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One key driver of the growth in use is greater 4 Mature functionality necessary to support
product maturity, shown by increases in: mission-critical applications, such as high
availability, scalability and clustering
1 Available database administrator (DBA)
resources with skills in the OSDBMSs When these are combined with greater awareness of
the technology and a wide array of verified use cases,
2 Available tools for administration of the OSDBMS products are being considered for a greater
OSDBMSs, not only from the vendors providing number of applications in all industries, geographies
these RDBMSs but also from third-party DBA and organization sizes, ranging from small or midsize
tool vendors such as Dell (formerly Quest businesses (SMBs) to global enterprises.
Software) and Embarcadero Technologies
In Figure 1, we show the maturity chart from Open-
3 Functional completeness necessary to support Source DBMS 2009; Gaining in Maturity and Use.
rich applications (even compatibility with leading In Figure 2, we evaluate the relative maturity of
products, as with EnterpriseDBs support for OSDBMSs today across six criteria. Together, they
Oracle PL/SQL) demonstrate the large change in maturity over the
past five years.
3
The most demonstrable benefit of OSDBMSs, Figure 3 outlines the impacts and top recommendations
given their increasing suitability from a technology for the open-source RDBMS. This is relevant not only to
perspective, is the TCO of these products. When technical, DBA and application management, but also
skills were at a minimum, management tools were to CIOs, CTOs, procurement and other IT management
few and the software was relatively immature, concerned with rising costs.
the TCO was not necessarily lower than those of
commercial vendor offerings. That has changed Impacts and Recommendations
to the point where we now believe that the cost Open-source RDBMSs have matured
of managing OSDBMSs and the availability of
skills are now close to parity with those of the
and today can be considered by
commercial DBMS offerings. We therefore believe information leaders, DBAs and
there are clear savings in TCO for the OSDBMS. application development management
With software costs skyrocketing, this has become
as a standard infrastructure choice
a major focus of IT management and is a major
impact of the OSDBMS. for a large majority of new enterprise
applications
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Figure 3. Impacts and Top Recommendations for the Open-Source RDBMS
dbPaaS = database platform as a service; OSDBMS = open-source database management system; RDBMS = relational
database management system; TCO = total cost of ownership
Source: Gartner (April 2015)
As stated above, the open-source RDBMS innovation, where there is a preference among
products have matured in the availability of DBA developers for using open-source DBMSs, are
skills, availability of DBA tools and near-equality making use of the open-source DBMS.
of RDBMS functionality. OSDBMS is being used
successfully in mission-critical applications in a Gartner inquiry statistics show over 110 inquires
large percentage of organizations. Further evidence about open-source RDBMSs (EnterpriseDB, Ingres,
of this is in the Magic Quadrant for Operational MariaDB and MySQL) in the past 24 months, and
Database Management Systems, where for the an increase in 2014 to greater than five inquires
first time two OSDBMSs have appeared in the per month.1 Five years ago, we estimated that
Leaders quadrant. Both MariaDB and EnterpriseDB we had fewer than 10 or 12 during the entire
references show pervasive use throughout an year. There is a clear increase in awareness and
organization for both non-mission-critical and demand for OSDBMS products. Also, the majority
mission-critical applications. We also believe that of our inquiries are from end-user organizations,
many new applications classified as systems of as opposed to third-party software vendors. This
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demonstrates a willingness of organizations to use An increasing proportion of third-
OSDBMSs for new development and increasingly
to replace existing RDBMS platforms. Furthermore,
party and in-house applications can
as described above, much use by developers and be used on open-source RDBMSs,
in SMBs is taking place, who are not submitting meaning DBAs and application
inquiries to Gartner. development management can now
We find many of our clients adopting a dual-RDBMS
use them to replace existing internal
strategy: an open-source RDBMS combined commercial RDBMSs
with one of the commercial DBMS engines. We
also find that many clients are beginning to use As the capabilities, reliability, availability and
OSDBMS for more applications than originally functionality of the open-source RDBMS have
planned and that vendors are eager to tell us improved, two trends are emerging.
about their expanding footprint after their first few
deployments are in place in an organization. We An increase in the use of open-source RDBMS by
believe this trend will continue so that, by 2018, third-party software providers.
more than 70% of new in-house applications will be
developed on an OSDBMS. Many organizations are considering open-source
RDBMS as an additional standard to be used for
Recommendations: modernizing existing applications, in addition to
or instead of the incumbent RDBMS they were
Acquire and deploy at least one open-source built on.
RDBMS in a sandbox or testing environment to
understand the use cases and build expertise. Many smaller application vendors offer their products
on an open-source RDBMS platform; some have for
Identify applications requiring functionality or many years. Recently, however, there is an increase
SLAs that can only be met with commercial in larger application vendors beginning to offer
RDBMS, as these are not candidates for applications based on OSDBMS platforms. The
migration. best example is Infor, one of the major application
platform vendors. In April 2014, Infor announced
Add an open-source RDBMS to your the availability of the Infor LN ERP on an open
organizations DBMS standards for new uses, technology stack, including the EnterpriseDB
and to replace commercial RDBMS where Postgres Plus DBMS.2 We believe this to be the first
commercial RDBMS and specific functionality major application vendor to offer an OSDBMS as a
are not required.
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platform choice for its applications. This migration is Recommendations:
possible because of the Oracle compatibility feature
and the maturity of the Postgres Plus product, Inventory the organizations in-house-developed
allowing Infor to take advantage of the lower cost applications and evaluate the less-critical and
of ownership from the OSDBMS. By 2018, 50% of less-risky applications for conversion.
existing commercial RDBMS instances will have
been converted or will be in process. Begin to replace the RDBMS platform of less-
critical applications with an open-source RDBMS.
Inquiries to Gartner about replacing traditional
DBMS platforms in applications written in-house Evaluate the use of an open-source RDBMS,
have been increasing substantially.1 Several years when offered by a third-party application vendor,
ago, we had one or two per month; today, we have as the implementation platform of choice for
two or more per week. Although the most frequent existing deployments.
reason cited by Gartner clients is cost, replacement
would not be possible, even at a lower cost, if it Information leaders who opt for an
were not for the other changes shown in Figure 2:
OSDBMS licensing model can benefit
Increased maturity of the OSDBMS software from much lower costs than using a
commercial model, even with todays
Greater availability of tools to manage the hosted cloud and dbPaaS offerings
OSDBMS products
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Table 1. Pricing Comparison Chart
License License Yearly per License Yearly Total Three-
Metric Fee Metric per Server Support Year Cost
Oracle Database Two cores $47,500 $10,450 $285,000 $62,700 $473,100
Enterprise Edition
MySQL Enterprise Server n/a $5,000 n/a $5,000 $15,000
Edition
EnterpriseDB Postgres Socket n/a $6,900 n/a $13,800 $41,400
Plus Advanced Server
Source: Gartner (April 2015)
These Gartner clients are really interested in the as OSDBMS software matured. Now that it has
open-source pricing model they do not want to matured, we believe that many traditional vendors
pay substantial, upfront license fees for software, are looking to what can be done to reduce the cost
and prefer to pay only the yearly subscription of commercial software. One clear answer has
support fees, which normally are less than the emerged: database platform as a service (dbPaaS)
associated yearly maintenance fees based on the and cloud hosting of RDBMS instances. The major
license cost of commercial licensed software. The vendors (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP) now
initial entry cost of OSDBMS is substantially less offer cloud-hosted versions of their commercial
(without license fees) and the ongoing subscription DBMSs, at a yearly fee including the infrastructure.
support fee is normally far less than that of licensed Although these fees today are typically more than
software. This is true not only for the OSDBMS, but the OSDBMS subscription support fees, there are
also normally for the commercial software offered no upfront license fees for the hosted versions. This
with subscription support by the same vendors. This should not be confused with the pure hosting model
is true for the software and vendors listed in Note 1. where customers bring their own licenses to the
cloud infrastructure. In this case, the customer will
Table 1 contains a pricing comparison of Oracle continue to pay the normal maintenance and support
Database Enterprise Edition,3 MySQL Enterprise fees, and the cost savings will only come from the
Edition4 and EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus Advanced infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model. Customers
Server,5 using a standard x86 server with two must take care when comparing the different models
sockets, each with six cores. available. First, be sure to compare the total cost of
running on-premises (including infrastructure) with
Assuming a 50% discount for the Oracle EE licenses the hosted cloud model cost. Note that pricing tiers
(net $236,550), this would still represent a cost 15 for cloud-hosted versions of closed-source products
times greater than MySQL and almost six times may bundle options that require additional payments
greater than EnterpriseDB, yielding three-year cost when on-premises deployments are used. This can
savings of $221,550 and $195,150, respectively. dramatically increase the relative cost disadvantage
for on-premises usage. Further, many of the cloud-
We have predicted over the years that the pricing hosted models include some RDBMS management
pressure on the commercial vendors would increase in the price (such as patching and upgrading to new
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versions), which can reduce your TCO or permit
redeployment of staff to other activities. The cost
of the technical support time and effort must be Note 1; Sample List of Open-Source
factored into the comparison. Although we believe RDBMS Vendors and Products
that the total cost will continue to be less for the
on-premises OSDBMS, the cloud-hosted model will Note: This is a sample list so should
bring the commercial software costs more in-line not be treated as comprehensive.
with those of OSDBMSs. Additionally, there are
OSDBMS dbPaaS offerings that further reduce the Actian Ingres
costs for cloud-based software. If there is interest in EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus
a cloud-based solution, then those costs should be Advanced Server
used in any cost comparison. MariaDB MariaDB
Oracle MySQL
Recommendations: VoltDB VoltDB
Evidence
1
Statistics compiled from Gartner inquiry data over
the period 2013 through 2015.
2
See Infors open-source stack press announcement.
3
See Oracles technology price list.
4
See Oracles MySQL price list.
5
See EnterpriseDBs Postgres Plus subscription
plans and prices.
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ABN AMRO Clearing: Financial Systems on
Postgres Plus
ABN AMRO Clearing is a recognized global leader
in derivatives and equity clearing and one of the
few companies that can offer global market access
and clearing services on more than 85 of the worlds
financial exchanges. The company operates from The growth, and geographic reach, of this application
12 locations worldwide and supports more than 16 is an example of how the applications running on
million trades per day. PostgreSQL became more important. As a result, the
company began planning a transition from the open
Reducing operating costs while ensuring source database to Postgres Plus Advanced Server
functionality, security and availability are key from EDB. EDB extends open source PostgreSQL
challenges for organizations today and ABN AMRO with enterprise-class performance, security and
Clearing is no exception. To reduce costs, the manageability enhancements. The team did the
company instituted a global policy to use open migration in 2011 during a hardware upgrade.
source solutions wherever its feasible. The freedom
from vendor lock-in that comes from using open In order to provide our clients with quality and
source was attractive too. The company builds in-time service delivery, it is crucial for us that
many of its applications in-house. we ensure high availability and continuity for our
applications, says Pieter Van Tol, European Chief
High costs and vendor lock-in prompted the Technology Officer of ABN AMRO Clearing Banks
infrastructure architects to consider alternatives for London Branch. Our applications have a 99.97%
the database. That led the team to open source- high availability requirement. Continuing to work with
based Postgres Plus Advanced Server from the community version of Postgres without the proper
EnterpriseDB (EDB) and a relationship that has support model was not an option. In addition to
expanded in recent years along with the Postgres support, there are things EDBs Postgres Plus offered
footprint at ABN AMRO. that arent available in the community version, such
as monitoring, tooling and compatibility for Oracle.
Open Source-Based Solution
In 2006, as open source software emerged Expansion of Postgres Plus
as a priority for the company, ABN AMRO ABN AMRO Clearing has continued to expand the
Clearing started using the open source version Postgres Plus footprint in the organization. The team
of PostgreSQL for two applications. One of the ported a transactional trade capture system from the
applications is a global reporting portal, used community PostgreSQL to Postgres Plus in 2013.
to store clearing transaction data and compiling The application was part of legacy infrastructure
reports for customers, ABN AMRO departments installed in the 1990s and had been targeted for
and regulators. The database grows at an modernization.
aggressive rate.
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As part of the European datacenter consolidation a Proof-of-Concept for a new mission-critical risk
project we decided to immediately make use of the assessment/risk calculation application to be
opportunity to migrate our reporting application to powered by Postgres Plus The company was further
EDBs Postgres Plus, said Mike Van Doorne, ABN planning a new a client query portal to be deployed
AMRO Clearings European Technology Architect. on an all-flash array for high-performance and
This migration forced us to build a solid new powered by Postgres Plus.
database platform based on EDB Postgres Plus,
which accelerated the use of Postgres Plus by other This is an example of the evolution of EDBs
applications as well. Postgres Plus into our environment, said Van Tol.
Were expanding our Postgres Plus footprint and
As of April 2015, ABN AMRO was using Postgres increasingly looking for ways to use it for our more
Plus to facilitate between six and 10 million highly business-critical systems.
transactions a day. The team was also performing
Source: EnterpriseDB
Open Source: The New Data Center Standard is published by EnterpriseDB. Editorial content supplied by EnterpriseDB is independent of Gartner analysis. All Gartner
research is used with Gartners permission, and was originally published as part of Gartners syndicated research service available to all entitled Gartner clients. 2015
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