The database market has been quiet of late, with the exception of a few
announcements here and there. But while Big Blue, Oracle and Microsoft are all
busy ramping up the next versions of their market-leading 9i, SQL Server and
DB2 products, respectively, some companies are working on their own
platforms businesses can use to maintain and manage their data.
A young company is making some waves in the industry for its open-source
approach to database technology: MySQL.
The Sweden-based company has been both welcomed by analysts as the purveyor
of a “disruptive technology” in a segment driven by licensed revenues, and
has received a shoulder shrug by commercial vendors for its lack of complex
feature functionality and scalability.
But there are indications the privately-held firm’s stock is rising, at
least in the figurative way, as Benchmark Capital has recently led a $19.5
million round of funding for MySQL, quite a boost in a time when investments
are scant. The company also recently inked an
intriguing deal to take over the development of ERP leader SAP’s open-source database, SAP DB. It boasts more feature functionality
than MySQL’s database.
MySQL, which gained the commercial rights to SAP DB, will then marry SAP
DB’s code with its own product, paving the way for a more functional,
next-generation database. That, MySQL hopes, will bring in more customers
and users: as of today, the firm can lay claim to 4 million MySQL
installations worldwide and 30,000 downloads per day.
MySQL CEO Marten Mickos is at the helm, leading his Sweden-based company
through the harsh climes of the current economic terrain. A former high-tech
entrepreneur, Mickos formed his first company, Polycon, in 1987. He has worked with
project management software, database software, telecommunications software,
and real-time mobile sports entertainment. The executive recently took time
to discuss his company and the database market with internetnews.com.
How did you come to take the helm at MySQL?
I met Monty Widenius (MySQL CTO and co-founder) in 1981 when we both
enrolled at Helsinki University of Technology, Dept. of Technical Physics.
I’ve known David Axmark (MySQL’s co-founder) since the same time. Since
those days, we became good friends and played some poker together. Around
the end of 2000, Monty and David called to tell me that their little project
was literally exploding in their hands and they needed a CEO to run the
growing business. When I realized what a fantastic thing they had built, I
joined the crusade and became CEO. We brought in some external capital,
professional directors and hired a management team.
Q: What is MySQL’s value proposition?
We provide database management software that has superior performance, high
reliability, and a high level of ease of use
at very affordable prices.
Q: Oracle, Microsoft and IBM all have similar licensing models, ranging
in prices of $1,000 to roughly $40,000 per processor or server for their
database offerings — standard editions for smaller businesses and
enterprise-class editions for large businesses. What is MySQL’s business
model?
I would say we are an excellent complement to, say, Oracle. Oracle focuses
Q: Solve this argument: commercial vendors argue that open-source
I don’t think any other DBMS vendor is specifically focused on the commodity
Q: IDC analyst Carl Olofson recently posited two schools of thought on
We are what we call a “second-wave, open-source” company, meaning we have a
functioning business model that is in harmony with our free software
principles. Our dual licensing allows us to offer our software free of
charge under the GNU General Public License (GPL)
selling the same product under a regular commercial license. We can do this
because we own our software and have the freedom to license it any way we
wish. Commercial licenses account for nearly two-thirds of our revenues. The
rest is support and services. Our operations are profitable. Our commercial
license has a highly attractive licensing policy: we charge a flat fee of
$440 per server and you can have as many users and as many CPUs as you want.
Put this in context of the pricing of other database management systems and
you can understand why we sell so much. This is all in line with our
mission “to make superior database technology available and affordable to
all.”
Q: While commercial vendors such as Oracle and IBM have said they do not
fear open-source database groups such as MySQL, PostGreSQL, or Firebird,
analysts say there is a definite opportunity for such models in the small-
and medium-business SMB) space because those firms won’t likely be able to,
or want to shell out the cash for more expensive systems? What do you think
about that?
on the that part of the market in which people are ready to pay for all the
latest features and all the options and add-ons. We focus on the
commoditized part of the market – the one in which performance, reliability,
convenience and price are the determining factors. So it is more an issue of
how large the commodity database space is, and how large the other part of
the market is. I guess we can say that we are the leading commodity
database. IBM, Oracle and Microsoft compete against each other in the other
part of the market.
databases can’t compete on security, scalability, or number of additional
features, but analysts say that many of the features in commercial databases
go largely unused, or more extremely, customers don’t even know they exist
within the software they buy. Do you agree? Disagree? What do you think of
that?
I would argue that open-source software (of any category) generally stands
out as [better performing], more secure and more convenient. Legacy software
generally stands out as having more features. So in terms of the sheer
number of features, the “commercial vendors” are probably right. But so are
the analysts. Legacy database management systems have more features, but the
market may not always need them. We have chosen specifically NOT to compete
on features, but to fulfill the real needs of the commodity database space.
We are doing very well in that segment, and our customers love us.
Q: At a partner event in April, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison discussed how
Linux could make Microsoft “irrelevant.” When an analyst asked him if he
feared similar consequences from open-source databases, he said “no”
because, among other reasons, security of a database is so important that he
didn’t believe open-source firms could create one as secure and as trusted
as Oracle 9i — at least not in the near future. What do you think about
that?
I cannot comment on other people’s statements or how they arrived at their
conclusion. What I know is that MySQL is used in thousands of highly
mission-critical heavy-load applications without missing a beat. But we are
not in the business of making other offerings “irrelevant”. We are in the
business of serving our customers’ true needs.
Q: What ways are you differentiating yourself from commercial vendors?
What challenges do you face in the market to gain more customers?
DBMS market, so therefore I don’t see a vendor we need to specifically
differentiate from. As a result of our customer focus, there are naturally a
number of ways in which we differ from other vendors. First, we have a
product development machinery (the open source model) unlike any other in
the DBMS industry. Second, we have a licensing model (dual licensing) unlike
any other player. Third, we distribute our products
in a completely new fashion – through tens of millions of downloads and
companion distributions. Fourth, by cleverly using the Internet, we are able
to be near our customers and serve them around the clock with highly
sophisticated services. All of this we do at an affordable price, so that
our customers make fantastic savings.
what the future of software will be like: “Will we still have the Fortune
1000 with large data centers and in-house IT staffs, and myriad medium and
small businesses with limited, locally managed computers? Or, will the
lower end of the market migrate to outsourcing services and integrated
self-managing (“autonomic”) computer systems, causing database technology to
become, for them, integrated components of suites of computing services
where the details are left up to professional computing service providers
(online or packaged software)?” What impact will all that have on database
vendors, large and small?” What do you think about this and what does what
is MySQL working on to meet the evolution of the database market?
I believe that databases will grow significantly in number. Perhaps we think
we have covered all database needs in the world with a DBMS today, but I
don’t believe so. Companies, individuals, and therefore also devices, will
increasingly want to track all kinds of new information in an intelligent
manner, so they will want to store more and more information in structured
databases. To serve this need, there needs to be DBMS software that can be
deployed instantly in huge volumes. Some of those databases will be huge in
size or traffic, so they will need to reside on heavy hardware. But “heavy
hardware” can be either a single big iron, or a high number of dumb
appliances. Open source databases are excellent for deployment in high
numbers, so that is clearly a focal point for us. But we also believe we can
“componentize” the database so that you can assemble a huge database from a
number of interlinked computers. We are figuring out how to best enable this
type of building block-based database operation. There are a number of ways
in which this can be solved, and some solutions are already being developed
in the market.
For a more analysis of the open-source database landscape, please refer to
last week’s feature report.
