IBM Takes Top Spot As Database Market Leader Over Oracle

Oracle, however, maintains that the research firm's measure of the database space warrants a closer look.

IBM saw its overall 2001 database share grow to 34.6 percent of new licenses sold worldwide, up from a 33.7 percent share in 2000, Gartner Dataquest reported. Microsoft's database share in 2001 climbed to 16.3 percent of new licenses sold, up from 14 percent a year ago. Oracle's overall database share, meanwhile, fell to 32 percent last year from 34.1 percent in 2000.

But Rene Bonvanie, vice president of Oracle9i marketing, said Gartner Dataquest's IBM and Microsoft market-share numbers included database sales in non-core product segments. For example, IBM includes revenue from its ISAM mainframe file system and MVS mainframe operating system along with DB2 databases, and Microsoft includes Access with SQL Server, he said.

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"Both [IBM and Microsoft have massive revenue, and it's hard to look at those numbers and say, 'This is undoubtedly database revenue,' " Bonvanie said.

Oracle held onto the No. 1 spot in relational databases in 2001, despite losing some market share, Gartner Dataquest reported. Oracle accounted for 39.8 percent of new relational database licenses sold last year, down from 42.5 percent in 2000. Fueled by its Informix acquisition, IBM came in second at 34.1 percent share, up from 32.6 percent the previous year. Microsoft's relational database share rose to 14.4 percent in 2001, up from 11.6 percent in 2000.

Some integrators say IBM DB2 is gaining in distributed databases. "DB2 has always been popular in data warehousing and datamarts, but now we're seeing more mind share in distributed open systems, helped by the perception that Oracle is more expensive," said Jason Black, director of consulting services at MSI Systems Integrators, Omaha, Neb.