Download MarketScope: OLTP Database Management System Market

Markets, M-19-8927
B. Burton, K. Strange
Research Note
15 September 2003
MarketScope: OLTP Database Management System Market
Gartner's Online Transaction Processing Database
Management System MarketScope replaces the OLTP DBMS
Magic Quadrant. The maturity of this market results in few
vendors from which to choose. Know your requirements.
Core Topic
Enterprise Management: Database
Management and Administration
Key Issues
Which product and service vendors will
become leaders in database management
and administration?
How can enterprises effectively manage the
costs associated with database
management?
Note 1
RDBMSs Products Excluded Fromthe
OLTP DBMS Market Analysis
• Embedded RDBMS products
• Open-source RDBMS products
• Data warehouse RDBMS products
• Niche RDBMS products
• Pre-relational mainframe DBMS products
For more information, see "Evaluation
Criteria for the OLTP RDBMS Magic
Quadrant"
The online transaction processing (OLTP) database
management system (DBMS) market is mature in terms of
functionality and vendors (see "Gartner Study Shows Worldwide
RDBMS Market Declined in 2002"). Most enterprises support
two, if not all three, of the "Big Three" DBMS vendors — Oracle,
IBM and Microsoft. Decisions are largely driven based on
application-specific requirements. Few enterprises are looking for
a DBMS standard. Rather, they are selecting the right DBMS for
the specific application they are supporting. At the same time,
enterprises are trying to consolidate around a fewer number of
products. Because of the maturity of this market — and the slow
pace of change within this market — we are retiring the OLTP
DBMS Magic Quadrant and introducing the OLTP DBMS
MarketScope.
Market/Market Segment Description: The OLTP DBMS market
is defined by products that are suitable for a broad range of
enterprise-level OLTP applications, which include purchased
business applications such as enterprise resource planning,
customer
relationship
management,
and
customized
transactional systems. Some relational database management
system (RDBMS) products are excluded from this market
definition (see Note 1).
Rating for Overall Market/Market Segment: The OLTP DBMS
market is well-supported, which could warrant a "strong positive"
rating. However, we rate the market a "positive" because of the
influx of newer, less-mature platform architectures and
configurations that vendors are promoting to users (for example,
Linux and cluster configurations). We advise enterprises to be
clear about their requirements, investment plans and growth
plans before adopting a vendor's products and architecture.
Rating: Positive
Gartner
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results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
Evaluation Criteria: The OLTP DBMS ratings (see Figure 1)
were based on the following criteria:
• Financial viability and market commitment — ability of the
vendor to generate sustainable revenue and profits, and a
demonstrated commitment and investment (R&D, marketing
and sales) to be successful in this market
• Alliances and independent software vendor (ISV) support —
the degree of support/commitment and ISV enthusiasm
(level of support and marketing) for this vendor or product
• References — the number of high-quality references who
substantiate the technical, support and marketing claims of
the vendor for this product
• Product and market innovation — delivery of new and
innovative functionality for this target market
• Usability and affordability — the degree of maintenance,
support and manageability of the products relative to the
short- and long-term costs of the product
• Portability and suitability — ability of the vendor or product to
support diverse platforms and application requirements
• Performance and reliability, availability and serviceability
(RAS) — ability of the vendor to provide support
Figure 1
Gartner MarketScope for the OLTP DBMS Market
Strong
Negative
Caution
Promising
Positive
Strong
Positive
IBM DB2 for z/OS
IBM DB2 UDB
IBM Informix IDS
Microsoft SQL Server
Oracle Oracle9i Database
Sybase Adaptive Server
Source: Gartner Research (September 2003)
IBM DB2 for z/OS: The pace of new applications and systems
being initiated for, or migrated to, the mainframe has slowed on
zSeries systems running z/OS. Given the ongoing license
revenue and support revenue from DB2 for z/OS, IBM's
commitment (for example, R&D investment) to DB2 remains
steady. One of IBM's challenges for DB2 is its lack of application
support. Although IBM has many tool ISVs, application vendors
have been less than enthusiastic about DB2 support. This is
largely because of IBM's stumbling in the past with the
© 2003 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
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positioning of its mainframe products. By not positioning and
delivering DB2 as a viable DBMS server platform in the early
1990s, IBM missed an opportunity to be viewed as a target for
major application and software vendors.
Although IBM has made progress in forging these partnerships,
IBM DB2 lives with the reputation. For high-end OLTP
applications, there is no shortage of good and diverse references
that show support for the most demanding of workloads. In fact,
"high-water marks" for transaction concurrency are approaching
20,000 users, with database sizes of more than 10 terabytes on
DB2. In terms of usability and affordability, IBM DB2 would
receive a high affordability and usability rating for zSeries clients,
because many of these clients already made investments in IBM
software license agreements and in DB2 support staff. However,
the affordability and usability rating is significantly lower for
organizations that do not have zSeries systems or resources at
their disposal. DB2 received the highest ratings for pure system
performance and RAS for OLTP applications. Rating: Strong
Positive
IBM DB2 UDB for Windows and Unix: Because of its effort to
not alienate Informix customers, IBM's public DBMS strategy is
not always clear (see "IBM DB2 Windows and Unix Products Are
Still Catching Up"). In terms of a corporate commitment, Gartner
believes that IBM will be willing to trade a specific DBMS-centric
focus for an overall solution focus. In terms of ISV and
application support, IBM has enjoyed an excellent relationship
with ISVs, a position that has been strengthened as Oracle —
and even Microsoft — move deeper into the business application
markets. DB2 for Windows and Unix lacks credibility in high-end
OLTP, and production OLTP references lag its competitors.
In terms of usability and affordability, IBM has aggressively
priced DB2 Enterprise Server Edition at $25,000 per processor
and its partitioning option at $7,500 per processor to support
partitioned databases and clusters. Although IBM increased its
price for DB2 v.7, we have seen many cases where IBM has
discounted significantly the price of DB2 as part of an overall
solutions opportunity that includes IBM hardware and
professional services.
With respect to portability, IBM struggles to develop creditability
on non-IBM platforms, including Windows and Unix. Solaris
accounts for about 14 percent of DB2 sales, which is the largest
installed base outside of IBM AIX. Linux is the next largest,
accounting for 13 percent of DB2 sales. On the performance and
RAS side, we place DB2's high-water mark around 1,000
concurrent users and several hundred gigabyte database sizes.
The "comfort zone" for applications is at half the high-water mark.
© 2003 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
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For OLTP application implementations, enterprises should
consider DB2 for Unix and Windows when they are within the
comfort zone for database size and user concurrency, and they
are willing to use IBM's Unix (AIX) or a significant IBM stack (for
example, IBM servers, WebSphere and MQSeries). Rating:
Positive
IBM Informix IDS: It has been more than two years since IBM
acquired Informix. IBM has stated its pledge to support the
Informix product line (see "IBM Informix's Twilight Years") and
provide enhancements to Informix IDS. Although IBM will
continue to support Informix IDS, we believe that 1) declining
new license revenue, 2) IBM's focus on DB2 as its flagship
DBMS product and 3) the reassignment of Informix IDS
resources will result in a reduction of significant feature
enhancements and ISV support. Although Informix IDS was once
a strong contender in the OLTP DBMS market, in terms of
references, functionality and tools support, since the beginning of
Informix's decline in 1998, we have seen ISV enthusiasm,
technology enhancements and revenue wane. We believe that
IBM will continue to support Informix IDS, so current Informix IDS
clients should not panic. However, enterprises looking to deploy
new applications should consider other DBMSs (for example,
IBM DB2, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server). Rating: Caution
Microsoft SQL Server: Microsoft continues to make gradual
progress in the enterprise server software market and, as a
consequence, the OLTP RDBMS market. Microsoft's success
with SQL Server in terms of revenue growth (17 percent year
over year for 2002) has caused the senior executives to focus
more on SQL Server. In terms of alliances and ISV support,
Microsoft is one of the strongest in the OLTP market — not so
much because of SQL Server, but because of the attraction of
riding the Microsoft wave. In addition, as with IBM, Microsoft SQL
Server benefits from many of the businesses that want to
increase their partnership with any alternative to Oracle, because
Oracle is increasingly viewed as a competitor.
Although we regularly hear from enthusiastic SQL Server
database administrators for midsize applications, Microsoft's
references for the largest-scale applications continue to lag.
Additionally, the most current versions of SQL Server (SQL
Server 2000 and 64-bit SQL Server 2000) are largely "me too"
releases in terms of innovation. The one exception has been
database administration and tuning capabilities, where Microsoft
has made much of the configuration and tuning of the DBMS
semiautomatic.
Microsoft's licensing terms have often faced criticism; however,
in the world of DBMSs, SQL Server offers a lower-cost option to
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Oracle and, in some cases, DB2. In terms of performance and
RAS, Microsoft SQL Server continues to slowly improve. During
the past two years, Microsoft has been talking about the next
release of SQL Server (code-named Yukon). Microsoft has faced
several challenges with respect to its focus and vision for Yukon.
After multiple positioning iterations (for example, from Yukon
being the Windows file system to federation to scalability),
Microsoft has most recently decided that the major focus and
direction for Yukon is security. Because of this lack of focus and
vision, the general availability date for the next release of SQL
Server continues to slip. Microsoft will release the next version of
SQL Server by 2H04 (0.8 probability). Given the number of
delays in the release of SQL Server, enterprises should make
purchasing decisions based on current functionality. Rating:
Positive
Oracle Oracle9i DBMS: At its core, Oracle is largely viewed as
an RDBMS company. Now more then ever, Oracle's focus is on
its DBMS. In terms of alliances, we continue to rate Oracle
highly. However, Oracle faces increased competition from many
of its partners and declining DBMS license revenue — a
decrease of 20 percent overall year over year for 2002, as
compared to positive growth for DB2 and SQL Server. Seek to
understand the level of enthusiasm your target ISVs have for
supporting Oracle.
Because of Oracle's focus on its DBMS and its engineeringdriven culture, it is continuing to provide product innovation
leadership and functionality differentiation (for example, virtual
private database, partitioning, data guard and resource
manager). Users of Oracle9i Real Application Clusters (RAC) will
find this extra option of interest, especially those needing high
availability. Although the promise of increased scalability for
enterprises running package applications is introduced with RAC,
we have spoken to only a few references at the very highest level
of OLTP scalability. Oracle continues to consolidate functions
previously found outside of the RDBMS into its RDBMS product,
a benefit for enterprises that remain primarily within the Oracle
stack. Pricing and business practices are Oracle's most
significant challenge in this market. Oracle's business practices
with its customers has led to defections to competitors and
caused others to rethink their strategies. In terms of reliability and
availability, Oracle achieves the highest rating, because Oracle's
RAC product is gaining traction, particularly in enterprises looking
to Linux. Rating: Strong Positive
Sybase Adaptive Server: We believe that Sybase will survive
for a long time, but it will not be the major DBMS vendor player it
once was. Sybase has experienced negative growth in new
license revenue for its ASE product during the past several
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years. Sybase's strategy is to increase profitability by cutting
costs and using the revenue from database maintenance to
increase cash flow into its new portal offerings and other
software initiatives. There is still continued erosion of third-party
software support, including applications and tools, despite
renewed emphasis by Sybase on partnering strategies. Thirdparty software (ISV) vendors are looking to support platforms that
give them the best opportunity for market share. With the
challenges in gaining market share and momentum for Sybase,
this has caused some ISVs (for example, PeopleSoft) to reduce
their investment in supporting ASE. This support has been
shifted to DB2 and SQL Server as areas of increased
opportunity.
Sybase has not stated any long-term improvement plan for the
ASE DBMS in its turnaround strategy. There are three scenarios
for Sybase by year-end 2003:
• Sybase Adaptive Server technologies die out
probability). Too many companies depend on this now.
(0.1
• Another company buys Sybase to get maintenance revenue
(0.3 probability). We believe that Sybase will hold onto the
maintenance business to fund its hopes for new life in other
product areas (for example, the Internet portal business or
other tool provider).
• Sybase continues to compete as a niche player in the OLTP
DBMS market (0.6 probability).
The Sybase ASE product will go into "maintenance mode" by
2006 (0.6 probability). Rating: Caution.
Gartner MarketScope Defined
Gartner's MarketScope provide specific guidance for users who
are deploying, or have deployed, applications for current users of
DBMS-based applications and for potential new users seeking to
purchase an OLTP DBMS. A Gartner MarketScope rating does
not imply that the vendor meets all, few or none of the evaluation
criteria. The Gartner MarketScope evaluation is based on a
weighted evaluation of each of the vendor's products in
comparison with the evaluation criteria. Consider Gartner's
criteria as it applies to your specific application requirements.
Contact Gartner to discuss how this evaluation may affect your
specific needs.
In Table 1, the various ratings are defined:
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Table 1
MarketScope Rating Framework
Strong Positive
Positive
Promising
Caution
Strong Negative
Solid provider of strategic products, services or solutions.
• Customers: Continue investments.
• Potential customers: Consider this vendor a strong strategic choice.
Demonstrates strength in specific areas, but is largely opportunistic.
• Customers: Continue incremental investments.
• Potential customers: Put this vendor on a shortlist of tactical alternatives.
Shows potential in specific areas; however, initiative or vendor has not fully evolved or
matured.
• Customers: Watch for a change in status and consider scenarios for short- and longterm impact.
• Potential customers: Plan for and be aware of issues and opportunities related to the
evolution and maturity of this initiative or vendor.
Faces challenges in one or more areas.
• Customers: Understand challenges in relevant areas; assess short- and long-term
benefit/risk to determine if contingency plans are needed.
• Potential customers: Note the vendor's challenges as part of due diligence.
Difficulty responding to problems in multiple areas.
• Customers: Exit immediately.
• Potential customers: Consider this vendor only if there are no alternatives.
Source: Gartner Research (June 2002)
Acronym Key
database management
DBMS
system
independent software
ISV
vendor
online transaction
OLTP
processing
Real Application Clusters
RAC
reliability, availability and
RAS
serviceability
relational database
RDBMS
management system
Bottom Line: The online transaction processing market has
mature foundation technologies, vendors and market support
structure (for example, tools, applications, professional services).
Although the market is mature, perform due diligence as to the
vendors' strengths and challenges. Given the competitive
pressure, the leading vendors in this market will continue to
battle for market control by releasing new features, architectures
and tools. As with any new technology, ensure that you
understand the real-life costs of supporting, managing and
maintaining these new technologies relative to your own
application requirements.
© 2003 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.
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