On Monday, Finextra reported rumours circulating among well-placed industry insiders that Sybase was about to go public with an announcement some time this week.

The database and analytics vendor says the deal to acquire Aleri was finalised on 22 January via an asset repurchase agreement.

Dr. Raj Nathan, SVP and CMO of Sybase. comments: "With this transaction Sybase positions itself as a clear market leader in CEP. We have strengthened our real-time analytics platform, added liquidity risk management, and the industry leading liquidity management suite."

Sybase last year launched its own CEP engine using source code licensed from San Francisco-based Coral8. The licensing agreement stipulated that the Coral8 code could only be used as an optional extension to the Sybase RAP anlytics platform.

The deal was announced just days after Coral8 was taken over by rival vendor Aleri. The vendor has since embarked on a major development programme, dubbed Ohio, to integrate the best features from the Aleri Streaming Platform with the Coral8 Engine.

The acquisition provides a firmer financial footing for Aleri as it undertakes a risky redevelopment programme and offers Sybase a stand-alone CEP engine that it can market into other industry verticals, such as health care and telecomms, or supply as part of a tightly-integrated data analytics technology stack.

While the implications of the move for Aleri customers and staff are not yet clear, it has been confirmed that Don DeLoach, Aleri's president and CEO will be leaving the company.

Aleri chief technology officer Jerry Baulier has been named vice president, engineering of Sybase.

Baullier is tightlipped about the status of the Ohio integration project and the future of the Aleri technology platform, saying only: "The addition of Sybase development resources to the Aleri platform will accelerate the pace of innovation adding new features to the CEP engine."

The acquisition continues the consolidation trend in the CEP market, leaving only Streambase and Progress as independent standalone suppliers.

Streambase is once again looking to cash in on the uncertainty generated by the acquisition by resurrecting its 'amnesty programme' for Aleri/Coral8 customers that was first launched last year. The programme promises free porting to the Streambase CEP engine and an introductory workshop.

"Although we applaud Sybase's recognition of the CEP market and their efforts to enter it, today's announcement of the acquisition of Aleri raises new questions about the future of this platform for customers and partners," says Mark Palmer, CEO of StreamBase. "Given the uncertainty resulting from this merger, we are offering Sybase, Aleri or Coral8 customers a one-time credit to migrate to StreamBase."

Richard Tibbetts, CTO at StreamBase, adds: "It's unlikely that Sybase will maintain four separate products. Aleri had three separate CEP product initiatives; Coral8, Aleri, plus Ohio. Sybase's CEP product RAP is yet a fourth code base. As a result, we've been approached by customers of all these products and asked to provide migration strategies to StreamBase.

"StreamBase has obvious attraction for these customers as it is a platform based on industry standard SQL and a company with a single, unified focus on offering the best CEP platform in the industry."