Sybase and Casio have joined forces to build more intelligence into Casio's Cassiopeia handhelds. Casio also intends to develop vertical market-specific functionality into its handhelds by embedding Sybase's mobile database and synchronisation technology, SQL Anywhere Studio into its handhelds. Casio will target the financial services, healthcare, sales force automation (SFA) and field force automation (FFA) markets. Casio projects sales of the combined e-business solutions to exceed $100 million by the end of 2001.
"The Sybase/Casio alliance is designed to accelerate the deployment of mobile solutions across a variety of industries worldwide," says Tony Nutter, MD of Sybase South Africa. "Sybase and Casio will work jointly with third-party application developers to build vertical handheld solutions, including e-health, consumer shopping, securities trading and mobile banking." The alliance is in line with Sybase's strategy to market its iAnywhere suite through strategic technology and channel alliances with large players in the market. "Locally, we will look to creating a channel for these products," says Nutter. "We will identify key technology providers in the mobile market, and support them with our integration skills, where we are able to add value by integrating mobile technology with enterprise systems. According to Gartner Group's Dataquest, Sybase is the mobile database market leader for the fourth consecutive year, with 61% market share.
iAnywhere Solutions, a newly announced, wholly-owned subsidiary of Sybase, is dedicated to becoming the premier provider of mobile and wireless e-business, or "many-business," products and services. Its SQL Anywhere Studio technology is a comprehensive package that provides data management and enterprise synchronisation to enable the rapid development and deployment of distributed e-business solutions.
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