Under the pending ownership of SAP, Sybase users and partners are wondering if the company's technologies will fare well.

SAP has announced the US$5.8 billion deal, after whose completion, it plans to set up Sybase as a separately branded unit, as it did after purchasing BI (business intelligence) vendor Business Objects in 2008. After buying Business Objects, SAP was quick to clarify the road maps reasonably.

Remarkable questions are floating over PowerBuilder, given Sybase's work to support Microsoft .NET application development. The vendor is buying Sybase for its mobile technology platform and database technologies, and will also inherit Sybase's PowerBuilder application development tools

PowerBuilder has been a cash cow for a while, said Forrester Research analyst, Jeffrey Hammond. "I don't see that this strategy will change, at least immediately". The question is whether it will continue to make sense for SAP to remain in the discrete market for .NET development tools, Hammond said.

"There's a heck of a lot of PowerBuilder code that's mission-critical out there for a lot of companies. I know it's a good technology," Clayton said. However, "bottom line, I'm cautiously optimistic" about the merger, he added.

Meanwhile, there appears to be no possibility that SAP will starve out or divest Sybase's mobile technologies, given how heavily the company's acquisition announcement focused on mobile.