Naughty, naughty. Oracle Corp has been going around telling its sales people – and by implication customers or potential leads – that Sybase Inc supremo Mitch Kertzman told his audience at the recent Robertson Stephens & Co technology investment conference on the West Coast that the troubled database company’s client/server development tool Powerbuilder would not progress beyond its current rev, 5.0, and that the it was hence at the end of its days. Put a fork in it – that product is done, crows the, er, competitive positioning document. PowerBuilder is at the end of its lifecycle. Don’t let customers make the mistake of investing in the last ever version of PowerBuilder!!! Well, Kertzman says nada, no way, incorrect. In fact Powerbuilder 6.0 is well along in development, according to the Sybase Chief Executive Officer, and he also adds that 7.0 is all spec-ed out. We’d be insane to stop moving this product – it’s the market leader, he told us. He also professes bafflement at how anyone listening to his speech could have formed that conclusion (and there is nothing that seems germane to the topic in the newswire write-ups of his talk, it must be said). Oracle’s got it into its head – via Wall Street – that Powerbuilder is being viewed internally as a legacy application. Who said the Database Wars were over?
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