mysql

Sun, Solaris, and a new chance to shine

With 12 million Solaris licenses now in the market, Sun's Solaris is no slouch. And while people like I talk up Red Hat's clean-up of the "certification market" [PDF] (with over 3,000 applications certified for RHEL), the chart below indicates that Solaris actually has a pretty compelling application certification story to tell.

The question is, "Is it enough?"

A few days ago I suggested that Sun would be wise to partner closely with Ubuntu (Read: Acquire Canonical). It seems the easiest route to continued open-source momentum as Linux vendors continue to cut into Unix. But there's a compelling story in the Solaris numbers that suggests that it may live on for a very long time.… Read more

Report: Open-source databases on the rise

Yes, the open-source database market is still relatively small (roughly $200 million in 2007, according to Gartner). But when The Wall Street Journal starts paying attention (subscription required), it's clear that the opportunity is huge. The Journal doesn't get paid to be sentimental.

Regardless, as Arjen Lentz opines,

...(D)isruptive technology tends to not take over the incumbent's market, but find or develop a completely new market, and indeed take over in that space. The question then is, does the incumbent's market remain intact, or does it change/evolve naturally and perhaps shrink or even completely disappear over time. Generally, the market-dominant incumbent continues to survive in a niche (where they are obviously dominant, but no longer in the market overall). In short, the market changes and with it its rules and demands.

Leading this market transformation is Sun Microsystems. Open-source databases (PostgreSQL and, especially, MySQL) may get a significant boost from Sun's involvement:… Read more

Alfresco's sales up 320 percent, hits 30,000 active deployments

Yes, you can make lots of money with open-source software. Alfresco, a leading enterprise content management and collaboration vendor, just announced its 2007 financial results. The numbers speak for themselves:

Surpassed the one million software download mark; Grew community membership to in excess of 45,000 members; Grew customer bookings by over 320 percent year-on-year with more than 400 enterprise accounts [including Activision, Electronics Arts, Boise Cascade, and Sony Pictures, as well as five of the top 10 investment banks world-wide and major government organizations globally]; Announced significant OEM partnerships - including a major deal with publishing giant Quark; Exceeded 30,000 active deployments of Alfresco worldwide.

There's apparently gold in them there open-source hills. Lots of it.

As an employee of Alfresco, let me add some more local color to the numbers, which provide a glimpse into the power of open source as a distribution model (putting to one side its power as a development model for just a minute):… Read more

Red Hat's leadership opportunity

Glyn Moody aptly asks, "Why doesn't Red Hat lead?" I posed a similar question a few weeks back, and 100 percent agree that open source needs a leader, and that Red Hat has failed to assume that role:

I must confess to a certain disappointment with Red Hat. On the one hand, it is clearly the leader of the open source world--both historically and in terms of its size. On the other, it is remarkable for the low profile it keeps: it is striking, for example, how much more influence Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth seems to command, even though his company is a tiddler by comparison to Red Hat's whale shark....[I]t is punching below its weight on the computing scene, and the open source world is suffering as a result.

On one hand, success covers a multitude of sins and to the extent that Red Hat continues to grow, its rising tide will (to a certain extent) raise all boats.

But on the other, Red Hat's success will ring hollow if Sun and others steal its thunder as the center of the open-source universe. So what can it do?… Read more

Ubuntu + Sun = Very good idea

I had dinner with a good friend tonight from the open-source world, and we ended up having the same conversation I had with a few other friends from the open-source business community at lunch yesterday. The conversation began with Sun and ended with Ubuntu. In between, the two came together.

Why doesn't Sun see things this way?

We're not the only ones asking the question. Seeking Alpha is reporting that things are heating up between Sun and Canonical/Ubuntu, with Sun "preparing to certify more of its servers for Canonical's Ubuntu Linux." I hope so. I think it would be excellent for both parties.

Solaris is a fantastic operating system. I can appreciate why Sun and its employees cling to it - to the innovations they've made - so tightly. But so was NetWare before it. At some point technology takes a back seat to market momentum.

Ubuntu has that. Solaris? Not so much. That's just how the market goes.… Read more

Silicon Vikings sail against harder winds

The Vikings sailed in small open wooden ships to discover America long before Columbus. Their 21th century counterparts, the Silicon Vikings, prefer business class when they travel the Atlantic.

The $2.6 billion acquisition of the Swedish IP phone company Skype by eBay in 2005 and Sun Microsystems' recent purchase of Swedish-Finnish open-source database company MySQL for $1 billion has raised hopes among Nordic investors that more big deals for VC-backed Nordic companies could be in the pipeline in the U.S.

And the Vikings have a lot of cash. Venture capital firms from Sweden and Finland-- the Norwegians prefer … Read more

Open source's "superficial impact" on the database market

The 451 Group just published a "glass half empty" assessment of the open-source database market. One big takeaway? Open-source databases are widely used, but not yet deeply used.

One of the key findings is that open source software has had a superficial impact on the enterprise database market in that adoption has been widespread but shallow. While open source databases have been widely deployed for Web-tier applications, there has been minimal adoption in the enterprise application tier, and adoption for enterprise applications is at this time limited to certain specific application workloads.

To which I'd respond, yes, … Read more

The Great Open Source Debate (Dave R vs. Sarah Lacy on Yahoo Tech Ticker)

I was lucky enough to hang out with Sarah Lacy and shoot a segment on Yahoo Tech Ticker and discuss how big the market for open source is, and how big it can get. We talk about MySQL, Zimbra, JBoss, Oracle and others.

In the interview process she hits me with some good questions about open source but fails to mention that I killed it on "Spanish Castle Magic" on Guitar Hero minutes before. She went with the predictable "Higher Ground" but managed to rock out really hard.

Can you build a billion-dollar business by selling … Read more

The effects of open source on stock prices

Has open source been positive or negative for its primary (commercial) proponents? That's the question I asked myself yesterday about Red Hat, Sun, and Novell, and found the answer interesting. I looked at these three as they, more than any others, have results that can be isolated and directly attributed to open source. A company like IBM does a lot with open source, but it's harder to discern the effects on the company's stock price because its embrace of open source is less pronounced/distinct among its other corporate policies.

A quick review of the data suggests that the market largely bought into the early hype on the transformative power of open source, but has taken a cautious "wait-and-see" approach since the initial euphoria.

Take a look at Novell's stock price since 2003:… Read more