Nov 2005
One of the things I am constantly amazed is how we perceive companies and how media has the ability to change perceptions. It is not infrequent when two newspaper reporters went to the same event, and got the same data, and make different conclusions. For instance, there was this company who just reported a 25% growth in sales, and one newspaper said that he has had outstanding growth as the headline, while another paper reported that the company has disappointed shareholders and recommended selling out.
For the last few years, we have read frequently how badly Microsoft is faring, and how new internet boom companies like Yahoo, or Ebay, or Google is eating its lunch. Yet, when you look at it now, you will find out that Microsoft continues to be a healthy company, and it does look like in the coming months, when it releases new products, it will continue to lead. A venture capitalist put in right when he said that we have to remember that of this moment, the combined market capitalization of Google, Ebay, Yahoo and Amazon still is lower than Microsoft.
Google: $124.9 billion
eBay: $66 billion
Yahoo: $61.2 billion
Amazon: $20 billion
Total: $272.1 billion
Microsoft: $297.7 billion
When you total the sales of all these four companies together, you will note that their total sales is also still a third that of Microsoft. In fact, the sales of Red Hat Linux, a much touted enemy of Microsoft, totaled about $200 million for the year ending February 2005. That would be way less than 1 % of Microsoft’s total sales. It does not mean that they are not a credible threat to Microsoft at this moment, but it does help to maintain a good perspective that it still has some way to go.
Last week, I attended the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 as well as the Visual Studio 2005 launch. It seems that Microsoft is putting a lot of ammunition to fight the database wars, and after five years ( the last release was SQL Server 2000) , it does look like SQL Server 2005 is designed really to make a dent in the database market share.
This launch was the biggest Microsoft has for this year, and there were over 1,700 people who crowded into EDSA Shangrila to take a look. The last few years, most software companies launched applications, and it is rare that companies spend so much to promote database and programming tools, which relatively speaking, is not a mass market product like Windows , or MS Office. Databases are normally not things that concerns businessmen ( in fact, most businessmen do use databases, but few would be able to name what database they use), but nevertheless it is something you should look into. After all, most likely, almost all a company’s structured information is stored in these databases, and their performance does affect your ability to store and organize such information.
Here are some of the take home notes that I got that might be good to think about. If you are technical, you may be happy to note that:
- SQL Server 2005 has 40% performance improvement over SQL Server 2000
- SQL Server has among the lowest, and almost negligible security bulletins compared to other databases. That means statistics wise, it is the most secure database in the market today.
- SQL Server CAN scale with even the biggest workload. SQL Server 2000 tested with over 26,000 concurrent users and it was ok. Before release, SQL Server 2005 was made to test with 93,000 concurrent users in an SAP implementation and it went well.
But if you are a businessman, it would be good to know that SQL Server 2005 is also the lowest price database in the market:
-SQL Server 2005 has built-in data mining and business intelligence at no extra cost.
- SQL Server 2005 will not charge for licenses for the passive cluster in a high availability active-passive cluster.
- SQL Server 2005 charges by CPU, not by core. So if you use Dual or Multicore CPUs, you only need to pay for 1 server license.
- SQL Server has a version called SQL Express 2005 which is available for free.
Just recently, Oracle, a leading database maker, also announced the Oracle Database Express, which users can also use for free. Competition is good, and the consumer benefits!
Wilson Ng keeps a blog of his articles in www.ngkhai.net/bizdrivenlife