EXCEPTION::QUERY

A Blog About Database Products and Technology.

May 2006

Gartner included opensource databases (like MySQL and Ingres) in their annual database report this year, adjusting their methodology to consider revenue produced through service and support, instead of comparing vendors only in terms of licenses sold. And (unsurprisingly, I think) it turns out that opensource databases are growing 47% a year -- about five times faster than the database market as a whole, though overall numbers are still tiny. The only major vendor to show real growth (also, I think unsurprisingly) is Microsoft, who jumped from 13%-and-change to 15%-and-change market share in 2005, while also improving profitability. Here's a terse explo of the Gartner report by CRN's Barbara Darrow.

Why do I think neither of these (strangely opposing) trends is surprising? In the case of opensource, the kind of computer-science heavy lifting that databases do is very amenable to the opensource "global cluster of really smart people working on the same problem" model. And the kind of "I'm trying to do this-and-so, here's my code, why isn't it working?" support consistently required by database developers can also be efficiently provided by vendor-supported communities. Opensource is an incredibly-efficient model for building engines. And the community is interoperating efficiently (and becoming self-similar with) related opensource communities also enjoying fast growth (e.g., PHP).

Opensource isn't so agile at building user interfaces, metacoding tools, and seamless interplatform interfaces, however (though admittedly, this is highly debateable). And I suspect that's where Microsoft (master of all this stuff) is coming on strong.

Posted by John Jainschigg at 02:16 PM  Permalink |