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IDC’s Database Market Share Analysis

June 28, 2008

IDC’s Chris Kanaracus has summarized the relational database market size in “Oracle Maintains Lead in Database Market”. You can read the full round up here. The total market tallies an estimated $19 billion. For me, the most important data in the news story is:

Oracle once again took the top spot, capturing 44.3 percent of the market with revenue growth of 13.3 percent. IBM came in second with a 21 percent share, also logging a 13.3 percent revenue growth rate. It was followed by Microsoft, with 18.5 percent of the market and a 14 percent jump in revenue. Sybase and Teradata rounded out the top five, garnering market shares of 3.5 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively.

My question is, How long will the traditional database vendors remain in ascendancy. The volume of data choking enterprises is increasing. The traditional row-and-column data tables remain administrative headaches. Basic queries often require hours, days, or weeks to execute after data cubes are built, queries written and debugged, and end users given a chance to review the reports.

The traditional database vendors are not solving the data management problems their licensees face. The companies in the IDC Top Five are creating an appetite for a different approach. Who will emerge with a soluition? The work I am going points to some newcomers. I have written about Aster Data and other firms with different angles of attach on the growing database problem. One thing I have learned is that the incumbents think their market positions are unassailable. These companies, despite their grip on the market, are dead wrong. This is not an innovator’s dilemma. This is the ostrich response: put the head in the sand and the outside world can’t be seen.

Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2008

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