Sybase Inc, Emeryville, California is determined not to leave the video-on-demand database software business to Oracle Corp but to go head-to-head with the giant with its SQL Server 10 database and Intermedia products. And the Emeryville, California company has scored a significant coup by winning ICTV Inc, the Santa Clara company supplying Cox Cable Communications Inc with video servers for its interactive television testbed in Omaha, Nebraska, which will start offering interactive services to subscribers next year. ICTV is still only at the agreement in principal stage, but also plans to use the Sybase Gain Momentum and Gain Interplay products to develop interactive entertainment and information applications for its customers, reckoning that Sybase is the only software vendor that has taken a truly open and scalable approach to the emerging interactive market. The company’s wrinkle is to create a Smart Network system that enables operators to deliver interactive services without investing in expensive smart set-top boxes – the intelligence is located at the head end and not in the set-top box. SQL Server 10 will be the software en gine for message routing, control and delivery of real-time data from video and multimed ia servers, and in tegration with bus iness systems for billing, customer service and such.
