SAP, IBM Work Together To Get Oracle Database Out!!

Kingsley Idehen points to this article outlining IBM's effort to replace oracle database with DB2. There are a whopping 44,000 SAP customers running on Oracle databases, and IBM wants them. To get them, for the first time ever, it's optimized its enterprise database for SAP applications. The new version of DB, 8.2.2, will include a slew of SAP-optimized features, including self-tuning, self-configuration, silent install, dynamic storage allocation and more. This opens the question – won’t SAP be better served by simply making their application database independent say via ODBC. This process really could have commenced years ago and prevented today's dilemma: Partner becomes the most aggressive Competitor. SAP tuned for specifically for DB2 or SAP tuned likewise for Microsoft SQL looks crazy. Microsoft and IBM will emulate Oracle in due course regarding their assault on SAP's market if DBMS specificity remains the SAP data access API strategy (this is a simple fact). SAP should be using its quest for DBMS independence to stimulate or contribute ODBC enhancements/alternates. Database specificity gets application vendors nowhere. Application business is always served better by being database independent. When applications are database independent the intellectual capital that drives the applications is preserved. This is akin to building physical and logical firewalls around the ecosystem created by your products. This is an interesting development - one that needs to be watched closely in the enteprise market.
Recently, writing on this topic, I raised the issue of differential treatment -"I was startled to hear one viewpoint saying that we buy a certain software product otherwise the database price could become very high and that we are better off by chosing the software product from the same database vendor.I was numbed for a moment - I recollect atleast half-a-dozen similar situations in the last few weeks.True or not true - the perception seem to be finding ground." Good, credible choices need to exist at all stack elements even in the age of consolidation.