Re: Attacking MySQL, was Thoughs after discussions

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

>Am Sonntag, 14. August 2005 07:56 schrieb Chris Travers:
>
>
>>The web-hosting/ecommerce market is a very important market for us to
>>attack, not just because of MySQL, but also because the alternative
>>often is MS SQL Server.  Attacking MySQL in this market is therefore
>>also moving up to further threaten MS SQL in one of their markets.
>>
>>
>
>IMO, the web hosting market is fairly uninteresting. And MySQL knows this,
>that's why they have invested so much in MaxDB, which gives them an inroad to
>the "enterprise" market, which has a lower public profile, but much more
>money.
>
>
>
On the surface, sure.  But I think that there are a few reasons why it
is a market that has been to date critical to MySQL's existing success.

The first is that most of the applications which run on web sites (with
the exception of content management systems) are directly applicable to
other aspects of business.  For example, the shopping cart is a simple
example of a simple web app with a database backend which, as businesses
can grow, can end up being integrated with other applications.

Secondly, a very large number of FOSS projects out there run on hosted
web sites.  As long as we abandon that market to MySQL, we give them an
entrenched presence.

Every product has a core market on which they are dependent for their
core survival.  For MySQL, this is (for better or worse) the web hosting
market, even though basing a web hosted application on MySQL can be
problematic later as integration requirements surface.  I therefore
suspect that this may also be boosting SQL-Server a bit because most
sites offer either MySQL or SQL Server, so customers wanting to be able
to move things to a reasonable enterprise platform will choose
Windows/SQL-Server over Linux/MySQL.

The goal is therefore not to offer small businesses the option to run
their web sites on PostgreSQL.  The goal is to provide customers hoping
to grow to the point that they will bring their hosting inhouse the
ability to run all their web apps on a database manager which will
continue to meet their needs.  This is how such a strategy would help in
attaching the SQL Server market.  The fact that it would also be a
fairly direct threat to MySQL is another side to it.

As far as MaxDB, others have noted that the SAPDB codebase is very
difficult to maintain and so I expect that this will prevent MaxDB from
really being viable in the short run.  Longer-term, however, much of
this could depend on MySQL AB's income base...

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting