Hello Hank
The latest Gartner research (G00261660) into this "Operational RDBMS" area indicates that SAP have improved both their vision and ability to execute, moving it ahead of IBM on both dimensions (compared to previous quadrants)
From an SAP ASE perspective, I think that the roadmap today is probably the best I've seen. The in-memory capabilities will further increase the strength ASE has in transaction processing, which is the focus for the offering - mission critical, high volume, low latency transaction processing applications.
Where things get even more interesting, is the work around HANA integration, and new work that is being undertaken to look at columnar technology for ASE. This will add a whole new set of capabilities for ASE based applications - like geospatial analytics, graph engine, time series, or just plain old report acceleration.
Towards June, we expect to release a range of new capabilities that I'm sure customers and users of the products will love to get their hands on. The Beta Program is well on its way for the Corona release.
Things certainly are promising. From a market share perspective, analysts track vendor marketshare, not necessarily product level - here, SAP is growing rapidly, with a range of specialized data processing engines.
ASE specifically is enjoying really good momentum, with significant growth in traditional SAP accounts, as an additional database offering for on-premise SAP applications - which is a new market for the offering, outside of it's traditional strongholds in Financial Services, Public Sector, Telco and Healthcare.
If you're a Gartner, Forrester or IDC client, or have access to the latest data from these organisations, I would encourage you to read through these.
Alternatively, reach out to your local SAP office, or account manager, and set up a briefing, so we can spend some time with you!
Rudi Leibbrandt.