Re: How to determine database market share?

From: Serge Rielau <srielau_at_ca.ibm.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 08:12:35 -0400
Message-ID: <3s41e1Fm9q7hU1@individual.net>

gazzag wrote:

>>I don't buy hammers based on marketshare.
>>I don't buy books based on marketshare.
>>I don't watch movies based on marketshare.
>>I don't buy my socks based on marketshare.

>
>
> Possibly. However, countless organisations that I have worked for -
> and continue to do so - *have* bought operating systems and RDBMS's
> based on "market share". That's how Microsoft works, in fact, and it's
> certainly what Larry Ellison is striving towards.
Which means that the companies have eaten too many marketing slides. My mom taught me about lemmings jumping of cliffs. (I figure her point was to clarify I'm no lemming which out to improve my life expectancy :-) I think the point that is being made by this group rather consistently is that a good professional looks past the marketing slides.

> As a slight aside, I also seem to recall you berating PostgreSQL,
> amongst other things, for it's lack of "support". Support, it would
> seem, stems from "market-share".

Does it? Do doubt you will get support from Ferrari because of it's lack of marketshare?
Support (in this context) is about the survival of the product-line. Let me stick with a DBMS example: IMS.
Been around a long time, not considered the hippest thing on the planet to buy (heck, I've never seen any marketing for it). Yet you won't find a customer telling you the move of of IMS because of support? Why? Because the product is backed by a company with a track-record of not going backrupt and not pulling the carpet under a customer's feet. So, there may be some correlation between marketshare and support, but not all that much.

Cheers
Serge

-- 
Serge Rielau
DB2 SQL Compiler Development
IBM Toronto Lab

Received on Mon Oct 24 2005 - 07:12:35 CDT