Sun Microsystems spent $1 billion to buy MySQL AB early last year. In recent days, the company has had two prominent names, Marten Mickos and Monty Widenius, announce their resignations. However, Sun says adoption of MySQL 5.1 is going strong and revealed some strategic plans for the MySQL database.Its been roughly a year since Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL
AB and brought the open-source database
into its portfolio. A lot has happened in the ensuing months, from the release
of MySQL 5.1 to the resignations of two prominent names long associated
with MySQL, Monty Widenius and Marten Mickos.
But there are even more changes afoot, and officials
at Sun want customers to know they are as committed to the database as
ever.
At the center of the immediate changes is Karen Tegan Padir, vice president
of MySQL and Software Infrastructure. Sun has moved to combine its software infrastructure
organization with its database group to form a unified open-source product
group.
The idea is to put MySQL into the mainstream of software at Sun and position
the company to leverage MySQL, GlassFish and Identity Manager by tightly
linking its software products together.
The charter of the combined organization will be to deliver open platforms
for Web-oriented architecture, spanning identity, applications servers,
databases and application integration, Padir said. With the unification of
teams, Sun's strategy remains the sameto achieve ubiquitous distribution of
innovative, easy-to-use, highly scalable, open-source-based application
platforms to gain both market share and drive software revenue growth.
The strategy may remain the same, but MySQLs first year under the Sun
umbrella has not been without its challenges. The most publicized of those
challenges was the controversy around bugs in MySQL 5.1, which ended up having
its general availability pushed back for a number of months. When it was
finally released late last year, Widenius, a MySQL co-founder, criticized the
number of bugs in the database.
It is going to take a lot of hard work for Sun to focus peoples attention
on building and growing momentum behind MySQL, which didnt have the best first
year under Sun thanks to delays to MySQL 5.1 and disputes about its quality,
said Matt Aslett, an analyst with The 451 Group. There are indications that
changes are already under way to make the development process more open and
ensure that delays are not repeated.
Sun countered at the time that not everyone in the MySQL community shared
Widenius view, and that the bugs were being worked on. In addition, Sun
officials pointed out that there have been 2 million downloads of MySQL 5.1
since its general availability 11 weeks ago, and a recent update included fixes
for dozens of bugs.
We respect and share Monty's desire to be very conservative in not shipping
a product before it's ready. To be fair, however, we had stringent
requirements and tests for the quality of this release, and many different
people both inside and outside Sun agreed that MySQL 5.1 was ready to ship, said
a company spokesman.
Even with this huge new number of people testing the product, the number of
new MySQL 5.1 bugs being discovered and reported has not risen dramatically,
the spokesman added. That's a big deal.
Still some analysts paint a slightly different picture, and just how much
the $1 billion investment has paid off depends on whom you ask.
There was no clear strategy that showed how MySQL will be integrated with
the overall Sun strategy or how to approach the enterprise market, said Noel
Yuhanna, an analyst with Forrester Research. Although, Sun has never been a
database company, the expectations were set high. I believe that MySQL got
buried among the other offerings from Sun.
Gartner analyst Donald Feinberg, however, said the announcements from Mickos
and Widenius that they were leaving Sun doesn't mean there is cause for
MySQL fans to panic.
There has been an increase in the number of developers, and 5.1 has some
very strong features, he said. The core engine [OS distro] is getting better
and increasing adoption. So I am not so sure that a couple of people leaving is
so bad.
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