Market Update: Open Source Databases

Open source databases continue to grow in adoption, offering enterprises a reliable and low-cost alternate solution for supporting small to moderately sized applications. Although the rip-and-replace method of trading a commercial database management system (DBMS) for an open source database is still slow, enterprises are mainly looking to open source databases to support new applications such as Web 2.0, Web-based applications, small portal applications, radio frequency identification (RFID), and other new workloads. More enterprises are deploying open source databases than ever before, with many planning mission-critical deployments in the coming years. SUN Microsystems' acquisition of MySQL further validated the open source database market's worthiness, and enterprises can now expect even more reliability and improved support in the coming years. The future of open source databases remains bright, with more innovations on project road maps in the areas of high-performance real-time data warehousing, XML, database-as-a-service, Web services, and content management. Every enterprise should now consider open source databases as part of its overall DBMS strategy, as doing this will deliver cost savings, especially when supporting small to midsized applications.