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IBM Invests In MySQL/Oracle Competitor
stoolpigeon writes "IBM has made a move to support open source RDBMS PostgreSQL by investing in EnterpriseDB, a company that supports PostgreSQL as well as selling their own proprietary extensions to the database product. IBM participated in a $10 million funding round, though the article doesn't say how much they invested. In the past EnterpriseDB has primarily advertised itself as an Oracle competitor, though the article says, 'Derek Rodner, EnterpriseDB's director of product strategy, explained that Postgres Plus 8.3 also adds in new application quick starts which are supposed to help with installation issues. They will also help in EnterpriseDB's battle against MySQL for open source database supremacy.'"
Now there's an oxymoron!
MySQL, while it has come a long way, still has a ways to go to rival PostgresSQL, technically speaking. By the time you enable all the atomicity, and PostgreSQL feature set, you arrive at worse-than PostgreSQL performance.
MySQL, while it has come a long way, still has a ways to go to rival PostgresSQL, legally speaking. PostgreSQL is BSD. MySQL is anything but. Sure, the community edition is free, but it cannot be used with commercial software. In fact, there's a special "open source exception" to the license. That's not really open source. Open Source would never make you pay server licensing fees for use in commercial software, it would only make you distribute your source at worst.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Here's a few random thoughts:
Having recently seen Sun buy MySQL, this looks a lot like a "me too"-move. That's not to say that it doesn't make business sense.
Last I checked, IBM makes its money from two things: hardware and support. Note that software is not one of them; the software is (to them) merely what enables them to sell their bread and butter. It's also costing them money to develop and maintain software that drives sales.
That's why they've invested money in Linux, and that's why they're investing money in Postgres: offering software with a good track record and a good reputation drives sales better, and cost is driven down as the software is open source.
Can one tell me why we (in the open source world), do not have a single product that competes with Access in terms of functionality, ease of use and ease of programming business logic?
Yeah, if I'm the owner of a company and not just some "Slash and Burn" CEO, I wouldn't want to have my core assets hostage to some third party _company_.
Having it in the hands of a trusted _person_ is different. If that person works for a different company, it's harder to ensure it's always that same trusted person who manages it.
Whereas if that trusted person works for you and the assets are in your company, it's a bit easier eh?
Why isn't this a competitor of db2?
For the same reason PostgreSQL and MySQL aren't really competitors to Oracle.
There might be SOME crossover, but one database system (MySQL, PostgreSQL) is aimed at user performing simpler tasks (web forums, home users) which don't necessarily need all the features of the larger products (transactions, large numbers of simultaneous users, data integrity checking), whereas the other (DB2, Oracle) is aimed at business users who require those full-fledged features.
Now, I'm not saying that PostgreSQL and MySQL don't provide some of the features, but people will choose what best suits their needs. You won't see banks running PostgreSQL/MySQL on for their financial transactions, just like you most likely won't see DB2/Oracle running as the backend of your (run-of-the-mill) web forum.
Disclaimer: I work for IBM. These thoughts are my own, and may not represent those of the company.
The software division of IBM accounts for 20% of their revenue, and 40% of their profit.
See http://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2007/md_4rco.shtml
Key applications are WebSphere, "Information Management" (db2?), Lotus, Tivoli, Rational, and operating systems.
Some of this is probably tied to the success of their hardware and service departments, I doubt many people buy IBM operating systems (2% of their total revenue, 12% of their software revenue) without IBM hardware.
But the non-disclosed revenue from Rational is probably pretty much standalone.
IBM buying into Postgres through EnterpriseDB is clearly a response to Sun's buying into MySQL. But what's really exciting about the move is that Sun also bought into Postgres, shipping it with Solaris 10 and integrating it with its Java App Server, as an entry-level database. Since Sun is also supporting and bundling MySQL (and therefore using it to drive sales of Sun machines), tools for porting between Postgres and MySQL are likely in the works.
Now IBM will follow suit, probably offering Postgres as an intro to selling its DB2 database, which will mean IBM tools for upgrading from Postgres to DB2. Meanwhile, EnterpriseDB already offers tools to port Oracle apps to Postgres.
The next move will probably come from Oracle. To continue the head-to-head competition, Oracle will probably offer tools for porting Postgres (and maybe MySQL) apps to Oracle. It's surprising that Oracle didn't buy a Postgres or MySQL company before Sun or IBM got them, but maybe that's why Sun bought one of each: to keep them from Oracle. Though Oracle did buy the InnoDB corp that makes the MySQL engine with serious DB features, and SleepyCat, the BerkeleyDB corp.
So as the dust settles, there could finally be a grand unification at work. IBM, Sun and Oracle each have incentive and in-house teams for producing tools to port between Postgres, MySQL and their proprietary high-end RDBMS'es. And since the lower-end (though Postgres competes well with them all) DBs are all open source, there is a good chance the upgrades will be available for freely porting among all of them.
The age of database lockin might finally be falling behind us. We might finally be free to use whichever DB is best for the job today, not determined by which DB was best for some other job yesterday.
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make install -not war