Re: Database market share 2004

"rkusenet" <usenet.rk@gmail.com> wrote: >Click here to read more about the increasing market share of open-source database >PostgreSQL. You would swear from this article that there were no other vendors of db's other than Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. Where was any mention of Sybase? Pervasive? IBM's Informix offerings? Borland's Interbase? Someone must buy these products! What about MySQL and/or Firebird? MySQL is not free for commercial use - what's its market share? Pervasive have also started to support PostgreSQL, as has another springup (other efforts to make money out of PostgreSQL have failed), but companies can do it because of the FreeBSD licence. No mention either of any revenue streams for companies that have support contracts for any of the open source dbs.

Paul wrote: > > "rkusenet" <usenet.rk@gmail.com> wrote: > > >>Click here to read more about the increasing market share of open-source database >>PostgreSQL. > > > > You would swear from this article that there were no other vendors of > db's other than Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. > > Where was any mention of Sybase? Pervasive? IBM's Informix offerings? > Borland's Interbase? Someone must buy these products! What about MySQL > and/or Firebird? MySQL is not free for commercial use - what's its > market share? Pervasive have also started to support PostgreSQL, as > has another springup (other efforts to make money out of PostgreSQL > have failed), but companies can do it because of the FreeBSD licence. > > No mention either of any revenue streams for companies that have > support contracts for any of the open source dbs. Apparently you haven't noticed how some of us from have been pointing out the fact that a Gartner Report is worth nothing except to Garnter. The company sells its opinions on the same basis that politicians sell their votes: To the highest bidder. -- Daniel A. Morgan http://www.psoug.org damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)

>> You would swear from this article that there were no other vendors of db's other than Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. Charts showing DBMS market share for 2003 and 2004: http://www.SQLSummit.com/Trends/DBMSMarket.htm Application server market share for 2003 and 2004: http://www.SQLSummit.com/Trends/AppServerMarket.htm

Paul wrote: > Where was any mention of Sybase? Pervasive? IBM's Informix offerings? Yes, in the actual Gartner report, not the eWeek diluted one. They break out Informix revenues. Oracle beats IBM by a few points if you don't count Informix. > Borland's Interbase? Someone must buy these products! What about MySQL > and/or Firebird? MySQL is not free for commercial use - what's its > market share? Pervasive have also started to support PostgreSQL, as MySQL *is* free for internal commercial use, it's just not supported. Companies like Google make a mint by modifying GPL software and not re-releasing the source because they don't ship a product, they offer a service. IF they do release components, it's out of a spirit of community giving ;) To answer your question, Gartner does have an "others" category at around 6.6% revenue or $517.1 million, which about the same share as Sybase, Teradata, and Informix combined. This is down 5.2% year-over-year, BTW. I assume this includes revenues from all the smaller vendors, but I don't really know. I'm not sure it matters that much: MySQL AB only had revenues of $5 million in 2002 -- at best they're $10-12 million now. (reference .. http://uk.builder.com/architecture/db/0,39026552,20276852,00.htm). To give you a reference point, RedHat had revenues of $124 million in 2004. > No mention either of any revenue streams for companies that have > support contracts for any of the open source dbs. This measures "new license revenue" -- not support contracts. This is a general problem with the enterprise software space, in that analysts (and Wall Street) determine the health of a company purely based on its "new licenses", not counting support or upgrades under maintenance. I don't know how MySQL AB's accounting rules work, but it's hard to fight against an entire industry's accounting practices. They may suck, but they make sense given the value system of many enterprise software buyers. But also note that if they measured database maintenance, support & services contracts, IBM and Oracle make billions off those too, so I'm not sure that's the answer to give OSS databases more "cred". > That has to be market share in some shape or form, but was completely > ignored in the article which only mentioned PostgreSQL, and even then > only provided a link, with no mention of its market share! Again, it's a measure of new revenue market share. I'd say it's pretty accurate on those terms, but can be misleading because these press articles never quite paint the whole picture (Oracle leads in UNIX, Linux, and is #2 on Windows -- yet IBM still is #1? Hmmmmmmm.) Whether revenue is relevant, of course is debatable. But what's a market without dollars? Does unit share really make that much sense (especially in the embedded market)? Look at it this way: most full time Linux or MySQL developers are subsidised by venture or public capital today (MySQL has 17 million EUR if I recall). They need license revenue to sustain that investment or it's effectively going to be supported and developed by hobbiests, college students, and engineers with an itch to scratch. That model works well enough for creating a good product (like Linux up to 1.2 arguably). But it doesn't quite give one warm fuzzies about their ability topple the big boys. Anyway, back to making fun of Gartner. There's a nice disclaimer at the bottom of the report: "The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice." yay. Cheers Stu

Stu Charlton wrote: > Anyway, back to making fun of Gartner. There's a nice disclaimer at > the bottom of the report: "The information contained herein has been > obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all > warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such > information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or > inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations > thereof. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without > notice." Which pretty much says it all ... a Gartner report is worthless except to Gartner's revenue stream. I don't know why anyone pays any attention to them. -- Daniel A. Morgan http://www.psoug.org damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)

Stu Charlton wrote: > Look at it this way: most full time Linux or MySQL developers are > subsidised by venture or public capital today (MySQL has 17 million EUR > if I recall). They need license revenue to sustain that investment or > it's effectively going to be supported and developed by hobbiests, > college students, and engineers with an itch to scratch. The number of downloads is probably a better measure of the influence of open source products. Trying to use capitalization or revenue as a yardstick is problematical. Much of the highly-visible open source software (MySQL, JBoss, Apache, Eclipse, Linux) has had an infusion of venture capital or a commitment of resources by large computer companies. For example, IBM committed to spending more than $1 billion on Linux and donated servers and software to the Apache and Eclipse foundations. The economic effect of open source isn't limited to direct revenue from licenses and support contracts. Companies that manufacture computers know that open source contributes to the revenue stream from selling hardware (e.g., 40 million web servers running Apache).

ken_north@compuserve.com wrote: Wow I thought compuserve was dead or was it compuware or both?