Oracle Corp, which supplies Yahoo Inc with database software, may lose some of that business to a little-known competing product -- the free MySQL database.
MySQL and others are starting to eat into the US$8.8 billion market for database software dominated by Oracle, International Business Machines Corp. and Microsoft Corp., users said. Yahoo, which uses MySQL to run the Yahoo Finance Web site, may replace some Oracle databases with MySQL, said Jeremy Zawodny, a computer engineer at the Internet company.
As the free Linux operating system gains acceptance among companies and government agencies, other open-source programs such as MySQL are making inroads as well. As MySQL improves, more companies are going to consider adopting it to store and retrieve information, Zawodny said.
"Linux has really hit the mainstream now and the same thing's going to happen in the database world," Zawodny said.
"It's just going to take a few years. That's when [database vendors] are really going to have to wake up."
This week, about 20,000 people gathered in San Francisco to learn more about open-source software at the LinuxWorld Conference, where Oracle Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison gave a keynote speech and IBM was a ``platinum sponsor.'' Open-source software programs, such as Linux and MySQL, are freely available on the Internet. Users can look at the underlying code, make changes and pass it on to others.
Oracle and IBM have embraced Linux in part because it offers a challenge to Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, whose Windows operating system runs more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers. All three companies pooh-pooh open- source databases.
"They're really very low-end products," Oracle Senior Vice President Andy Mendelsohn said at an investor conference this week. "I'm not too concerned about them being a viable competitor as yet."
Spokespeople from IBM and Microsoft said open-source databases aren't reliable and don't offer as many features as their own products. Both companies said they're keeping an eye on programs such as MySQL.
Like Linux, which was developed by a Finn named Linus Torvalds and posted on the Internet in 1991, MySQL is of Scandinavian heritage.
Two Swedes, David Axmark and Allan Larsson, and a Finn named Monty Widenius were working as computer consultants to Swedish companies and wanted a program to track customer buying patterns.
They couldn't find one they liked, so they wrote their own and released it in 1996.
They made the code available on the Internet, encouraging users to download it for free. They created a company, called MySQL AB, that would offer technical support for a fee.
With an expected 5 million euros (US$4.9 million) in sales this year, MySQL is a speck compared with Oracle, with sales of US$9.7 billion in the year ended May 31, or Microsoft, with sales of US$28 billion in the year to June 30. IBM had US$86 billion in sales last year.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS