April 15, 2004
Sun Microsystems days are numbered.
Sun has traditionally been a platform (OS + Hardware) for hosting large RDBMS database systems. The database systems that were typically hosted on it were Sybase and Oracle and ERP systems such as SAP. These have been systems that are hard to split up. Typically they scale up rather than out. MainFrame systems for example are typically used as database servers. They called their systems “Open” because at the time the majority of hardware and software platforms (IBM, DEC, etc) were proprietary and closed.
This market is rapidly shifting and Sun - with its high cost structure seems unable to innovate itself out of a market that is being hit with two disruptive technologies, Linux and scalable X86 processors, and one monopolist, Microsoft, who would like to take the RDBMS market. The current three strongest database vendors are IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft and none of them offer any hope to Sun.
Sybase
A while ago Sybase was synonymous with Sun systems in the financial industry. Sybase has been loosing market share ever since around 1994, when Microsoft bought a copy of the source code of Sybase SQL Server and then went on its own way. Sybase has recently shifted its focus from the large server to the mobile market.
Oracle is getting its margins killed by Microsoft and IBM. Its fighting back by using parallel servers which allows you to split up its database onto many commodity systems running Linux. Saves money for the customers and there is more potential margin for Oracle. Oracle has moved its "whole business" over to running on Linux on X86 systems.
SAP is another company weary of Microsoft - they have shifted all their development all over to the Linux platform and are promoting it to their customers. Linux typically runs on Intel or AMD systems.
Microsoft is the fastest growing Relational Database vendor (along with MySQL perhaps), eating market share from everyone and with a huge war chest and aggressive licensing packages to force companies to purchase their database system. Microsoft is essentially giving its software away to large companies at $300-$2000 a pop.
IBM's DB2 typically runs on IBM hardware with AIX, OS400, OS390 or more recently Linux as the operating system. No potential sales for Sun here.
Linux - with the 2.6 kernel Linux now has most of the features needed for large scale relational database hosting. Linux already scaled well to 4 CPUs. Now it with the 2.6 kernel it will scale well in the 16-64 CPU range – Sun’s bread and butter.
Intel – relentlessly seeking higher margins Intel and AMD are scaling up their servers as they gun for the larger profits that the RDBMS hosting business offers.
Posted by Anthony at April 15, 2004 09:25 AM | TrackBack