Why is the RDBMS Market Still Growing? (+ New IDC Report)
IDC has released its "Worldwide RDBMS 2007 Vendor Shares" report, which is eagerly awaited in many corporate board rooms this time of year. (See full report.)
I'll spare you exhaustive regurgitation, but here are some highlights:
- According to IDC, 2007 in the context of the vendors involved was characterized by 1) growth driven by features that provide better "flexibility and manageability in deployment", 2) the heating-up of competition in the medium-sized business space, and 3) a greater focus on security and compression.
- Oracle leads the world in market share again - no surprise there (and it grew from 43.7% to 44.1%). But more interestingly, Oracle's growth (13%) outpaced the rest of the market (12.1%).
- At 13.3%, IBM's share grew slightly more than that of Oracle; IDC attributes this possibly to increasing reliance on Informix for growth.
- Microsoft slightly lost share - from 18.4% to 18.3% - and its share is growing more slowly than
the market (11.2%) as well as Oracle's share. This is a change from past years, for sure.
rates for a major release" - most likely, as one might guess, because of new options such as Database Vault and "especially" Real Application Testing, as IDC puts it. (Oracle Database users, look for more interesting news in that particular area in coming days.) The interest in these features is apparently what led IDC to make its statement about the drivers behind the growth of the overall market last year.
We have an even better resource than IDC, by the way: the community. What do you think is driving the overall strong growth in this market, which is left for dead every year by misguided (IMO) people extolling the "commoditization" of the RDBMS?
