The news of the Sybase acquisition broke yesterday. The questions that immediately come to mind is " Why?" and "Isnt this too expensive ?" One out-of-the-box explanation for this marriage is simply " History repeats itself" It is more than a decade now that another German company acquired an American industry laggard. I am speaking of the Daimler-Chysler merger. It took a decade for the results of that partnership to unfold. Do things move faster in the IT industry? We will wait and watch.