Re: No future for DB2

From: Mark Townsend <markbtownsend_at_comcast.net>
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 16:00:39 -0700
Message-ID: <42E56F17.6030600@comcast.net>

Mark A wrote:
> "rkusenet" <rkusenet_at_hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3kkd26FurndhU1_at_individual.net...
>

>>This article is very bleak about future of DB2. How credible is the
>>author.   http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1839681,00.asp
>>

>
>
> There are several inaccuracies and illogical statements made in the article.
> For example he says that Oracle has won the Linux market because "Oracle
> that was willing to make the bold move by announcing at Oracle World its
> intention to convert its entire back office infrastructure to run Linux."
> AFAIK, all relevant IBM software runs on Linux, so I don't know what he is
> talking about.

When he says 'entire back office infrastructure' he is talking about Oracle's internal business apps (i.e General Ledger, AR, Payroll, eMail, Document Management, Support, CRM etc). AFAIK, IBM does not have equivalent software.

  Oracle may being doing very well on Linux, but that is mostly
> at the expense of Oracle on other platforms.

Oracle is also showing good growth on Windows (at least according to Gartner). Any supposed decline in Unix platforms is so negligble to be hardly measurable.

> His other basic premise is that the market is not big enough for 3 premium
> RDBMS vendors, and that DB2 will be odd man out. I don't see that happening
> anytime soon, if ever. The market is plenty big for all three, plus MySQL
> for some time to come.

Probably very true.

> Both IBM and Microsoft have one big advantage over Oracle in that RDBMS's
> only represent a small part of their overall revenue, and they can afford to
> cut prices, unlike Oracle who depends heavily on database revenues. So IBM
> will be able to undercut Oracle on pricing, and that will allow them to have
> a respectable market share.

Yes IBM can undercut Oracle on pricing and in fact can bundle the database with hardware and/or global services. However, it doesn't seem to actually be helping (at least in the deals I have been involved in)

> Most people on this forum are more concerned about job prospects than which
> RDBMS is better or the actual number of database licenses for a particular
> vendor. The real key is supply vs. demand. If there are more Oracle DBA's
> than jobs for Oracle DBA's, then the job prospects may be dimmer than a less
> popular database with fewer available DBA's. Since their is plenty of room
> to make Oracle a lot easier to manage with fewer DBA's (DB2 and MS SQL
> Server are already easy to use) then the job prospects for Oracle DBA's may
> actually get worse even if the installed base gets larger.

Some how I doubt that. There are a couple of key 'speed of light' issues that mean that DBAs will be needed for many, many years. The first is that we are managing more data than ever before, and being asked to manage it for longer periods of time. The second is that the number of DBAs overall is declining, not growing, as the baby boomers start to enter enmasse into retirement.

Not sure how a supply and demand argument for DB2 (less popular database with fewer available DBA's) strengthens the total TCO argument either. Buy a cheaper database and pay more to have someone look after it ? Received on Mon Jul 25 2005 - 18:00:39 CDT