Open source databases grow

Like many companies, National Semiconductor is looking for ways to cut costs and has Linux and open source high on its list. While the Santa Clara, Calif., company already is making the move to Linux, the big project this year is to take a close look at open source databases to figure out where less-expensive data management products could fit in its infrastructure.

"We looked at MySQL last year as far as software relief in concert with our leveraging Linux hardware - to be able to move a class of database applications from IBM hardware to Intel hardware," says Ulrich Seif, National Semiconductor's CIO.

The company also considered PostgreSQL and has a few small applications running on that open source database.

"The project this year is to take a serious look at an open source database road map and how it could be successfully deployed here as a second-tier database" environment, Seif says.

National Semiconductor is not alone. While open source databases are nothing new - Postgres, for example, has been around for 20 years, and MySQL celebrated its 10th anniversary in April - the projects are getting more enterprise-level features. And corporate customers in growing numbers are looking at low-cost alternatives to hefty, expensive proprietary database products.

Momentum around open source alternatives is swelling, with a number of developments in recent months illustrating the market's growing maturity. Consider that Novell, Dell and HP all now sell MySQL's database products and support services.

Earlier this month, the Apache Foundation released its first version of Apache Derby, the Cloudscape database that IBM contributed to the open source community last year. As for Postgres, a number of companies have recently emerged to provide support for PostgreSQL. One of those companies, EnterpriseDB, came out of stealth mode May 23 and hit the ground running, winning "Best Database Solution" at LinuxWorld earlier this month, edging out IBM, MySQL and Oracle. It announced general availability of its open source-based relational database management systems Enterprise DB 2005 earlier this month.

Meanwhile, MySQL in February launched its subscription-based MySQL Network to provide comprehensive support and spur corporate deployments. It already has Sabre Holdings, Continental Airlines and DaimlerChrysler on its lengthy customer list. Sleepycat Software last week announced that General Dynamics C4 Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, has deployed its Berkeley DB Java Edition to support a visualization and collaboration tool used by the U.S. military.

"We have been getting an increasing number of inquiries about [open source databases] from clients who are looking to somehow reduce their IT costs," says Michael Goulde, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "They are taking a look at where there might be commodity technologies that could replace the current technologies that they're paying a lot of money for - a database is certainly one of those."