Combined, these techniques enable enterprises to unleash the latent value of their data assets and to improve the speed and quality of BI across the organisation, Sybase says.

"Sybase is combining best-of-breed technologies into suites to simplify the management, integration and mobilisation of information," says John Chen, chairman, CEO and president, Sybase.

Sybase Data Integration Suite is designed to help customers to gain a competitive advantage by providing an easier, more flexible way to combine data from multiple heterogeneous sources. Building data-rich applications for BI, regulatory compliance, and customer relationship management is intended to become less complex. The suite aims to build on Sybase's extensive experience in data integration and to offer value to enterprises utilising analytic applications that combine historical and real-time data.

"Recognising the need for consistent management of all styles of data integration and the issues associated with multiple overlapping data integration tools and vendors, organisations will increasingly seek a single toolset for creating data services which access, move, transform, integrate and deliver data. Narrow point solutions that address only one style of data integration (such as ETL) or a single use-case - such as business intelligence (BI) - are falling out of favour," writes co-author and Gartner research vice-president, Ted Friedman, in "Predicts 2006: Navigating the data management market and usage trends," November 2005.

"Modelling and metadata management, provided through Sybase's modelling solution, Sybase PowerDesigner, ensures data design and control as integration requirements change to accommodate business needs," says Sybase SA GM, Johan Reynders. The integrated development tooling, Sybase WorkSpace, is based on the popular Eclipse framework, he adds.

"The suite's modular, easy-to-deploy architecture aims to enable IT managers to introduce capabilities in an affordable, evolutionary way, immediately supporting tactical integration projects while comfortably scaling to enterprise-wide integration programmes," he explains.

The components in Sybase Data Integration Suite 1.0 include Sybase Replication, Sybase Data Federation, Sybase Search and Sybase Real-Time Events. Sybase Data Integration Suite 1.0 is expected to be generally available in the fourth quarter of 2006. Sybase ETL, based on technology from Sybase's most recent acquisition, Solonde, is available separately now, and is expected to be integrated in future versions of the suite.