[fsug-calicut] Re: Article itself
- From: Biju G C <bijumaillist@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: fsug-calicut@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 06:47:24 -0700 (PDT)
--- "Frederick Noronha (FN)" wrote:
> Ajith, Could you post the article itself to the list, as we with slow
> lines have a lot of difficulty in visiting URLs? I often use www4mail
> (downloading webpages via email), but it doesn't always work. Thanks, FN
>
Content of
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/03/12/fortune.ff.open.source/index.html
MySQL: A threat to bigwigs?
Open-source database has dazzling opportunities ahead
By David Kirkpatrick
FORTUNE.COM
Wednesday, March 12, 2003 Posted: 4:13 PM EST (2113 GMT)
(FORTUNE.COM) -- Talking last week with Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, took me
back to the golden
days of 1999. Here was a fresh-faced, unbelievably enthusiastic CEO, raving
about the future
prospects of his product, just like so many executives I met back in those
unreal times. But
Mickos has a very real opportunity. The open-source movement has become a major
factor across the
software industry, and MySQL is the world's most popular open-source database.
In contrast to typical commercial software, open-source products have their
underlying programming
code available for all to see and modify. The products are also free or close
to it, which,
needless to say, helps them grow rapidly if they're good. MySQL is used in four
million
installations around the world, Mickos estimates. The product gets downloaded
for free off the
company's site about 30,000 times a day. And here's what Sun CEO Scott McNealy
said in a February
interview with Computerworld: "If you want to save...money, make the default
database MySQL. It's
free, it's bundled [with Sun's Solaris software], you've got the whole
open-source community
working on making it better. If Yahoo and Google can run their entire
operations on MySQL, then
certainly there's a huge chunk of your operations that could run on it as well."
McNealy slightly exaggerated the Yahoo and Google stuff, but both companies do
use MySQL
extensively. I e-mailed so-called "Technical Yahoo" Jeremy Zawodny, who
replied: "We use it all
over the place-for batch feed processing in Yahoo Classifieds and Yahoo
Finance, to serve live
content in Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance, and even in some billing
systems. Our usage
continues to grow."
And the product has impressive capabilities. It is mostly used to run sites,
including
Alwayson-Network.com, Slashdot.org, parts of Sony Pictures, and many more. In
addition, it's built
into products from many technology companies. Aside from Solaris, it goes into
the server version
of Mac OS X and most commercial versions of Linux. Cisco puts it into intrusion
detection devices.
MySQL employs a so-called dual licensing model. Anybody can download the
product for free and use
it for whatever they want, but in so doing they become ethically obliged to
share any
modifications with the company. However, there's a second option. Pay for the
product and you can
do anything you want with it. "We're not a charity," says Mickos. "Even when we
give it away free
we always get a benefit out of it. We have the world's largest quality
assurance facility."
This database costs only $395 for every server on which it is installed, quite
a contrast to the
$20,000 you might pay for Oracle. The product also runs on cheaper hardware and
typically is
cheaper to maintain. MySQL had $5 million in revenues last year, a figure that
should double in
2003, says Mickos. Privately funded, with ABN Amro lead investor, the Swedish
company just turned
profitable.
MySQL lacks many features big companies want for using it with applications
that are central to
their business, like manufacturing or finance software from companies like SAP.
But it is getting
inexorably better thanks to all those helpers bequeathed by its business model.
Says open-source
expert Stacey Quandt at the Giga Information Group: "As the
feature/functionality gap continues to
narrow, MySQL will eventually take market share away from Oracle, [IBM's] DB2,
and Microsoft SQL
Server at the high end." Charlie Garry at Meta Group says open-source software
is now supplanting
costlier proprietary software for well-defined, commoditized tasks. He predicts
that the
established vendors will fight back with free, stripped-down versions of their
own products, but
he has no doubt about MySQL's prospects: "MySQL will penetrate the enterprise
similarly to the way
SQL Server did, but with much greater speed." Yahoo's Zawodny makes a different
analogy: "MySQL is
to Oracle as Linux is to Windows. It will slowly but steadily creep up the food
chain, just like
Linux has."
Mickos is already seeing real headway. "I estimate we command 20 percent of the
worldwide
installed base of databases," he says , "but of revenues we only command only
.02 percent. So
there's a factor of 1,000." He laughs. "And we are making money. People ask me
'What's wrong-why
are you leaving money on the table?' We say 'You should ask the other database
companies what is
wrong with their cost structure." His confidence may be 1999, but his
pragmatism and
customer-centric approach are very 2003.
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