IBM puts Oracle to the sword with EnterpriseDB

IBM is going on the offensive against the pending merger of Sun Microsystems and Oracle.

IBM announced Wednesday that it nabbed 100 of Sun's and Hewlett-Packard's customers last quarter alone for its high-end servers and mainframes, with half the deals worth over $1 million each, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The bigger news, however, may be IBM's partnership with EnterpriseDB, the commercial backer of the open-source PostgreSQL database, to embed EnterpriseDB's Postgres Plus Advanced Server technology into IBM's DB2 9.7 database product. EnterpriseDB's technology basically allows applications written for the Oracle database to run on EnterpriseDB's PostgreSQL...and now IBM's DB2.

In other words, through this partnership with EnterpriseDB, IBM has gained the ability to easily migrate customers from Oracle to DB2--seamlessly, painlessly, freely.

This is obviously big news for EnterpriseDB, having the opportunity to work with IBM, but it's also big news for IBM, providing a nice off-ramp from Oracle and an on-ramp to the IBM DB2 highway.

This isn't, of course, the first time the two have worked together. IBM is an investor in EnterpriseDB and has been tracking the open-source database market for some time. This is the first time, however, that the two have banded together to target Oracle.

Expect sparks to fly.

I asked Ed Boyajian, CEO of EnterpriseDB, about the effects of the partnership on Oracle, and its acquisition of MySQL (in buying Sun):

IBM and EnterpriseDB have a shared interest here--to preserve customers' right to choose their database solutions, whether they're making a closed-source decision (DB2 vs. Oracle) or an open-source decision (MySQL vs. Postgres Plus). Oracle's moves aim to limit those choices; our intention is to promote them.

It remains to be seen whether Oracle will bury MySQL post-acquisition, but one thing is clear: the database market just became even more interesting. Arvind Krishna, vice president of database servers and development at IBM, said in a statement that "clients are increasingly taking advantage of DB2 to lower costs while improving the performance and reliability of their business applications."

That may have been the case before. With Oracle-compatibility built into DB2 via EnterpriseDB, IBM has positioned itself to make it happen now.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[zvonr]

The only thing here is that Sun(future Oracle) offered PostgreSQL support for a while, and used to employ core postgres developers...

http://www.sun.com/software/products/postgresql/index.jsp

Postgres runs best on Solaris with DTrace probes and ZFS anyways...

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/postgresql_opensolaris.jsp

GPL gives you some freedom, owning the code gives you more freedom( to change license for example ) Sun/oracle will always be able to better monetize MySQL than any other fork... (significant mysql revenue comes from commercial licenses...) That is why you need to sign contributor agreements ...

[thescooterman]

Yeah, strangely enough, it seems that EnteprriseDB was actually how sun supported postgres!

http://www.enterprisedb.com/company/news_events/press_releases/08_08_06.do

And, as a postgres veteran postgres user, I have seen postgres run poorly on a 'slowlaris' box when it runs fine (same config) on linux.

[zvonr]

Calling Solaris names is not an argument and does not make your statement true.

Sun looks like the only one who published benchmarks with Postgres, and all of them run on Solaris, and if you look at the price performance of the sun offering and compare it with IBM's p570 that quarter: http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2004/results/res2007q3/ you realize that the sun solution is not bad at all...

http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/database-soup/postgresql-publishes-first-real-benchmark-17470
http://www.spec.org/jAppServer2004/results/res2007q3/jAppServer2004-20070703-00073.html

My experience with Solaris and Linux is that both have similar performance on similar hardware, however Solaris always scaled better as Linux and with ZFS and Dtrace and Zones has some killer features that Linux lacks. (in Solaris you can do cool stuf like: http://lethargy.org/~jesus/archives/92-PostgreSQL-warm-standby-on-ZFS-crack.html)

Meanwhile Linux has some catching up to do to have a file system worthy to run a database on:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/10/8/240

[splendidcrm]

The problem with DB2 is that IBM does very little marketing for their non-mainframe business. So, they have a better database than MySQL, and they have a free Express version, but nobody is using it. It is simply sad. Besides getting a little PR for the partnership, I don't see that it will make much of a difference.

At SplendidCRM, we support SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL and DB2. Ignoring the fact that the SQL Server version is our primary product, we have seen significantly more interest in our Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL implementations that we have in our DB2 implementation. And, like I said, DB2 is a solid product. By comparison, the MySQL implementation is noticeably slower.

[gggg sssss]

certainly IBM's express database is more attractive than Microsofts simply for the fact it does not need Windows to run on. But if IBM had a clue there woudl never have been a Microsoft, or for that matter an Oracle. IBM was in the Database busness in 360 days, and let Oracle steal it away. Sad

[totocalimero]

"In other words, through this partnership with EnterpriseDB, IBM has gained the ability to easily migrate customers from Oracle to DB2--seamlessly, painlessly, freely."

Be careful with this notion that you can change the underlying DB engine "painlessly". Only those who don't have serious real world database experience think this is the case. I think it is just marketing lingo thrown by people at IBM. There are fundamental pieces to take into account when you change the DB engine, especially on the locking / concurrency side.

Postgres is a serious DB engine, much more serious than MySQL. Its locking mechanism is very close to what Oracle is doing, so you have a good chance of being able to "migrate" your code and still have a decent level of confidence that you won't be corrupting data. But saying it will be "painless" is pushing it.

Also, what does "freely" mean in your text? Since when is IBM working for free? You don't expect IBM to put its people on your project to help you with your migration for "free", do you?

[zvonr]

:-) agree

[mewlyn]

You're right about the concurrency problem. and that's exactly why DB2 now supports Oracle's concurrency model.

[jandockx]

What about Informix?

[fred_gallagher]

Matt,
As always, good thoughts.
Quick question, tell me if you know whether the technology which IBM has licensed is available under open source. As you know, Postgres Plus Advanced Server does not provide all the source code under an open source license.
Fred (at Ingres)

[BackInTheDayDBA]

Why would anyone want an Oracle compatible database from IBM - even if it did work (and it won't), what's the upside - DB2 is significantly more expensive than Oracle, with a much smaller install base. If you want an Oracle database, just get Oracle.

I think this move is stupid on IBM's part. You don't win mindshare by marketing someone else's products. I suspect desperation - they have spent billions on DB2 on LUW, only to see ever decreasing marketshare. There's even a rumor that Informix makes more money for IBM than DB2 for LUW does.

[bucknuggets]

It's very difficult to configure DB2 to be more expensive than Oracle - in general it should be 25-50% cheaper. And in terms of capability, manageability and scalability I prefer DB2 to Oracle for a number of application types - most specifically data warehousing & reporting.

Postgresql is a great database as well. If this also means that there will be a smooth transition between those two that's great. It may not be great for IBM's licensing revenue in the long term but it'll be great for IBM customers.