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Can Sun Make MySQL Pay?
AlexGr submitted a nice followup to last weeks billion dollar Sun buyout of MySQL. He notes that "Jeff Gould presents an interesting analysis in Interop News:
How can an open source software company with $70 million or so in revenue and no profits to speak of be worth $1 billion? That's the question Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has been trying to answer since he bought MySQL last week.
Like most commercial open source companies, MySQL makes money by enticing well-heeled customers to pay for an enterprise version of its product that comes with more bells and whistles than the community version it gives away for free.
It appears though that the additional features of the Enterprise version are not enough to compensate for the revenue-destroying effects of the free Community alternative. What else could explain the surprising fact that MySQL has quietly filled out its open source portfolio with a closed source proprietary management software tool known as Enterprise Software Monitor?"
"What else could explain the surprising fact that MySQL has quietly filled out its open source portfolio with a closed source proprietary management software tool known as Enterprise Software Monitor?""
They're offering better support. Haven't we always said that the rationale behind open source is you can offer the product for free, then offer paid support?
Why is it every time someone actually implements this, they're criticized?
How can an open source software company with $70 million or so in revenue and no profits to speak of be worth $1 billion?
:)
This is where you have to think outside of the box. There are some who believe that Sun may simply be the pawn of Oracle. Oracle could not buy MySQL directly because of anti-trust issues etc.. Not to mention, Sun and Oracle have been "strategic partners" for a very long time. However, another company could purchase MySQL to kill it off.
I am not saying this is exactly what happend, but I do think the above author and Dvorak make some good points. Disclaimer: IANADF - I am not a Dvorak fan
Such as VMW and XenSource and every ORCL acquisition. It's the potential that the companies and investors are buying.
MySQL doesn't make money by enticing the customers with the 'extra bells and whistles' of MySQL Enterprise. They make money because companies who base any important part of their IT infrastructure on MySQL or any open source product will want to pay for support. It's the same reason companies pay for RedHat or SuSE. Who has better support for an open source product than the developer of that product?
My blog
He misses the most obvious way of making Mysql pay and that is Java. If Sun goes down the same route that Microsoft is with Sql Server/.NET and integrates Java into Mysql, Sun gets a powerful new platform for the enterprise.
Those bastards!
Sun will make MySQL pay. Boy, will they pay!
I've pondered this as well. What makes Youtube worth ~1.5 billion? Certainly not the technology. Sun has bought developer mindshare. When you think MySQL now, you're going to associate it with Sun. As long as they don't destroy it, it will reflect well on a company that, till now, has been floundering.
According to Torvald's biography, Linus walked out of a meeting in the 90's that Sun had called with the open-source community because the license they were introducing didn't pass his muster. It is interesting to see Sun coming around.
Of course, I could be totally wrong and we could be looking at a storm on the horizon.
Free software *which is painful as hell to use*, paid support. If your software is well-documented, configuration is easy, and it isn't effectively broken in important respects... what do you need support for, again?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
TFA: "Sun would have to grow MySQL's revenues to $500 million per year to bring it into sync with the purchase price"
That's a 7X increase, no small potatoes, but if Sun is thinking long term (esp., hopefully, w/r/t international markets), I don't think this is as unlikely as the article writer seems to.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Sun is buying direct influence over millions of websites through owning the database product that powers them.
And maybe even more importantly they establish a customer relation with their owners.
That's half a sale right there, or at least a direct channel.
I am not saying it comes at a bargain price, though...
Baboons are cute.
I have always thought that most of the OS config should be moved to a proper networked DB. Much better scalability, consistant API, Security etc. That along with bundled content management seems like the right direction to be going.
Please chemically castrate yourself, or jump off of a tall building before you have a chance to reproduce. Thanks.
Perhaps it wants a db it can install for all the cheapskates who buy their hardware but don't want to fork out for an expensive db.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
Maybe they won't make profit from MySQL directly. But being able to bundle it and support it could mean more sales of sun solutions with an integrated database vs. paying for oracle licenses. Just a thought.
What is the enterprise management utility? Is it like the enterprise manager in oracle? In which case I'm all for it. MySQL is amazing even in its "free" incarnation, and everything you need to manage it can be done with either front ends or from the command line. However if there is a supported manager utility like in Oracle, I think it'd totally be worth the purchase - ESPECIALLY if its as useful as the oracle one. Sun is a company who has made a ton of strides towards working with the open source community, but first and foremost they are a company.
A while back I remember I had a conversation with a manager guy I used to work with about OSS software. We were talking in particular about Linux, but I'd guess it would apply to MySQL. He said that companies don't go for OSS because they'd have no one to sue and/or hold accountable if the software fails. Not his literal words, but it went something like that. This makes some sense, in a twisted sort of way. I'm not a licensing expert, but how many companies enter this sort of agreement? Big guys? SAP, Oracle?
the future is but past forgotten
How can Sun sell enough hardware to justify this purchase? What if they have a platform that (should a major database vendor optimize their implementation for that platform) has a significant advantage over any other platform?
Databases are one of the most common applications that need lots and lots of concurrent threads.
And Sun has a unique platform that provides that support: Niagara Optimizations for MySQL and a list of other cases in Sun's performance contest
Try looking at market cap instead;
WMT: nearly 200 Billion.
AAPL: nearly 120 Billion.
Comparisons between individual share value are pretty meaningless.
The reason for lack of customers for the enterprise version is not a mystery when you have one of the foremost High performance Mysql Experts recommending that people not use it
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Sun will make a profit by selling more hardware - I don't know how long it will take to make 1 billion dollars (insert evil laugh) but at least it sounds like a good decision
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
MySQL is great, don't get me wrong. I used to poopoo it when they didn't have foreign keys, but now it seems fairly mature.
But the name. Oh my god, the name. Anything with "my" in front of it sounds like the intended audience is a four year old. "it's mine! my computer. my space. my toybox! I'm special. This is mine!"
I always feel like an idiot when I say it.
P/E.....P/E.
Apple's P/E is way out of whack (30's when most everyone else is teens to 20's). If the NASDAQ / DOW / S&P falls, those with higher P/E's fall faster.
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AWMT
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL
Layne
I have to agree with other comments so far. MySQL has built its business on charging $3500 here and there for "Enterprise" support. They have also made a big push to sell their MySQL Cluster based on NDB. Unfortunately, NDB doesn't work for about 99% of the systems out there. That hasn't stopped them from selling it to customers that don't need it or can't use it.
In terms of their other high availability solutions, they are mostly hacks. Their multi-master replication option uses an auto-increment offset workaround to keep inserts from stomping on each other, but this isn't without its problems, also, recovery isn't easy. Their cluster solution uses DRBD and Heartbeat to compete with things like Veritas Cluster Server, it's okay but it's really not innovate, it's another patchwork of technologies. Finally, Without point-in-time recovery through the use of something like rollback logs, it's highly dubious to put anything requiring truly ACID type compliance on MySQL.
Sun needs to put resources into plugging all these holes. If they can fix the major shortcomings with NDB, and get cluster to work for more people, they may actually have a hugely successful "enterprise" offering.
I seem to recall asking the CEO about this when he came on to discuss the company going public. At that time he said they wouldn't be selling or allowing the company to be bought out. I always preferred mysql as my open sql database but if this is managed like Sun manages openoffice then I'll be moving to another platform.
That isn't necessarily true, as stocks aren't traded based strictly on P/E. The figure for how volatile a stock's price is relative to the market at large is the stock's beta. That's what tracks how fast it's expected to rise/fall relative to the market at large.
From the reports you linked to, Wal-Mart's beta is 0.25. Apple's is 1.6.
I can't see it or say any other way than "My Squirrel"
MySQL also has alternative licensing so companies can build proprietary products using MySQL as the engine. I wasn't seeing much mention of that in the comments.
Yeah, right. You want support for you COMPANY and you don't want to pay, that's obviously the underlying issue. Oracle support was per-CPU for a long time. So were other commercial DB. You're cheapskates, not potential customers.
If Sun offered a supported Linux (or Solaris) with a standard SQL interface in its kernel API as featured as is the fileystem API, it would sell a lot more Sun systems. Sun could also sell services to convert default MySQL apps to other DBs that are better at heavy write volume. Or Sun could just upgrade MySQL for a commercial version to compete with Oracle and DB2 on heavy write volume, but keep the same API as the free bundled MySQL. Which would make Sun's platform a preferred one for the DB developer community. That's a huge win in Sun's battle with Oracle and IBM, to say nothing of Microsoft.
--
make install -not war
Personally, I find Postgres a bigger option to MySQL, which the author did not consider. Why Sun has bought MySQL when a database of that quality is already out there in the open source world, I don't know. We'll have to see.
A mechanical pencil always sounds as if it is going to be a really cool piece of kit, with levers, lots of hydraulics and wheels... perhaps Sun will give one away free with open solaris next time - Proprietary Mysql, I mean. But sure a mechanical pencil would be cool too.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
They also have a half-baked ticketing system that they promote alternatively as a PM tool or a bug tracker, which I narrowly avoided having to migrate to from Bugzilla.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
One wonders what this will do to Sun's relationship with Oracle. Previously, Sun and HP were database allies and IBM was a database competitor. Now, Sun is a db competitor. This is actually pretty logical anyway, since Sun was was already lined up to be an Oracle competitor anyway due to the Oracle/BEA deal so there are now 3 main Enterprise Java camps: Sun (the mothership), IBM and, now, Oracle/BEA.
Now neither Oracle (nor IBM) would say they take MySQL seriously as a competing product - but the mere presence of lightweight FOSS database has certainly affected database license fees, esp in SMB segments.
If Sun intends to monetize their billion dollar spend, I assume they'll try to drive commercial MySQL into the enterprise in an aggressive way -which should really tweak Oracle...
Watch Oracle get even closer to HP now...
...with stronger reputations in the market are available?You have to be joking about SQL Server having a strong reputation. Oh, wait. Reputation is an unsigned value.
It's over for MySQL - just like Forte, NetDynamics, and IPlanet (which was ~50% Sun). All taken in-house, innovation destroyed, product gone except for bits and pieces in Sun's current substandard offerings. (Do I sound bitter?) I think only AT&T has destroyed more technology companies.
However, here is a thought - Sun is going to compete with Neteeza this year. Neteeza uses Postgres as an engine, I bet the Sun product will use MySQL.
I think Jeff assumes Sun and MySQL's goal in "business reality" is to become a "powerful closed source incumbent." But that may not be the thing to do. To continue Jeff's save the planet/animal theme, would my goal at the end of the Cretaceous period be to become a "powerful incumbent" dinosaur? What if I knew the asteroid was on the way? Would I instead choose to become a "marginal" mammal? Sure.
Jeff then says there is no "free lunch." But open source is a free lunch. I, and every individual database user, can save money if open source companies like MySQL are successful. I can also say the same thing about a lot of other types of open source companies, present and future. And when enough people and companies start to think like I do -- the asteroid arrives.
This open source mindset is a way for everybody except "powerful closed source incumbents" to save a lot of money. We keep it -- they don't get it. So I and a rapidly increasing number of other people support open source. We support companies that support open source. We oppose companies that oppose open source. That's the "business reality," Jeff.
I could also say that open source is a better way to support innovation. But that is another topic.
The sole test of knowledge is experiment. -- R. Feynman
Personally, I don't have a problem with people attaching proprietary tools to open source products. But I have to point out that "offering paid support" is supposed to mean providing an actual human who can help you make the software work. It most definitely does not mean selling people closed-source management tools.
The basic issue here is between the "open source software" people and the "free software" people. Superficially, the two groups want the same thing: access to the source code. But the two groups come from completely different ethical assumptions. For OSS people, sharing source is just good business, and opening up their products (or deciding not to) is a business decision.
By contrast, the "free" software folks are in revolt against the very concept of proprietary software. Their consider its very existence an abrogation of their rights.
I've always considered the whole "free software" concept to be just a little naive. No, make that dumb. Its arguments are convoluted and not very compelling, and ignore inconvenient ethical precedents and economic realities. To me, the only good thing about the "free" software movement is that it unintentionally gave birth to the open source software movement.
But that's just my opinion. There are a lot of people who honestly believe that there's a big moral issue at stake in "setting software free" and especially in attaching "unfree" software to "free" software. When such people object to the MySQL/ESM bundle, you can accuse them of being soft in head. But it's not fair to accuse them of being hypocrites.
If you add up the amount of man-hours put into the product you end up with a different figure.
Another factor is that by having a well-known database in their portfolio they can actually benefit from having a better chance on the market when offering solutions. (Customers like to have a single place to leave their complaints! :-) )
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
What the hell sort of sane business model DEPENDS on your customers requiring support? It's like saying, "I have to keep my product consistently buggy, and provide poor user interfaces and cryptic errors, so that people continue to need help with it." It's an up-front admission that you're going to make crappy software.
Suppose the cable guy came out to install your cable, and said "This cable is free. Installation is free. The programming is free. We only charge for support. So if something breaks, you can call me out here and I'll fix it for some $NOMINAL charge."
It kind of makes you think, "Gee, this shit must break all the time if they can actually make money charging only for support," doesn't it?
In addition, anybody can provide support. Chances are, your support blows. Someone else can step in and provide better support. They can easily do this because the source is available. NOW what are you going to make your money on?
Currently, the top item for buying MySQL is a $599 software package that you need some suitable machine to run it. When they've rearranged things, I bet the top item will be a $2000 server comprised of the $599 software, a $1200 Sun server, and everything already set up. This is a more compelling offering in terms of a business getting froom purchase to actually using it, so they'll probably have more sales than MySQL did before. It gives a compelling benefit over using a no-cost version of MySQL, since it's all put together. It means that the machine is all one supplier, so there's no support people pointing fingers, meaning more effective support for the cost. And it's new sales of computer hardware, because people would currently never think to buy a Solaris server from Sun to run MySQL on.
Between all of those factors, I could see owning MySQL being worth $1b to Sun, even if MySQL's value in general is much lower. And, given Sun's flaky reputation in the Open Source world, I could understand MySQL refusing any lower offer.
On the other hand, I expect to see only a third of Sun's increase in income due to ownership of MySQL to come from getting the money when people buy MySQL products, and much more to come from an increase in Sun's income from existing products.
The luxury of MySQL is that is is more simple than the more robust databases like Oracle or MSSQL. If you're a vendor, and you want your application do database-like things, a having a database in your portfolio is a wonderful asset. For instance, Microsoft Exchange's internal databases are run by a MSSQL-like data engine optimized for the kinds of data it stores. Microsoft's Terminal Server code (in NT 4.0 -> 2000) is the basis (if not the entirety) of Windows XPs Remote Desktop/Remote Assistance features in the consumer OS.
/. very often touting the newest, most robust, kick-ass embeded database almost every month. I think MySQL has a strong enough name, and Sun has enough credibility, and the ability to make native-java packages, to do well in this market.
If Sun could use MySQL as a simple application service (Java or otherwise) database for applications wishing to use a RDBMS for internal functionality (vs. lets say a text file, or some proprietary binary blob file) Sun would have the perfect product in its simplicity, lightweightness and general support in the OSS community. If you had a highly tuned MySQL instance running as part of an application, you'd get simple app-to-app integration.
I see ads on
On another note, with I'm sure it has been said before, but it can't be said enough, how awesome would it be if OO.org had MySQL as the data-engine in OO.org's Base application. It would make it much simpler to use OO.org forms to integrate into live data being pulled from other sources. (To me, using an Office Suite to manage "data" is a bad idea, but I've done enough freelance work to see many small businesses who think a shared folder (usually from the admin assistant's PC hard disk) full of Word documents is the best way to store business information much better suited for a DB (or even Excel if they must...).
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
I believe that Sun is capable of adding an enormous amount of value to the Mysql server in the way of advanced feature set. Imagine that Sun brings the Mysql server up to par with Oracle's product offering, but continues to charge the same amount. Where are sales going -- of both their hardware and Mysql? Sun is perfectly capable of some fairly stunning software advances. Look at ZFS and Dtrace. If they can pull this off, Mysql will be a big winner. The free version might not be a big winner though.
The insurance business model, which is alive and well. You might as well ask, "what kind of business model depends on people crashing their cars?" or "what kind of business model depends on houses burning down?"
Now, there are viable alternative strategies to the insurance model of protecting against risk, but there is no denying that this model is popular and perceived to be effective by millions of consumers.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
Ok, My-S-Q-L, you owes us some money, see. So pay up!
Wait, it's not me your want, it's that "My-Sequel" guy.
Nice try. We ain't fallen for that trick again. Now pay up. Or Vinny here will re-write your core in Java.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The insurance business model, which is alive and well. You might as well ask, "what kind of business model depends on people crashing their cars?" or "what kind of business model depends on houses burning down?"
If the insurance company built the cars, built the roadway, and drove the cars themselves like some kind of chauffeur service, you'd have a point. This comparison is not even remotely relevant.
The insurance business model, which is alive and well. You might as well ask, "what kind of business model depends on people crashing their cars?" or "what kind of business model depends on houses burning down?"
Your comparison is not equivalent. To be equivalent, the insurance company would have to be giving you your house, for free. Now imagine getting a house from a company who's business model depends on your house burning down. I'd have to say you are a psychotic with a deathwish if you buy from such a company.
I think it's more about IBM than Oracle. IBM is one of Sun's biggest competitors, they compete on hardware and software, from big iron to blades and desktops. They even compete against Sun's IDE and UI toolkit for Java.
Most important though, IBM has DB2, so you can get everything you need from IBM. Until now, Sun didn't have a competitive database offering, they would push Postgres, but they couldn't own Postgres. Buying MySQL not only gives them a well known database with a large user base, but it gives them copyright ownership of all the code. For a long time now Sun's stack has been incomplete, MySQL fills that gap.
http://www.mhall119.com
Right, so I can get MySQL Enterprise for $5k per server per year while MSSQL is $25k, plus about $8k per year for 24x7 support. So, on a five-year plan, a MySQL installation costs $416/month while a MSSQL installation costs $1083/month, or a difference of about $22/day. If an administrator can make the case that MSSQL will on average save fifteen minutes per day of his time, there's no financial incentive whatsoever. If the damned thing was free across the board, including free 24x7 support, they'd just have to justify one day per month of savings to make it even at which point any infinitesimal functional advantage or shortcoming will tip the scale.
The bottom line is that for such a critical application, the cost of staff so far dwarfs the licensing fees that the free software + paid support model can't compete unless the product is truly superior and better suited to begin with.
A little bit of reading would have shown him that MySQL's monitoring capabilities is based on open source vendor Hyperic (http://www.hyperic.com/). Hyperic's software, Hyperic HQ, is actually the software that powers many vendor's for sale monitoring and management services - including MuleSource, JBoss (soon to be all of Red Hat as well), SpringSource, Iona and more coming.
Full disclosure: I work for Hyperic, and think EVERYTHING that MySQL has done to date has been a series of extremely smart moves. Product parterns included!
And they still don't have anything to compete with DB2.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
No, but they at least have a database product now. And we all know that in a year's time they will be selling it under a different name with some enterprise management tools integrated into Solaris and ZFS and provide benchmarks running on Niagara showing it besting DB2 in some operation. And even if it still won't be anywhere near as good as DB2, it will be enough for Sun's salespeople to convince those who make purchase decisions that it is, and selling Niagara+Solaris+SJSAS+MySQL(renamed)+Storage package solutions will add up to $500million in no time.
http://www.mhall119.com
Maybe what Sun's trying is the old game of buying out the cheap competition, with the idea of simply shutting it down. And maybe they don't properly appreciate that MySQL's source is Out There.
But I'm a bit unclear on just how MySQL is licensed these days. Could Sun actually shut it down, take it off the market, and prevent previous users from continuing with it indefinitely? And is all the source really available, or will current users have to migrate to something else for their next machine if MySQL is no longer available?
Just curious. The legalities of such things can get confusing, until a court tells you what you're stuck with.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Is the only reason to do it to convey information, or maybe to have a little fun?
You say "mill", I say "himalountain".
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
You can call QuickBooks a "Virtual CPA" if you want, but that doesn't make QuickBooks a service -- as in, a service that a person does for example in exchange for money or camels.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Here here. Valuation is a good example of the human aspect to all of the market. Look at CROCs as another good example. Look at China Mobile and PetroChina. Value does not necessarily reflect value. IMHO MSQL at a billion seems like a deal. "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money"
And the more things running on it and the more popular they are, the more hardware they sell.
After that comes the much smaller income you get from the commercial uses of MySQL.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
if i were Sun i'd be building an equivalent to SimpleDB. a MySQL cloud. sun could do it. sun should do it. that could be worth 1 billion.
imagine a db cloud that everyone already knows how to use...
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
I believe Sun's resurgence will come from moving people onto ZFS, not necessarily from sales of MySQL. They will add some nice improvements to MySQL, and this move has bought them a LOT of potential customers - but the long term benefit to going with Sun is going to be with their stable and flexible Solaris and ZFS products and services.
Nobody is scaling down in the amount of data they deal with. To say ZFS is scalable is an understatement.
A little bit of reading would have shown him that MySQL's monitoring capabilities is based on open source vendor http://www.hyperic.com/. Hyperic's software, Hyperic HQ, is actually the software that powers many vendor's for sale monitoring and management services - including MuleSource, JBoss (soon to be all of Red Hat as well), SpringSource, Iona and more coming. Making money in open source is obviously a smart idea for all - it keeps the engineers and support staff employed to keep your software being maintained and improved. Plus, it may actually pay out someday with a $1B acquisition...
Full disclosure: I work for Hyperic, and think EVERYTHING that MySQL has done to date has been a series of extremely smart moves. I also think Jeff was being lazy when he wrote that article.
I'm sorry I struck a nerve, that was not my intent. It seemed to me that most purchasers of support are willing to pay for the availability of a benefit for a need that may or may not happen, and, like purchasers of insurance policies, the economic viability of the business depends on the majority of the purchasers not actually using or needing the service. Customers buy based on a perception of risk, and a desire to minimize that risk. The pricing and delivery model counts on most customers not needing the service most of the time.
Certainly it's different in that the mitigation benefit is a service, rather than a payment. But that's just a different cost function - the overall business model even depends on actuarial considerations - how many customers are there, how many machine do they run, how often will the need what kind of service, and how much will MySQL/RedHat, etc, pay out in satisfying their obligation.
Your assumption is that the companies providing the service have built the product. MySQL doesn't build all the MySQL code, RedHat certainly didn't build the Linux kernel, and CrossOver took over Wine. Yet they all provide support on the aforementioned model. I'm not sure where your building the cars metaphor comes from, but it seems, to use your acidic words, hardly relevant.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
[sorry, my first post ... not creating an account for this]
;-] , the one originally created by SAP and ...] , but which is still at the core ...]
...] ... mySQL fastest on SUN ... SUN best power scaling ... ok, solaris is maybe not so bad an alternative, ... it just works ... it just works ... affordable
Gals & Guys, I think you are missing something completely:
Sun is primarily a hardware company, not a software company.
In this they are similar to Apple: Apple does not need to
earn money with iTunes as long as the can earn money by selling
iPods. Sun does not need to make money by selling a DB as long
as they earn money by selling servers which run the software.
Having stated that, a few observations:
(1) mySQL "owns" one of the two best DB-engines on the market
[flame bait
given away [ratio: we sell Rx, not a dumb, run of the mill
database like Larry
of SAP Rx [at least I read an aeon ago that this was the plan]
(2) mySQL is dual use freeware/payware as mySQL owns all its code.
(3) IBM [do they own a database ?] hast just declared Sparc
to be end of life.
(4) Sun is selling the mother of all multi-core chips in its
servers. There are only a small number of real life problems
can take advantage of that. [DBs come to mind
So, lets put this together and develop a scenario:
(A) mySQL stays mySQL, Oracle supports the continuous developement,
and sells a supported version [lets see: mySQL for money, openSQL
for free ?] This way, mySQL will pay its own way, and the community
does not need to feel screwed.
(B) my/openSQL will be able to take massive advantage of SUNs latest
hardware, not only because it will be properly supported for that, but
also because SUN multicore hardware is potentially screamingly fast
for DB-applications.
(C) SUN will provide a nicely rounded and optimized L/SAMP or SAP package
[think Quicktime, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPod, iTV, iBook, AirBook
(D) So, now you are an old school LAMPer, or an old school SAPer, and
suddenly need scalability, and your choice is IBM or HP or [whoever]
or SUN, and you start to do your calculations:
cost / performance
power / performance
cost / software
to Linux, and not really expensive, and Linux is
always an option on SUN
cost / reliability
cost / managebility
cost / convincing management
Does this sound sensible ? It does to me. Long live Sparc, long live Intel
long live Amd, long live Power [?], long live competition !
Servus
pjms
PS: Is not there an economic theory [asymetric information?] that proves
that trying to sell somewhat exchangable wares [i.e. insurance] can be
impossible to do profitably if you have different business models ?
Don't some of the major ISPs (well, hosting sites) use MySQL? I would bet that the transactions and storage and data integrity issues they have probably are larger in scope and intensity than some credit card activity, banking and others. But, I could be wrong. Anyone care to take this ball and make it bounce?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
A new viable platform emerged that the big boys ignored, so the small companies jumped in and grew with the growth of the platform. That's the story of the standard PC as well as a Linux PC. It has nothing to do with open vs. closed.
"How can an open source software company with $70 million or so in revenue and no profits to speak of be worth $1 billion?"
That is what some wondered too, in a company I worked at long time ago.
We were 125 employees, with about software 80 developers. We sold for about $20 million and had $30 million in expenses. We had 65 small and large contracts in 45 countries.
Then, we were bought, for about 1 billion dollars by a larger company? What did they pay for? Our profit? Our staff? Hardly. Probably our running technology, patents, and above established contracts.
I guess the situation is similar here. SUN bought the MySQL for its technology and contracts.
MySQL is the missing piece.
MySQL has:
- a large userbase
- is a decent database by now (5.0)
With ZFS and Niagara 2 Sun can make MySQL scale without limits. There are a lot MySQL-user that "grew big" by now.
OTOH, Sun has also important components on the other side:
- Java
- Openoffice
Besides MSFT, Sun is the only company that has such a complete stack. And its all opensource:
Niagara -> OpenSolaris -> MySQL -> Java -> OpenOffice
Dude... I said when Apple was in the 200's its market cap was nearly that of WMT. The 120 billion market cap is due to the massive price drop. If you are going to start talking the market please get your calculations right.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Screwed up the link - need more coffee:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
Kevin Smith on Prince
Why would SUN buy MySQL for $1billion?
It's all about the marketing.
First, SUN is scared stiff of the word "LAMP" (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python).
SUN has tried to promote "AMP" instead so it could include their operating system Solaris.
These days though LAMP is being used all over the place... (even in lots of places PHP/Perl should not feasibly be used.)
LAMP is the first thing people think of when talking about MySQL.
PostgreSQL is a great database, but LAPP is nowhere as catchy to all the business journals as LAMP.
LAMP is hip, cheap, everywhere... If your not LAMP, well then your SOMETHING ELSE.
Simply put, LAMP was costing SUN in marketing expenses and support contracts.
SUN's buying MySQL is also buying the marketing word LAMP (which is everywhere).
LAMP now requires the use of SUN.
Once that doorway is open, businesses can be shown why it is so much easier to also purchase support for SUN's Java and Solaris products along with their MySQL support contract.
SUN can additionally control development so that MySQL gets its best optimized performance with Java and Solaris versus competitor products.
As for the $1billion? Who knows.
Maybe it was the magic number that MySQL would sell for...
Maybe it was the magic number that would give SUN lots of free advertising in all business and technology journals world-wide...
bamph