Berkeley, California-based relational database firm Sybase has concluded the formal announcement of its European efforts with the surprise news that John Louth, former European director of Tandem, will be heading up internatinal affairs. Almost topping that, the UK managing director of the Sybase operation, John Stevens has been poached straight from arch-rival Relational Technology. And to accompany the formal launch (as previewed in CI No 724) Sybase unfolded some more of the strategic alliances that it expects to rely on in the future. Already it is widely known that Apple has taken a stake in the firm, but it was made clear at the European launch that an Apple version of the database software is likely to follow hot on the heals of an OS/2 version. OS/2 is the first effort in the IBM community, and a 9370 version of Sybase isn’t in the plan before 1989. Meanwhile, to counter the Oracle sales story of we can deliver it on both IBM and DEC machines, Sybase plans early introduction of gateways to MVS and VM for co-existence with DB2 and IMS from the existing versions of Sybase, which so far run on DEC, Sun, Pyramid and Stratus machines. But the firm was at pains to point out that while we can offer referential integrity on our own systems, customers using a gateway into DB2 will have to ensure that applications that update DB2 files have their own referential integrity built in. Louth plans to launch subsidiaries in Germany and France in the first quarter 1988, but will use distributors to enter the rest of Europe.