It's quite simple really...
With Oracle's acquisition of Sun, they inadvertently got MySQL which had acquired SAP DB from SAP.
So that gave Oracle a three tier approach, with Oracle DB at the top, Max DB (which probably replace Oracle XE or be renamed 12g XE) at the middle and MySQL at the bottom.
Microsoft also has a similar strategy with SQL Server Azure at the top (cloud), SQL Server 2008 R2 at the middle and SQL Server Express at the bottom.
At the SAP side, at this moment, they don't have any top, middle or low end. This is where things get interesting. SAP will never target the low end, so they only need to choose Sybase to either be at the top or at the middle.
If they choose Sybase at the top, they can funnel resources to optimize SAP under Sysbase and target the cloud. Oracle will be left at the middle and bottom, with MySQL. SAP could create hosted services and Corporate will have no objection on them using an unknown database. That would also create a SQL Server Azure compatible offering in the cloud, since they both share the TSQL language (Azure SQL doesn't offer the extensions that MS has created with time that has diverted from the Sysbase standard).
Also the mixed branding of cloud offering will avoid confusion. So a SAP Sybase Enterprise Cloud will not be confused with a SAP Enterprise One product.
Just my two cents.
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