Dublin, Calif.-based Sybase has long maintained strong database sales in certain industries, such as financial services, health care, government and telecommunications, as well as in countries such as China. According to Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, it was the fourth-largest database vendor worldwide last year, with US$503 million in revenues, but held just 3.5 percent of the $14.6 billion global market. That's far behind third place Microsoft Corp., which had $2.5 billion in revenues and 15 percent of the market in 2005.

Sybase was once the second-largest database vendor behind only Oracle Corp., but it fell behind in the mid-1990s after failing to keep pace with other vendors by providing a then-key feature, row-level locking.

Following the release of ASE 15 last September, Sybase database sales have risen. For the first six months of 2006, revenues from licenses for ASE grew 8 percent from the same period in the prior year. For the second quarter alone, license revenues were up 21 percent year over year.

"Until you start growing, there will always be some hesitation [in the market]," Marty Beard, Sybase's senior vice president for sales and marketing, said in a briefing at the company's annual Techwave conference in Las Vegas this week. "That has decreased in the last several months."

Customers that have upgraded to ASE 15 from ASE 12.5 -- Sybase skipped Versions 13 and 14 to avoid numbers deemed unlucky in Western and East Asian cultures, respectively -- say the product is generally serving them well.