Data and Information Management Software Category Profile

IBM and Microsoft traded places once again in the 2006 VARBusiness Annual Report Card (ARC) Data and Information Management Software category. This year, it was IBM's turn to take the throne; the vendor earned an overall score of 73, edging out the software behemoth by 4 points.

IBM maintained a comfortable lead over Microsoft almost across the board. Only in two criteria--ease of doing business and likelihood to recommend to a peer/friend--did the latter outshine IBM, by 2 points and 1 point, respectively.

At the other end of the spectrum, Oracle lagged behind its three competitors in all four areas--Product Innovation, Support, Partnership and Loyalty.

"I think a lot of people perceive Microsoft and IBM as more user-friendly than Oracle, especially SMBs. When they think of Oracle, they think of enterprises," says Anthony Walker, president of Enterprise Technology International, a solution provider in Denver. "Also, Oracle has been less eager to embrace the concept of the channel. On the other hand, IBM and Microsoft have always had a good partner apparatus."

To wit, Oracle scored lowest in Support and Partnership, where the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company earned 16 points and 12 points less than IBM, respectively. Those numbers represent a downward slide for Oracle, which scored lower than both IBM and Microsoft last year, too, but by a smaller margin.

Meanwhile, IBM maintained a solid lead over Microsoft this year in both areas. In Support, IBM scored 69 to Microsoft's 63; in Partnership, the leader earned a 65 to Microsoft's 60.

"Microsoft changes its channel programs every year, and it's sometimes hard to keep up with them," says Jim Adamson, CTO of Columbia Ultimate in Vancouver, Wash. "IBM doesn't do that. And when they do want to make a change, they always consult with us first and get our input."

Adamson says Microsoft's affinity to change is evident, too, in its licensing schemes and product development. "Their new releases aren't backward-compatible, which causes us a lot of grief when we have to change tools and rewrite [code]," he says. "IBM goes to great lengths to maintain backward-compatibility."

That might, in fact, go a little ways toward explaining Big Blue's high scores in Product Innovation.

"On the whole, IBM's [database] product seems to be more reliable than Microsoft's [SQL Server]," says Adamson, whose company sells IBM's DB2 Universal databases. He cites as an example the fact that both vendors added encryption features to their most recent database releases. "With Microsoft, it was like an afterthought," Adamson adds. "With Universal, the encryption functionality was well integrated with the product."

In the product quality/reliability criterion, IBM earned a 79 to Microsoft's 72; in richness of features, IBM overshadowed the No. 2 player by 7 points, 78 to 71; and in technical innovation, 4 points separated IBM (73) from Microsoft (69). Three of the four vendors--IBM, Microsoft and Sybase--tied for first place in compatibility and ease of integration, with a score of 71. When those scores were analyzed as a group, IBM took the title in Product Innovation with a 75. Microsoft followed with a 71.

It appears also that the software behemoth's brand, while still strong, has lost some of its luster. Microsoft's Loyalty score, which carried the vendor to a slim victory over IBM in 2005 (70 to 69), was not enough to earn it a win again this year.

At the same time, though, some VARs remain fiercely loyal to Microsoft, in large part because of the well-integrated application stack the vendor offers partners.