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: with large industry segments. Oracle also did not want to comment on Sun’s acquisition of MySQL and its possible impact on the open source database market in India. But many analysts and industry people believe that, with MySQL, Sun can power its way into the SMB space more effectively than it has done in the past, thereby creating problems for the global majors.

Roy says that, for the SMBs as well as the government, database is one of the most important components in the business software package.

“As more web-based applications dominate the SMB business, open source is becoming an attractive option,” he says. Roy believes that Sun’s platform initiative LAMP can now become an alternative to the SMB solutions of SAP, Oracle and Microsoft.

According to Radhesh Balakrishnan, who heads platform strategy at Microsoft India, it is important to look at the issue of cost and openness from the perspective of total cost of ownership (TCO) and not just license and maintenance fees.

“We believe that TCO is an acid metric that enable customers to make informed IT investment decisions and goes beyond the initial purchase cost of a hardware or software to include pre implementation soft costs and post-implementation operation, support, maintenance, downtime and training costs,” says Balakrishnan.

Microsoft says its SQL Server is a complete solution—no need for add-on elements that may add to the total costs, reduced training costs given the overall familiarity that Microsoft platform provides and the strong support in a large partner community.

The idea is to address the needs of SMBs that are different from those of enterprise class customers. “So SQL server provides SMB segments with a range of tailored options that they can choose from, including SQL Express, available as free download, to multiple licensing options that help SOHO and SMB customers manage their costs in different ways.”

For SAP, there is also a positive opportunity waiting if MySQL succeeds in India. It can try to push its MaxDB database to SAP customers as an alternative to MySQL as a free download.