Pain Relief - Ending the Database Trade-off
Thankfully, it is not all doom and gloom though. Growth in the database market is fuelling new vendors who are ready to take-on the database giants. Butler is backing this move by fast growing, more nimble players and believes that the market is ready for a low-risk alternative to database Gorilla’s, Oracle. If these new vendors can eliminate the trade-off between cost and capability and more importantly enable a safe and easy migration path for enterprise customers, a true enterprise class alternative is emerging.
 
What still appears to be a challenge for new database systems is proving they can deliver the functionality and scalability that large and growing organisations increasingly need. It’s the same story with fully open source offerings. Although companies of all sizes are either looking at it for the future, trialling or actually using open source databases for certain applications, the use tends to be restricted and enterprises are generally still not considering its use for mission critical data systems.
 
Forrester believe that there are three stages to enterprise adoption of open source based databases.

• Stage 1 – customers adopt OS based  databases for non mission-critical applications
• Stage 2 – customers moved to the  next level and move mission-critical apps
• Stage 3 – customer trust in OS based  databases and move all critical applications  across
  

Another interesting point that Forrester raised is that 80% of companies using open source based databases are in Stage 1.
 
It is clear that open source has huge potential for companies of all sizes but where new database vendors will truly succeed will be by bringing the highly advanced open source code into a more commercial environment whilst maintaining a low cost base. The real benefit for companies is when they can achieve the best of both worlds. Essential elements for the successful combination of open source and proprietary systems include:
 

• 24/7 support  
• Enterprise-class scalability,  performance and functionality
• Compatibility and interoperability  with existing proprietary systems
• Ease of migration – reducing time,  risk and cost of migrating and managing systems
• Software indemnification and  commercial roadmap and version release planning
  

In summary, the database market is clearly evolving and with data continuing to grow at a phenomenal rate it is more competitive than ever. No vendor, even one the size of Oracle, will be able to ignore the pressure to offer customers more affordable solutions that do not compromise on key requirements such as performance, functionality and scalability.
 
Real contenders in the database market that are not only claiming but demonstrating true enterprise-class database capabilities and ease of migration, all at a fraction of the cost of traditional vendors, are already emerging.  Money to be saved through this new breed of databases can be put to better use to fund investment in innovation and growth and thus have a wider impact on the overall success of a business. We could be seeing the start of a whole new database war and right now it’s anyone’s game.