An RDX Insights Series Presentation that analyzes the most significant areas of database vendor competition. Competitive evaluations include public vs private cloud, the three leading public cloud offerings, NoSQL vs relational, open source vs commercial and the traditional DBMS vendors vs all competitors.

1. INSIGHTS Presentation Series
Who Will Win the
Database Wars?
Open Source
Commercial
Ever Increasing # of
Of Competitors
Relational
NoSQL
Cloud
On Premises

2. Who Will Win the
Database Wars?
Cloud On Premises

3. Strengths Weaknesses
• Cost savings
• Pay as you go
• Opex vs Capex
• Quick access to innovative technologies
• Agility
• Scalability
• Reduces time-to-market
• Most vendors’ strategic direction
• Focus on core competencies
• Failure is less expensive
• Conversion costs
• Confusing number of alternatives
• Vendor lock in
• Security
• System visibility – auditing, regulatory compliance
• Lack of internal skill sets
• Preferred tools may not work
• Required to “trust” a third party service provider
• SLA enforcement
• Leverage - You become just another customer
• Integration with on premises – No DB is an island
Cloud DBMS

4. Strengths Weaknesses
• Leverage hardware and software
investments
• Security
• Regulatory compliance
• System visibility
• Lower reliance on third parties
• Accessibility
• Interaction with other systems
• Integration with existing tools
• Staff already trained
• Costs
• Opex vs Capex
• Limits Quick acess to innovative technologies
• Agility
• Scalability
• Time-to-market
• Strategic direction is cloud
• Focus on backend infrastructure support
• Failure is more expensive
On Premises DBMS

5. RDX Recommends
Hybrid Architectures Will Win the
Cloud vs On Premises Competition
(for now)
Winner – NEITHER
100% App Code
Transportability
100% Database
Feature Match

6. Azure
Hybrid Cloud
Oracle Hybrid
Cloud

7. Who Will Win the
Database Wars?
The Battle for
Cloud Computing

8. Strengths Weaknesses
• Most mature provider of cloud services
• Huge customer base – X times other vendors
• Large investment in infrastructure
• Robust provisioning and administration tools
• Able to build entire application
• Elastic compute
• Breadth of architectures (EC2, RDS)
• Breadth of database products
• RDS – Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL…
• Aurora, Redshift, DynamoDB
• CLOUD ONLY
• Customer support gets mixed reviews
• Confusing array of options, features and
settings
• Amazon databases (Aurora, DyanamoDB)
features and functionality limited when
compared to Microsoft and Oracle
• Complex pricing

9. Strengths Weaknesses
• HYBRID CLOUDS
• Customer loyalty
• Huge customer base
• Large investment in infrastructure
• Environment rivals Amazon in features and
functionality
• Database features and functionality
• Large number of security certifications
• Able to build entire application
• Pricing is simpler – when compared to Amazon
• Multi-product support
• Focused on the Microsoft tech stack
• Running non-Microsoft DBs in Azure cloud
services can be challenging
• Limited product offerings available
• Support has received mixed reviews

10. Strengths Weaknesses
• HYBRID CLOUDS
• Customer loyalty
• Huge customer base
• Database features and functionality
• Large investment in infrastructure
• Committed to cloud - Declared war on Amazon
• Same vendor that eclipsed the entrenched leader
– IBM DB2
• Deep pockets for building and acquisitions
(Logfire, Netsuite, Opower, Crosswise)
• Strong focus on cloud migration services
• Entered later than Amazon and Microsoft
• Architecture and offering still maturing
• Limited product offerings available
• Traditional higher Oracle costs
• Predatory licensing practices
• Cloud licensing is confusing (no change
here)

11. RDX Recommends
Amazon’s Breadth and Depth of Offerings
Microsoft and Oracle – Hybrid Environments
Amazon #1
Microsoft #2
Oracle #3
Microsoft #1
Oracle #2
Amazon #3
Cloud Hybrid

12. Who Will Win the
Database Wars?
Industry
Standards
Everyone
Else

13. DBMS Market Arena

14. Strengths Weaknesses
• Database features and functionality
• Customer loyalty
• Huge customer base
• Access to DBA and developer skill sets
• Product maturity
• Robust utilities
• Vendor support
• Most vendors have robust cloud strategies
• Strong third-party software provider adoption
(applications, tools and utilities)
• Costs
• Flexibility
• Scalability
• Predatory licensing practices
Traditional Vendors

15. Strengths Weaknesses
• Cost
• Custom tailor DBMS to meet application needs
• Scalability
• Flexibility
• Ability to store different types of data
• Many different architectures to choose from
• Access to DBA and developer skill sets
• Training and startup costs
• Limited customer base (except Amazon)
• Access to DBA and developer skill sets
• Product maturity
• Utilities
• Vendor support varies greatly
• Niche solutions (except Amazon)
• Limited third-party software provider adoption
(applications, tools and utilities)
Increasing Number of Competitors

16. RDX Recommends
Standardization vs Best of Breed
Winner – Database Consumer
Ease of Ownership vs Capabilities

17. Who Will Win the
Database Wars?
Relational
DBMS
NoSQL
DBMS

18. Single View
Sensor Data
Biometrics
Radiology
Videos, Images
Weather Data
Catalogs
Content Management
Geospatial
Social Data
• IDG: Unstructured data is growing at the rate of 62% per
year
• IDG: By 2022, 93% of all data in the digital universe will
be unstructured
• Gartner: Data volume is set to grow 800% over the next
5 years and 80% of it will reside as unstructured data
Structured
Structured Structured
Structured
RDBMS

19. Document
Graph
Wide-Column
Key-Value
NoSQL DBMS Architectures

20. Cost effectively handle large volumes of
data and/or users
Vertical
Horizontal

21. Strengths Weaknesses
• Dynamic schema flexibility
• Faster development times
• Total cost of ownership
• Easily stores semi, non and fully structured
data
• Horizontal and vertical scalability
• Geographic replication and data distribution
• Easier to achieve high performance accessing
large volumes of data
• Custom tailor environment to data storage
and processing needs
• Cost effective clustering
• Crude transaction management and locking
mechanisms (BASE vs ACID)
• Limited cloud offerings
• Vendor support (or lack thereof)
• Data is often denormalized leading to duplicate
updates
• Weak access languages
• No inherent data integrity enforcement
mechanisms
NoSQL DBMS

22. Strengths Weaknesses
• ACID
• Transaction management
• Sophisticated locking and latching
• Power of the SQL Language – Two-phase
commits, foreign key constraints, joins,
subqueries, integrated aggregations,
complex business rule enforcement
• Product maturity and strong vendor support
• Robust utilities
• Most vendors have robust cloud strategies
• Strong third-party software provider
adoption (applications, tools and utilities)
• Scalability can be expensive
• Data normalization can impact performance
• Schemas are not flexible
• Not all data fits neatly into rows and columns
• Geographic distribution can be complex
Relational DBMS

23. RDX Recommends
Winner – Relational Vendors
Will Become Multi-Model
The larger relational vendors will attempt to co-opt any
NoSQL technology that challenges their dominant role in
the industry
As they identify offerings as tangible threats, their strategy
will be to ensure that the technologies used by those
vendors become a component of, not a replacement for,
their traditional database products

24. RDX Recommends
NoSQL Survivors
Niche NoSQL vendors with limited market appeal and those
that have complex processing architectures will be less
attractive to their larger competitors
NoSQL DBMSs that consist of a unique storage model that
is also open source will allow them to be viewed as
attractive, cost-effective alternatives to commercial products

25. Who Will Win the
Database Wars?
Open Source
DBMS
Commercial
DBMS

26. Strengths Weaknesses
• Lower up-front licensing costs
• Lower maintenance costs
• Growing feature set and increasing
functionality
• Vendors stepping in to provide 24/7 product
support and maintenance
• Vendor support quality can range the spectrum
• Access to DBA and developer skill sets
• Still can’t compare their features to commercial
offerings – especially for high availability,
scalability, data warehouses
• Third-party software provider adoption
(applications, tools and utilities)
• Conversion costs
• Interaction with other DB systems
Open Source DBMS

27. Strengths Weaknesses
• Strong vendor support
• Robust features and functionality
• Most vendors have strong cloud strategies
• Strong third-party software provider
adoption (applications, tools and utilities)
• Access to DBA and developer skill sets
• Higher up-front licensing costs
• Higher maintenance costs
• Vendors’s licensing practices often become
predatory
• Complex to administer
Commercial DBMS

28. DB-Engines Popularity Trends

29. RDX Recommends
Commercial Products Win - For Now
But Will Lose Market Share at an Alarming Rate
(alarming for them anyway)

30. RDX Recommends
Evaluate OSDBMS Offerings
as Potential Replacements
for:
• Low risk applications
• Applications that don’t need all of the
functionality of a commercial product
• COTS applications

31. Next Month’s Presentation – NoSQL Overview: MongoDB,
Cassandra, Redis, Neo4J
The RDX Report
Will You be Replaced by a Robot?, Protecting Your Shop From Whaling Attacks,
Identifying and Preventing Tech Burnout, 2017 Database Top Tech Trends,
EnterpriseDB vs Oracle
LinkedIn
Selecting Cloud DBMS, NoSQL Architectures, Database Security Series,
Improving Customer Service
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SERVICE DELIVERY
EXPERIENCE
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