MySQL is promoting its open source database as a viable,
more affordable alternative to products from Oracle, IBM and the
other top database suppliers.
The Swedish company boasts 4 million installations of its
product worldwide, many of which are at small businesses and
government agencies that have downloaded the software for free. It
claims to have 4,000 paying customers, including such names as
Google, Yahoo and Cisco Systems, which has embedded MySQL in some
of its networking products.
MySQL has what it calls a dual licensing strategy. Customers can
download its software for free, in which case they are required to
make any improvements they make freely available to others, in a
traditional open source model. If they pay for the software, they
can keep their modifications private.
Its goals for the coming year are to evolve its database with
new features and better performance, to partner with more
applications and tools suppliers to expand the ecosystem around
MySQL, and to add new support, training and certification services
for customers, said Marten Mickos, the company's chief executive
officer.
"Performance is always number one. MySQL is and shall be the
fastest performing database. We'll always keep that our number one
priority," he said.
The product lacks many features found in products from the
leading database suppliers and it sees a role for itself alongside
databases from those suppliers in what are already heterogeneous
database environments.
"It's analogous to what's happening with Linux. Everybody says
they're switching to Linux, but the reality is that most companies
run it in a mixed environment where they also have mainframes and
they also have Windows and Unix," Mickos said.