Database Market Is Three-Way Race, Report SaysDatabase Market Is Three-Way Race, Report Says

Oracle retained its lead in the $8.8 billion database software market last year, but IBM and Microsoft gained ground against Ellison & Co. in the Windows and Unix markets, states a report released Wednesday by Dataquest. The report on the 2000 database software industry also found that the market grew only 10%, compared with the 18% sales growth the industry recorded in 1999.

The database market has essentially become a three-way race. Oracle captured 33.8% of the total market last year, up from 31.4% in 1999. IBM increased its market share slightly, to 30.1% from 29.9% the previous year, while Microsoft's share grew to 14.9% from 13.1%. Sybase Inc. and Informix Corp., which both lost market share last year, and other vendors accounted for the remaining sales.

Although the numbers include database software for all platforms, including mainframes where IBM has a virtual lock, the real battles are occurring in the markets for database software for Windows and Unix platforms. Sales of databases for Windows NT and Windows 2000 jumped 34% last year and Microsoft's SQL Server database narrowly captured the lead here with its 38% market share vs. Oracle's 37.3%. "We're clearly taking away market share from Oracle in the Windows space," says Stan Sorensen, who as Microsoft.Net enterprise-server marketing director oversees Microsoft's SQL Server database.

The news for Oracle was better in the Unix arena where it retains a huge lead, holding a 66.2% share of the market compared with IBM's 14.4% share. IBM execs touted the report's finding that sales of DB2 for Unix grew 61%, compared with Oracle's 23% growth, although that growth is coming on top of a much smaller base. IBM is in the process of acquiring Informix, which held a 6.7% share of the Unix database market last year, to give its Unix database efforts an additional boost.