MySQL: Sun acquisition will propel business

By Jenalyn Rubio, Computerworld, 04/10/08

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Although it has, for some time, been known as a global open source database systems provider, MySQL has not been actively marketing in the Philippines until recently. During the release of MySQL Enterprise Server 5.0 in the country, APAC senior vice president Larry Stefonic said they believe the Philippines is a strong market as evident in downloads being made from the country, even when they have not been heavily marketing in the country yet.

"The Philippine market is one that we have known for a long time; it's a good market which we have not addressed until today," said Stefonic. Acknowledging that, being a late entrant, it may take some time for the company to penetrate the market, Stefonic believes the company has "the right pieces to move the market," especially given the positive momentum that open source has been getting lately.

Citing a study by Gartner, Stefonic said open source has gained a lot of momentum today, adding that 70% of the respondents reported they will use open source database management systems by the end of this year. According to Stefonic, technology, media, and telecommunications industries have been traditionally good markets for them, while financial service institutions (FSI) and government segments have been showing a lot of initial adoption.

Stefonic further said that many banks want to adopt MySQL but it may take some time, especially for those whose systems are so old; while some tend to be conservative about moving between databases. "Some are starting on the edge of their enterprise, they want to move their data center operations to open source but, especially with a 20-year old application in place, you just cannot move that stuff overnight. But it is happening already," he said.

According to Stefonic, datawarehousing and Web 2.0 are currently two drivers for growth in the database market. "The reason why we see huge adoption in Web service (and e-commerce) companies, as opposed to banks and other traditional markets, is because these companies have new technologies in place; so it's a lot easier for them to adopt new technologies as well," he said.

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