IBM and Oracle - Let's Rrrrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuumbbbbbbbbbbleeeeeeee
Data Cruncher
Officials at IBM are throwing verbal haymakers at Oracle as Big Blue touts
its successes in the database market.
The two database heavyweights alternated between offensive and defensive
postures recently after IBM questioned Oracle's claims of database
dominance.
"The rapid adoption of DB2 9 would seem to call their claims into question
and analysts are starting to question their numbers as well," said Bernie
Spang, director of IBM data servers.
He cited commentary by Philip Howard of UK-based Bloor Research, who noted
that when reporting Oracle's results for the third quarter of fiscal year
2007, CEO Larry Ellison said new license revenues for the database and
middleware division grew 17 percent.
However, Ellison also noted the middleware portion had grown roughly 80
percent, which Howard argued indicates a slow down in the growth of Oracle's
database portfolio.
In an interview with eWEEK, Howard said increased competition not just from
IBM but from a number of vendors, has affected sales of 10g.
"11g may make a difference compared to DB2 but probably not versus SQL
Server, Netezza and EnterpriseDB - as these all compete as much on lower TCO
and reduced administration as on features and performance," Howard said.
But for Oracle's part, company officials are not breaking much of a sweat,
and are convinced the company's hold on the database market is not slipping.
"There's no doubt about that," said Willie Hardie, Oracle vice president of
database product marketing.
Hardie pointed to a study by IDC that included estimated 2006 revenue totals
from the five biggest relational database management system providers and
had Oracle in the top spot with a 44.4 percent of the market. IBM was second
with 21.2 percent.
According to IDC, those figures represent a growth of 14.7 and 11.9 percent
between 2005 and 2006 for Oracle and IBM, respectively.
"There's always going to be competitors in the market," Hardie said. "An
organization like Oracle continues to do business with its extensive
install-base."
The IDC study did not include features sold by vendors as separation options
and did not break out subscription and maintenance revenue, which can
obscure the true growth rate of a vendor's database license sales.
IBM's Spang said the $4.3 billion in revenue earned by the company's
software segment in the first quarter of fiscal 2007 was driven largely by
sales of the DB2 9 Viper data server.
"The volume of new DB2 customers since we launched DB2 9 last July has
exceeded all expectations," he said. "We have seen literally thousands of
new customers in that timeframe - and a large percentage of those are
migrations from Oracle."
However, Forrester Research analyst Noel Yuhanna disputed IBM's claims of
how aggressively the market is adopting DB2.
"I think we have seen less aggressive movement with IBM DB2," he said,
adding that he thinks IBM has not aggressively marketed DB2. "Oracle still
rules the world."
Spang strongly disagreed.
"I would also say that the large numbers of new customers - backed up by our
earnings - support the claims that our marketing strategy has been right on
target," he said.
Mark Townsend
I believe this is a troll and should be treated as such
DA Morgan
In other words ... we don't know anything more than we did before we
read this.
But for those who have to pay their mortgage and feed their families
the only metrics that matter are those that can be found at: www.dice.com.
As of 6 May, 2007:
=========================
DB2 3,419 8.9%
Informix 452 1.2%
Oracle 17,861 46.7%
SQL Server 14,171 37.0%
Sybase 2,355 6.2%
=========================
If these aren't the numbers you're looking at you aren't paying
attention to putting the kids through college and your retirement.
Small comfort to remember your product loyalty to a particular brand
when living off your Social Security check.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damo...@x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org
Bill Martinez
> In other words ... we don't know anything more than we did before we
> read this.
>
> But for those who have to pay their mortgage and feed their families
> the only metrics that matter are those that can be found at: www.dice.com.
>
> As of 6 May, 2007:
> =========================
> DB2 3,419 8.9%
> Informix 452 1.2%
> Oracle 17,861 46.7%
> SQL Server 14,171 37.0%
> Sybase 2,355 6.2%
> =========================
>
> If these aren't the numbers you're looking at you aren't paying
> attention to putting the kids through college and your retirement.
Are these market share figures?
Shouldn't people consider things like performance, cost of maintenance,
etc... if they want to put their kids through college?
I notice that Anheisur-Busch has the lion's (clydesdale) share of the
beer market here in the US.
I don't particularly like any of their beers - should I drink them
anyway just because their popular?
Bill Martinez
> DA Morgan wrote:
>
>> In other words ... we don't know anything more than we did before we
>> read this.
>>
>> But for those who have to pay their mortgage and feed their families
>> the only metrics that matter are those that can be found at:
>> www.dice.com.
>>
>> As of 6 May, 2007:
>> =========================
>> DB2 3,419 8.9%
>> Informix 452 1.2%
>> Oracle 17,861 46.7%
>> SQL Server 14,171 37.0%
>> Sybase 2,355 6.2%
>> =========================
>>
>> If these aren't the numbers you're looking at you aren't paying
>> attention to putting the kids through college and your retirement.
>
>
> Are these market share figures?
>
> Shouldn't people consider things like performance, cost of maintenance,
> etc... if they want to put their kids through college?
>
> I notice that Anheisur-Busch has the lion's (clydesdale) share of the
> beer market here in the US.
>
> I don't particularly like any of their beers - should I drink them
> anyway just because their popular?
Before anyone flames me, I meant "they're", not "their". I only made
that mistake because I'm drinking some non-AB beer right now.
Tool
Good points Bill. Microsoft has the lions' share of office software, but
like Anheuser, it isn't always the best choice in it's space.
There is also a lot of muddy water with trying to compare Oracle with DB2, at least
on an apples-for-apples comparison. At the high 'executive' level it works, but when it gets
down to implementation DB2 and Oracle are not exactly comparable products. Oracle
is also selling it's db in most cases as a result of selling an application that requires it, but
rarely do you really hear about a company outright deciding to buy an Oracle database
on its own. I have yet to walk into a shop that has a bunch of Oracle bigots in it,
in most cases Oracle is treated as something that was required for an application,
not because some database expert said it was the best choice among databases. I do
see a lot of shops buying SQL-Server because of the perceived value that it's good
for developing applications, and that's of course due to some marketing from Microsoft.
You see MySQL being recommended too, because developers love it.
Serge Rielau
safely through college .... lotsa greeters needed - always.
Cheers
Serge
--
Serge Rielau
DB2 Solutions Development
IBM Toronto Lab
Knut Stolze
>
>
> I believe this is a troll and should be treated as such
Yeah. It's surprising why anyone still jumps for that...
--
Knut Stolze
DB2 z/OS Utilities Development
IBM Germany
Jeroen van den Broek
1. Why would I need to look at a US-based job site?
2. Get yourself a course in statistics and how to apply them:
a) Your search for 'oracle' (or the other search-keys) isn't limited
to searches on job title only, so it will also include advertisements
for MySQL DBA's to administer db's that have been migrated from Oracle
to MySQL.
b) Your search for 'oracle' isn't limited to Oracle DB, it also
includes jobs for Oracle Apps.
I've done a search on 'oracle', limited to job titles.
Result: 3500 jobs (still including Oracle Apps)
At the left of the search screen several refinements of the search
results have been made, one of them based on 'skills'. Of those 3500
jobs, only 1546 require 'SQL' for skill.
Remarkebly, only 3011 require 'Oracle' for skill, so even someone
thinking Oracle is just a myth from Delphi, is able to apply with >
10% chance of getting hired... ;-)
My conclusion: your posting is as much of a troll as the OP, given
that it doesn't give any insight at all at the database market.
Not that I need one, I'm most happy administering both DB2 and Oracle.
--
Jeroen
DA Morgan
> DA Morgan wrote:
>
>> In other words ... we don't know anything more than we did before we
>> read this.
>>
>> But for those who have to pay their mortgage and feed their families
>> the only metrics that matter are those that can be found at:
>> www.dice.com.
>>
>> As of 6 May, 2007:
>> =========================
>> DB2 3,419 8.9%
>> Informix 452 1.2%
>> Oracle 17,861 46.7%
>> SQL Server 14,171 37.0%
>> Sybase 2,355 6.2%
>> =========================
>>
>> If these aren't the numbers you're looking at you aren't paying
>> attention to putting the kids through college and your retirement.
>
> Are these market share figures?
Available paying jobs. My criteria and the one I would suggest that
should be adopted by DBAs, developers, and SysAdmins. If there are
no jobs then I'd rather be on my boat.
DA Morgan
If they paid more than what I do now you'd be absolutely right. <g>
I don't work 12+ hours a day because of my deep love of living the
life of Dilbert.
Noons
> http://www.physorg.com/news97246418.html
>
regular as clockwork, the first half-year IBM bullshit propagation.
oh let me see: a new version on the blocks, so need to promote
it with all the fud they can muster?
given they can't flog it to anyone but their existing customers?
Niall Litchfield
> DA Morgan wrote:
>
>> In other words ... we don't know anything more than we did before we
>> read this.
>>
>> But for those who have to pay their mortgage and feed their families
>> the only metrics that matter are those that can be found at:
>> www.dice.com.
>>
>> As of 6 May, 2007:
>> =========================
>> DB2 3,419 8.9%
>> Informix 452 1.2%
>> Oracle 17,861 46.7%
>> SQL Server 14,171 37.0%
>> Sybase 2,355 6.2%
>> =========================
>>
>> If these aren't the numbers you're looking at you aren't paying
>> attention to putting the kids through college and your retirement.
>
> Are these market share figures?
>
> Shouldn't people consider things like performance, cost of maintenance,
> etc... if they want to put their kids through college?
>
> I notice that Anheisur-Busch has the lion's (clydesdale) share of the
> beer market here in the US.
>
> I don't particularly like any of their beers - should I drink them
> anyway just because their popular?
I rather think the analogy would be with a pub/bar owner, you might not
like AB beers, but you'll probably want to sell them.
I don't personally like the analogy, prostitution and the arms trade
both pay better than my job, and have more opportunities, but I wouldn't
be regarding that as a reason to work in either of them.
--
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info/services
DA Morgan
I agree. But given you are already a carpenter ... and there are jobs
available ... seems to me you would want to train for those jobs that
offer the most opportunity. I know very few carpenters who are looking
for work manufacturing birdhouses. In our business that means Oracle
and SQL Server. It isn't that there is anything wrong with building
bird houses. Just that they account for less than 20% of available work.
Captain Pedantic
news:O9WdnVuLN5L0L93b...@pipex.net...
>
> I don't personally like the analogy, prostitution ... (pays) better than
> my job ...
You're not in Portsmouth, then...?