Oracle Eats the Database Market—Again (
Page 1 of 2 )
According to Gartner's numbers for the worldwide relational database management systems market for 2005, Oracle sat on the biggest slice of the pie.Oracle ate the database market—again—in both Gartner and
IDC numbers, here in PDF form, released May 24.
According to Gartners numbers for the worldwide RDBMS (relational database management systems) market for 2005, Oracle sat on the biggest slice—48.9 percent—of the $13.8 billion pie, which grew 8.3 percent over 2004 numbers.
IDC says the 2005 database market was $14.6 billion, up 9.4 percent over 2004 numbers.
IDC granted Oracle a 44.6 percent share of that market, and said that Oracles appetite grew 8.6 percent over what it took to fill the database kings belly in 2004.
Oracle is, understandably, tickled pink to retain its hold on the market, in the two leading analyst firms assessment.
Willie Hardie, vice president of database product marketing for Oracle, said 2005 was a significant year given the release of Oracle Database 10g Release 2 in July.
The polished release was what many customers were waiting for to get them to jump on the epic 10g database, he said.
"That was a green light for our customers to increase their uptake of 10g," he said. "We saw significant increase of adoption in the second half of last year."
RAC (Real Application Clusters) adoption continued to grow as well, Hardie said.
Click here to read more about Gartners assessment of Oracles identity management.
Meanwhile, penetration into the SMB (small to midsize business) market is going gangbusters, he said, what with Oracles introduction of the downsized Standard Edition 1.
Another factor in Oracles database dominion is Oracle Express Edition, Hardie said.
Thats given the companys inroads into the developer community, given the editions drivers for PHP support and its better integration with .Net, among other developer-friendly features.
"Were seeing progress in three broad areas of the database community: the enterprise space, the SMB space, and the developer space," Hardie said.
Thats all well and good, said Gartner analyst Colleen Graham, principal research analyst on the market report.
Not to pop Oracles bubble or anything, but much of Oracles success is actually coming at the expense of Oracles own business, she said.
To wit: Linux grew the fastest of all the RDBMS platforms, 84 percent, in Gartners numbers.
That growth was driven primarily by Oracle, as well as the maturation and acceptance of Linux as a mission-critical database platform.
Next Page: Not all rosy.
