A huge segment of Indian enterprise that is beginning to join the IT adoption curve, Office Productivity Software, DBMS and ERP solutions are some typical initial investments.  The Indian database market, poised at $148.6 million in 2006 is growing at 40 per cent year an year, driven by a booming economy that is propelling increased investments in basic IT infrastructure.

An increased awareness of the value that IT delivers to business productivity is also driving investments in storage, security and ERP applications, specially in the chemical, pharmaceutical and manufacturing verticals and in the finance and insurance sectors.

With DBMS options increasing plentifold over the last five years and several solutions such as Oracle’s XXX, “open source” MySQL, now available, how does a chief information officer (CIO) make a choice? One question that is often asked about DBMS is, how does one choose between an open source solution (MySQL) and proprietary software that is not so cost effective?

Frost & Sullivan conducted a study involving over 76 organisations along with focus group discussions with independent software vendors, system integrators etc. The results are interesting.

One of the major drivers of MySQL in India is the increased effort by the government and vendors to use licensed software. Today, government, small and medium manufacturing enterprises, BFSI, small retail shops and community groups such as housing societies or social organisations are the major segments using MySQL.

System performance

The survey shows that MySQL is chosen because it is perceived to be low cost with adequate performance for running non-mission critical applications requiring up to 4GB. The selection is not based on formal considerations of DB performance dimensions but system performance, which one that allows them to experiment with a low cost option.

But can MySQL also be used for higher-end jobs? Results from the survey shows that not many want to risk running high workloads on MySQL .Chief information officers (CIOs) felt that support from independent software vendors for MySQL is rudimentary or does not exist at all.

With lack of proper documentation, some companies faced difficulties in enhancement and upgrade. Since the majority of applications built on this framework are from local software vendors and there are no major companies banking on the reliability of the software product developed, many enterprise customers are hesitant to deploy MySQL for critical applications.

Interoperability

Another important finding of the survey is that enterprises transitioning to MySQL face interoperability challenges with some of their back-end key applications. Lack of technical support is seen as a major hindrance, and transition from existing databases to MySQL has not been seamless. With limited available expertise for MySQL and with few certification agencies, CIOs have raised concerns about trusting these resources to develop key applications on MySQL.

The decisions taken  about DBMS help determine the kinds of systems that can be constructed, and the value that an organisation could derive from them in the future and how this can be done securely.
As a CIO from Chennai says, “I do not want to limit our company’s growth and scalability by limiting my DB investment in MySQL. I would opt for a proven well-supported product anytime.”

Dr  T R Madan Mohan,
Frost & Sullivan,
South Asia and Middle East