Oracle is countering MySQL, Ingres and the like with its own low-cost programs and even a few free apps.
Oracle's handsome pretax profit margin--at 42%, thanks to the ax of Safra Catz--leaves Ingres room for inroads.
He has added 25 engineers to Ingres' 100, plus a new staff of 145 sales and support folks.
He leads fellow Oracle alumni at Ingres, a database maker that aims to undercut Oracle with lower prices and better service.
Garnett counters that Ingres doesn't need to catch up to reap rich profits.
Open-source firms are flourishing in databases (Ingres, for instance), business intelligence (JasperSoft), customer-relationship management and other business applications (SugarCRM, Alfresco).
ECONOMIST: Open-source software in the recession: Born free | The
But an unfinished, suave life study of a seated nude by one of Ingres's followers, Henri Lehmann, requires no special pleading.
WSJ: Appealing to Modern Eyes | The Path of Nature | Metropolitan Museum of Art | By Karen Wilkin
At the low-price end, open-source upstarts MySQL and Enterprisedb have hawked cheaper, nimbler databases for a few years, possibly squeezing Ingres out.
Some 10, 000 businesses use Ingres' databases, typically on just a few boxes.
For Oracle the threat comes from such outfits as MySQL and Ingres.
They have resurrected an aging Oracle foe--Ingres, which uses database technology developed 32 years ago by two Berkeley scientists--to target Oracle's biggest source of profit: the steady, high-margin fees it charges for regular upgrades and support.
What the hardware is that goes underneath Oracle (or Ingres etc, the other relational databases, if any of them still exist so long ago was my involvement in this world) is very much a secondary consideration.
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