MySQL Makes an Acquisition
February 21, 2006 2 Comments
A bit more on a previous post about the acquisition offer Oracle made MySQL recently. The more I think about it, the more I think SAP is the intended target here. Why? Just look at the money involved. While MySQL is profitable, the numbers involved in the MySQL balance sheet are nothing when you compare them to the numbers involved in the CRM battle Oracle and SAP are locked in. With Peoplesoft and JD Edwards already absorbed, SAP is really the only competition Oracle has at the upper end. By partnering with SAP and MaxDB, MySQL may very well have painted a bullseye on their chest. If Oracle is able to scoop them up, it would severely impact SAP's future plans. I for one am glad to see MySQL is not laying down though. They just announced the acquisition of Netfrastructure, which includes Jim Starkey who will now be working for MySQL full time. Jim is the father of Interbase (which later forked into Firebird) and is extremely well known and respected in the database world. He's been working on Netfrastructure for six years now, as some of the things they've been doing look extremely interesting. One has to presume that his first task will be leading the development of an in house transactional backend for MySQL, but I think long term he will benefit the company far beyond that. While MySQL now has the benefit of learning from the limitations of multiple transactional backends and has a highly skilled lead at developer for their project, one still has to wonder if they can successfully pull off the migration from InnoDB. This is not just from a technical perspective, but also from a perception one as much as they hyped Inno with the release of MySQL 5.x. Here's an interesting interview with Jim, whose departure from the Firebird project as a result of this will surely be missed.
–jeremy
MySQL, Netfrastructure, Firebird, Oracle, SAP, Open Source
Jeremy's Blog 
I am not sure you fully understand the “battle” between SAP and Oracle. First, this “battle” is about platform or technical stack dominance within the enterprise, not about CRM or even database technology such as MaxDB. Second, MaxDB is only a database platform for one small component of SAP's SCM (Supply Chain Managment) product, called LiveCache. Which is used as RAM based datastore to enable very fast calculations on data for Demand Planning. Third, SAP is built to be as OS and DB independent as possible so just about all of SAP's software packages run on Oracle, DB2, DB390, SQL Server, MaxDB, and even Informix. Fourth — and please keep this in mind. Oracle is not just a competitor with SAP, it is a key partner as well. Over half of SAP's installations (even more for very large customers) run on the Oracle database.
Just a different perspective on the “battle” between giants
Thanks for the feedback duliano. I'll fully admit that the SAP and Oracle space is not a place I have a lot of expertise. I'm more of an outsider looking in and making observations. I will comment on your fourth point though. The fact that SAP is both a partner and a competitor doesn't change a lot to me. Both Microsoft and Oracle have worked in the past to either destroy or absorb companies they had a partnership/competitor relationship with and I don't see why it wouldn't happen again. I'm always interested in a different perspective though and would be interested in any addition insight you may have.
–jeremy