Sybase Inc tried to push Oracle Corp out of the spotlight at the DB Expo exhibition yesterday, launching its own video server and client products aimed at the business market. The company unveiled two products, attacking the client and server ends of the market. The client product, called Gain Interplay, is a lightweight graphical front-end based on technology from Sybase’s Gain multimedia acquisition. It is designed to be used by OEM customers on customised products for business users, and Sybase is already in dicussion with AT&T Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Digital Equipment Corp, Intel Corp, IBM Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc. The server product is called the Intermedia Server, and will include a meta repository to provide access to disparate information sources. Sybase is targetting the products purely at the business market initially, saying that the consumer market has potential, but doesn’t exist yet. John Spiers, European marketing director at Sybase, added that Oracle has been talking about the video-on-demand market, but that is much too simplistic. He said that eventually, business-oriented video-on-demand would filter down into the consumer market to provide on-line utilities billing, ticket ordering and the like, but for the time being it will concentrate on connecting businesses. Meanwhile the company consolidated its software engineering base, launching a Windows NT-based version of its Gain Momentum product. This tool is the only component of the Momentum tool set that is actually shipping; the firm’s Build Momentum graphical application development tool, which was meant to have shipped in the first quarter, is still in beta test, while Enterprise Momentum, its object-oriented repository, won’t enter beta testing until the fourth quarter. The firm is still unclear on its object methodology; while the Enterprise repository is under way, the method by which objects will communi cate is unclear, and Spiers would make no comment on Object Request Broker tech nology, other than to admit a need for an object meta- database – this would be developed in-house he said.
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