Sybase SA has appointed black-owned IT consulting company Edge Consulting as a channel partner for Sybase PowerDesigner, the world's number one database modelling tool, which holds a 35% share of the global market.
According to Sybase SA's channel and partner manager, Shiona Blundell, 2006 saw the beginning of a steady incline in the market's demand for planning, analysis and design modelling tools, a trend which filtered into the local market and positioned Sybase SA as one of Sybase's largest distributors of PowerDesigner worldwide.
"Sybase SA's business has grown to the extent that it has recently necessitated additional resources in the form of channel partners who have proven themselves as leaders in the supply of information management and mobile solutions to the local market," she says.
"Our products have matured and since we represent a variety of leading tier one products in the local market, we recruit partners in niche areas that can competently address this growth and ensure that these products get the visibility they deserve. This will enable Sybase to enhance its market presence and further increase revenue potential in the region."
She adds that Sybase ensures that all of its channel partners are adequately skilled on the Sybase product set to promote a collaborative effort in developing the region through the effective delivery of Sybase solutions.
Blundell says Sybase SA identified Edge Consulting as a specialist provider of data management solutions. "Their strong footprint, high level of expertise and experience, as well as their proven delivery track record, gives us confidence that Edge Consulting's reputation as a leading IT consulting firm will help ensure that Sybase customers achieve the best return on their investment in this partnership."
Edge Consulting's solutions portfolio includes consulting services and skills provision into the telecoms, government and retail sectors with a core focus on customer care and billing, data management and systems integration.
Edge Consulting CEO Manny Moreira sees the appointment as a Sybase reseller benefiting his company's existing IT consulting offering. "The Sybase PowerDesigner modelling tool complements our data management consulting focus and forms an integral part of the data architecture framework Edge follows in enabling our data management methodology," he says.
"It further assists us in offering our customers a core building block within their data architecture and enables us to deliver on our commitment to deliver professional and effective modelling solutions and services to our customers. Furthermore, it complements our business intelligence (BI) tool, DataAssist, by dealing with the modelling aspect of BI-related projects."
IT consultancies are expected to bridge the divide between business and technology and Moreira says that in his experience, this alignment of IT and data strategies to the overall business strategy is absolutely key. "This approach is therefore a crucial part of our data management methodology," he adds.
Edge Consulting plans to evaluate other Sybase products to complement its existing data management offering with regards to data quality, data integration, as well as enterprise mobility.
Sybase's flagship enterprise data modelling solution, PowerDesigner, allows businesses to collect, integrate and leverage metadata and is based on standard techniques such as data modelling, business process modelling and UML (unified modelling language). This foundation offers management and impact analysis capabilities. In addition, companies can leverage metadata to automatically produce code for industry-leading database engines as well as application development and deployment platforms.
To support business strategies effectively and develop a truly 'unwired enterprise', organisations need to ensure consistency across their IT systems and deliver new solutions quickly and effectively, explains Sybase's Blundell. "Agility is key to dealing with business change and our metadata-driven PowerDesigner solution gives companies better control over their existing data systems, as well as greater agility and ability to adapt to change."
As a data-modelling and collaborative design tool for enterprises that need to build or re-engineer applications quickly and cost-effectively, PowerDesigner is often an addition to a bundled solution as it works with all modern relational database management (RDBM) systems and combines several modelling techniques (UML, business process modelling and market-leading data modelling) with leading development environments (Microsoft .NET, Workspace, PowerBuilder, Java and Eclipse) to bring business analysis and formal design processes to the traditional software development lifecycle.
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Sybase SA is the sole African representative of Sybase Inc, the largest global enterprise software company exclusively focused on managing and mobilising information from the data centre to the point of action. Sybase provides open, cross-platform solutions that securely deliver information anytime, anywhere, enabling customers to create an information edge. The world's most critical data in commerce, finance, government, healthcare and defence runs on Sybase. For more information, visit the Sybase Web site at www.sybase.com or www.sybase.co.za.
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