The new wave

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Not many moons ago, a senior SAP executive based in India said after a press conference in Bangalore, “You know, we are open to the idea of having open source databases with our ERP solutions, but Indian corporates are not interested.” Other vendors narrate similar stories, confirming that most companies use proprietary databases like Microsoft’s SQL Server or Oracle to run their databases.

In sharp contrast, Sun has acquired popular open source database MySQL for $1 billion and its chief executive officer, Jonathan Schwartz terms the MySQL deal as the “most important acquisition in the history of the company”. The database firm will have “a central role” as Sun rolls out its open source strategy, he confirmed in a recent conference call.

But, in India like elsewhere, not many perhaps believe that Sun will have an easy road ahead here against the might of Microsoft and Oracle. As one blogger in Pythian.com commented: “Will MySQL defeat the Oracle Database?” question sounds to me like “Will OpenOffice.Org defeat Microsoft Office?”

MySQL has several customers like Yahoo! Google, Nokia, YouTube and Facebook. However, in India, it has a negligible presence. Though Schwartz—who spent $1 billion to acquire MySQL—is yet to roll out Sun’s India plans for the database, there is euphoria among senior executives who run Sun’s business in India. “While the open source database market is an established one, it is a new area for Sun and an opportunity for growth. The acquisition of MySQL adds an important piece of the application stack to Sun’s software portfolio and reaffirms Sun’s position as leading provider of platforms for the web economy,” says KP Unnikrishnan, director of marketing, alliances and teleweb sales, Sun Microsystems in India.

Gartner’s figures for annual sales of database software suggest that in 2005 and 2006, open source databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL had a marketshare of less than 1%. Out of $105-million business estimated in India during 2006, according to Gartner, the open source vendors had a 0.2% marketshare against Microsoft SQL’s share of 41.5%, Oracle’s 28.4% and IBM DB2’s of 17.6%. Gartner says it has not yet finalised data for 2007.