Oracle still tops the database market

Oracle is still dominant in the relational database market, according to analyst firm IDC.

The market grew by 14.3% from 2005 to 2006, said IDC, with Oracle once again leading the field, with 44% of the market. This generated revenue of £3.84bn for Oracle, which was a 14.7% jump on 2005.

IBM held second place with £1.8bn, and Microsoft continued to gain ground with 25% growth to £1.5bn. Upgrades to ASE 15 helped lift Sybase by 4.3% to £263m, followed by Teradata with £230m. Smaller suppliers averaged a relatively robust 5.3% growth rate from 2005 to 2006, said IDC.

IDC said Oracle has shown strong growth in new sites among small and medium-sized businesses. Additional licence purchases due to processor or core-related upgrades also helped drive Oracle’s licence revenue growth.

Both IBM and Microsoft reported “substantial” net increases in new sites for their products, said IDC, and there was a wider acceptance among larger firms for Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 as an enterprise relational database system.

Read IDC's full report >>

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