr.
Pryslak also stoops very low with his sour grapes comments about our Company.
Referring to ANTs as a "perpetual
start-up" and commenting on our financing and financial performance
during the development years has got to be the best indication of just how
threatening our product has become to Sybase.
For starters, running a public
company in the midst of the worst recession in history is way above Mr.
Pryslak's pay grade. If he weren't threatened and/or terrified by what ANTs and
IBM are doing - he wouldn't be taking pot shots at our company or its history.
As a matter of fact, his article
smells of FEAR and a LACK OF CONFIDENCE. His attacks are so transparent that
they call into question the judgment of the good people at Sybase that allowed him
to become a spokesperson in the first place.
As
for his closing comment - "Oh yeah,
and stealing is bad."
Again, while it is more sour
grapes from Mr. Pryslak, it may be the only point in his entire blog post that
we all can agree upon. However, what he calls stealing - the rest of the world
calls winning.
Our product allows customers that
are fed up with Sybase ASE to move to a much more powerful and robust DB2
environment while controlling costs and saving lots of valuable time. If
customers didn't want to leave Sybase, no migration product could force them to
go.
If you want to see how an IBM
executive responded to Mr. Pryslak's blog post... Just click the article below
and look for Warren Lucas' response... Warren is a member of our Technical
Advisory Board.
http://blogs.sybase.com/database/2010/07/elephants-and-ants-a-corporate-fable/comment-page-1/#comment-274
Well, that's all for today. If
you are a shareholder of ANTs software and have seen the years of blood, sweat
and tears that went into launching the Sybase ASE to DB2 product, you know that
we are tough... we are fighters... and we will never let our names be dragged
through the mud.
My advice to Mr. Pryslak is that
he spends less time conjuring up silly analogies and citing childhood fables.
Maybe some of his new management within SAP would point him to the fact that if
SAP really wants to stop the Sybase ASE bleeding they might want to eventually
work on the capabilities ANTs and IBM currently have. That is exactly what industry
analyst Matthew Aslett from the 451 Group actually recommended (http://blogs.the451group.com/information_management/2010/05/20/why-sap-should-march-in-the-direction-of-ants/)
In other words, he needs to spend
a heck of a lot more time figuring out how he is going to protect his lunch
basket now that the ANTs have invaded his picnic.
Sincerely,
Joe Kozak
