What Oracle gets with MySQL

While the open-source community wrings its hands over Oracle's intentions relative to MySQL, and while Oracle may be fretting about how to marry the more hippie-esque tendencies of the MySQL open-source software crowd with its need to make the database acquisition pay dividends, both sides can relax. MySQL has long been at the forefront of figuring out open-source monetization, with Zack Urlocker (formerly EVP of Products) and Marten Mickos (CEO) leading the charge.

MySQL, in other words, is a great example of how Oracle can make open source pay. MySQL is much more like Oracle than I originally thought.

Urlocker, now vice president of Lifecycle Marketing at Sun, wrote recently of the science he has been applying to the open-source lead process for MySQL, and how he has been spreading it throughout Sun:

My goal is to take best practices from MySQL, Sun, and elsewhere in the industry and fill the sales pipeline for all of Sun's products. There's a large class of products that can benefit from the high-volume/low-touch lead generation, nurturing, and scoring approach that we built at MySQL. One of the goals I set for the team was to increase the "top of funnel" inquiry or raw lead volume for sales.

Urlocker delivered a 13-fold increase in raw lead volume, which is an exceptional number, one that even Oracle would be well-advised to embrace. Yes, through Oracle's acquisitions it has years' worth of cross-selling and upselling opportunities, but in its new open-source assets, it also has a way to drive volume of net new leads.

This is the sort of activity one would expect of Oracle: big goals and operational excellence to achieve them. I suspect that it's just one example of the people value Oracle acquired when it bought Sun and, in particular, MySQL, which has spent years honing its open-source lead generation and conversion models.

In MySQL, Oracle bought much more than open-source street credibility. It bought some of the best open-source business minds the industry has to offer; people that can help Oracle make open source pay serious dividends. People who think like Oracle does.

I've suggested that Oracle may scare away MySQL's brightest minds by drowning its ambition. I now believe I was wrong. A closer analysis reveals two companies with very similar goals: make as much money as possible by serving community and customers.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

[Orion Blastar]

We aren't worried that Oracle will kill MySQL, just make it pay only like the Oracle database is apparently. That means Oracle might close off the open source version of MySQL and make it pay only.

[ian.waring]

Having seen marketing bonuses handed out for outright lead volume, the thought of "Raw lead volume" x 13 makes me wince. Number of monetised leads - without sapping the productivity of the company in identifying those that may convert in the future - would probably be a much better measure. However, like Cluetrain says, markets are conversations, so if they've got reach and not killed the productivity of their salesforce in getting there, then their addressed market will be larger anyway.

[searching611]

The MySQL process discussed above is much more than increasing initial lead volume. It includes a sophisticated scoring system and lead routing mechanism that determines when something is 'worthwhile' for follow-up by a sales rep, when and by whom. The issue is not enough 'leads', it is having too many. The trick is making sure we don't waste the reps time on un-qualified touches.

While Lifecycle Marketing is the start of the funnel, it is the other components of the Volume Sales Process that complete the cycle.

[ZUrlocker]

I think Oracle understands the power of open source more than most people give them credit. And they certainly know how to make money. What we found at MySQL and more recently in Lifecycle marketing is that you have to cultivate the right leads in order to make open source produce a good return on investment. It's surprising to me how few companies do this right. The concepts are fairly straightforward, but it does take a lot of analytics, scoring and nurturing to make it payoff. Growing the top of the funnel is just the first step.

--Zack