MySQL's Open Sesame

There is no other way to say it: Some vendors with direct-sales reps sporting $2,000 suits and pulling in outrageous commissions have taken customers to the cleaners. At the same time, the vendors fielding these direct-sales sharks have failed to invest in and build a strong channel that can sell and support their products and make a reasonable profit margin.

In one of our lead news stories this week, CRN Industry Editor Barbara Darrow reports on the MySQL open-source phenomenon. MySQL, the developer of an eponymous open-source and commercial database, last week unveiled a new VAR program and additional features,including clustering,squarely aimed at taking down the database giants a notch or two.

Should the database vendors be worried? You bet they should. To get an idea of just how outrageous the world of database licensing is, take the case of Sabre Holdings. The Southlake, Texas-based online travel reservations powerhouse originally didn't consider the open-source option but changed its mind after discovering that other traditional database options would have cost tens of millions of dollars over the life of a five-year contract.

Michael Benzinger, senior principal at Sabre, said high-end database player TimesTen put its price at $36 million for that five-year period. Oracle countered with an $18 million "deal," and IBM with $5 million. While Benzinger was not sure of the exact figure for MySQL, he estimates it clocks in at just under $50,000 per year,including around-the-clock support. The MySQL database phenomenon is growing, and the company's new VAR program should increase its market momentum. By the way, JBoss is posing the same challenge to application server vendors.

Tim Shea, co-owner of Alpha NetSolutions, a Worcester, Mass.-based solution provider that makes 80 percent of its profits from services, said he expects his use of MySQL for database projects to shoot up to as high as 80 percent over the next year from 50 percent.

Bottom line: The economic model is out of whack for a number of software makers, and the bill is due.

And here's a tip for those direct-sales reps: Sears has some pretty nifty suits for $199.

What do you think of MySQL? Let me know at (781) 839-1221 or via e-mail at [email protected].