December 4, 2003
The MySQL database model is becoming more and more popular among enterprises.
Industry analysts have some advice for enterprise database vendors: Stop adding
features and functions and start solving business problems at a reasonable price.
“Vendors are totally overshooting the market in terms of features and functions,” said Mark Shainman, a senior analyst at Meta Group Inc.
Betsy Burton, an analyst at Gartner Inc., agreed, saying that the changes customers want are much more fundamental than vendors are offering. Customers are looking for robust systems that are scalable, reliable and available. “Right now, enterprise customers are just trying to survive,” she said. “Vendors are trying to drive technology faster than customers will adopt it. Customers just want to keep their systems running.”
To prove her point, she cited the adoption of Oracle9i. Apparently, only 40 percent of Oracle customers have migrated to the product after about two years. Sluggish new product sales aren’t unique to Oracle, however. According to Lou Agosta, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc., the adoption rate of new enterprise databases is low due to IT budget cuts.
And, apparently it doesn’t hurt to sit on the sidelines for a while. Agosta said that the prices of fully configured systems are declining dramatically. For example, in April 2002, a 2TB database using DB2 on an off-the-shelf Intel x86 server might cost about US$2.2 million. Today, using a system built on an AMD processor running an open-source operating system and database might cost $800,000, he said. Agosta said that 90 percent of the price reduction is attributable to falling hardware prices, while a mere 4 percent is attributable to the use of open-source software.
He pointed out that the statistic isn’t a criticism of open source, but rather a reflection of the effect Moore’s Law has had on hardware.
THE RELATIONAL RIVER
Gartner’s Burton said the evolution of relational databases is like a “relational river.” Various technologies, such as object-oriented databases and XML databases, have attempted to make relational structures obsolete, but in the end, all they do is influence the direction of relational database evolution. According to Burton, relational database vendors are using “wire and wax” to handle XML data. And, like it or not, XML does adversely affect the performance of relational database systems.
Regardless of what features a relational database may have now or in the future, enterprise customers should select a database product based on the problems they are trying to solve. From an applications perspective, it becomes more apparent whether a relational, flat file, object-oriented, XML or combination of databases makes sense. “More than ever, applications are driving database selection,” said Burton. “You should not be adopting a database per se; you should be asking which database is right for your application.”
Forrester’s Agosta believes that relational databases won’t be replaced by anything else soon. Relational databases will remain the dominant design because vendors will continue to provide extensions to new technologies. New technologies and competitive pressures are causing vendors to continue to innovate, which results in more features and functions, only a fraction of which customers use.
Meta’s Shainman said that customers are paying for features and functions they never use, which is why some organizations are eyeing MySQL. What customers really want are simple, cheap, and stable products. Simpler pricing structures and licensing also would help. Shainman said customers shouldn’t have to spend weeks or months in vendor negotiations, only to end up with a 100-page licensing agreement.
Source: SD Times.com
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