"The huge opportunity was there IMO, they just fail to execute and run out of time and money."
No need for the IMO, the huge opportunity was there, and there's no reason to believe otherwise now even though the sale of Sybase to SAP may have impacted Ants and IBM's previous opportunity. Who knows, it may not. Somebody call Citi and see if they still want off Sybase. But, what we didn't have before, and we do now with the AAA is the ability to work with any two databases without the time and costs of coding specifically for....oh say from Microsoft to Oracle, it's ready to implement now(well, when the AAA is ready). Consolidation of databases makes life easier and saves a company money. If everything(most everything :) works as planned, there's no telling what can happen. One unfortunate outcome will probably be a certain amount of animosity as one company takes another companies business. Witness the Sybase evangelists blog that went after Ants when it became clear they and IBM were a very real threat. Could this be why the big boys have yet to develop a product like this? A product made specifically to steal their competitors business? Ants would be a buffer, where anyone could "play". Of course with Ants previous patents and Docs patent pending(I feel sure) additions, we may have the best solution locked up at this point.
