Companies spending more money on databases

March 8, 2005

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According to IDC's preliminary numbers, Oracle pulled in 41.3 percent of relational-database spending, up slightly from the year before. IBM came in at 30.6 percent, down a fraction compared with 2003 IDC numbers. And Microsoft's share grew to 13.4 percent, which represents a growth rate of almost 11 percent.

Sybase, which grew slower than the rest of the market, and NCR, which builds a specialized database for data analysis systems, both had 3.1 percent market share.

Last year was the second year in a row that spending on database licenses and services went up. The overall market size declined by about 2 percent from 2001 to 2002, according to IDC.

Olofson said that in the coming year, competition for medium-size businesses--an area where Microsoft already has many customers--will be most fierce. Also, IDC said that all database vendors will need to react to "potential threats" from open-source database companies.

Source: C-Net News