Marketing Plan for Sybase database against open source database MySQL Problem Statement o To market Sybase against

t the open source database, MySQL Situation Analysis o Company Skills & resources available Sybase is a leading enterprise infrastructure and integration company. Sybase enables the Unwired Enterprise by delivering mobile and enterprise software that integrate platforms, databases and applications. Distinctive capabilities o Context Social and Industry trends The small and medium enterprises are shifting to leaner and lower price databases, while the big companies continue with commercial databases. o Customers and market analysis Target customers Big and medium enterprises, especially in the financial sector o Competitors Current and potential Sybase dominates the remote database market Sybase has a strong base in the finance industry

The need to cut software licensing costs and the backing of Linux from major players in the industry are two factors driving open-source software's appearance in largeenterprise computing environments. While enterprises aren't ripping out proprietary applications to run opensource software, they are increasingly considering open source as an option when bringing in new software or upgrading versions.

Direct and indirect IBM, Microsoft and Oracle are competitors in the commercial database space Open source databases like MySQL and Postgres

o Collaborators Sybase has an impressive list of partners

Implementation Plan o Product offering Features, functions, benefits

Sybase needs much less manpower in terms of Admin and is a very cleanly structured database Sybase will focus on mobile software, applications integration and key verticals. With such an approach Sybase may carve out a comfortable niche in the database world

Sybase is the fastest RDBMS on Linux (ASE 12.5.0.3 recently scored the best benchmarks for a Linux-based RDBMS, ever)

A high-performance data warehouse can be built with Sybase for a tenth of the cost of anybody else The extreme performance coupled by the reliability and affordable pricing makes Sybase stand head and shoulders above the big three players in the database world (IBM, Microsoft and Oracle)

Sybase products are designed to be open so they can easily be integrated with other vendors' products

o Positioning Competitive Positioning: A commercial database which is more affordable and at the same time provides the openness, level of care and feeding that open-source software lacks Brand program strategy Communicate the fact that Sybase does not play on double standards as MySQL does by providing two options, a Commercial and a GPL license. Play on the fact that most of the companies would not like to make their code open, thus they will chose a commercial license; and if it is a commercial license, it better be from a commercially proven product in the industry.

Differentiation point to avoid A low Total Cost of Ownership is a position already occupied by MySQL, hence avoid attacking that position.

o Pricing Penetration pricing Much lower than the big three commercial database players but higher than MySQL o Promotion Promotion type and vehicle Flood the open source related newsgroups with Sybase related communication alongwith related facts. Use references from existing clients (big Financial companies) o Distribution Small enterprises typically prefer easily downloadable tools from the internet. Hence, Sybase should have a ftp server for its customers from where they can download the database/entire suite

Use partner distribution channels, by identifying small ERP/CRM companies that supply to medium enterprises References

1. http://mysql.fasterline.net/products/licensing.html 2. TechWeb News, January 5, 2004, Open-Source MySQL Database Usage Spikes 3. www.databasejournal.com: MySQL--Yesterday's Toy, Tomorrow's Contender, May 22, 2003 4. http://smallbusiness.itworld.com/4393/030402opensourcedb 5. www.sybase.com