by Martin Veitch

Ingres: Oracle already protecting core biz from MySQL

Opinion
Jan 20, 2010
IT Leadership

With the EU finally saying ‘oh, go on then’ today to the Oracle-Sun combination and Larry Ellison due to talk up the new hybrid beast of Snoracle on 27 January, I suppose it was only a matter of time before the sparks (and less pleasant things too) began to fly.

This just in from Ingres CEO Roger Burkhardt. I’ve asked Oracle for response and will post any reply.

“Oracle is going to reshape the MySQL business and channel it in ways that protects its proprietary software business and supports its move into hardware. Evidence of this is already there: MySQL have removed the migration assets from their web site that would support a move from Oracle to MySQL. It was removed in recent weeks to reduce choice for their customers before the deal was approved or closed. Oracle clearly wants to take no risk in cannibalizing their Oracle DBMS business, even though MySQL is a much less capable product.

We also understand that MySQL has already stopped reselling and promoting other products based on MySQL that are competitive with Oracle’s database offerings.

The good news is there is a proven alternative to Oracle’s database. Ingres has the technology, migration tools, and global partners to support smooth migrations from proprietary databases to the benefits of open source which are experienced every day by thousands of Ingres customers running mission critical applications in 59 countries around the world.

Ingres believes in the superior innovation that comes from the community development model and welcomes a broad range of contributions ranging from location based applications to the leading analytics capabilities.  We are very confident that the developers who created the MySQL community will continue to lead the industry in innovation across a broad range of open source projects.”