Analysis & Commentary:

BATTLE OF THE DATABASES: ORACLE VERSUS SYBASE

As reported by Tim McDonald, the Oracle-Sybase rivalry may not be the hottest contest in the technology universe at the moment, but it certainly is one of the longest-running. Indeed, some who look at Oracle's huge edge in market share say it is not a rivalry at all anymore.

But database management software is crucial to most businesses, and choosing one system over another is a task that no IT manager can take lightly. So, what makes managers prefer one product over another?

'Breakthrough Technology'

Oracle executives claim it is their constant innovation that makes them attractive.

"We've really pushed the envelope on innovation and new features, and very few of these smaller companies could keep up," George Demurest, Oracle's senior director of database marketing, said.

"If I had to pick one top thing we can do that no one else can do, including Sybase, it would be the clustering (Real Application Clusters) we've been talking about this year -- the ability to take a database and start on one system, and when you run out of computing cycles, just add another [system] without having to change your data or your applications," Demurest said.

In a research report, IDC called Oracle's Real Application Clusters a "breakthrough technology," and VectorSCM, one of Oracle's customers, said on Oracle's Web site that the feature will save the company more than US$1.5 million in hardware costs.

"No one except IBM on the mainframe, in some restricted ways, can do it," said Demurest. "We're really the only database out there, including open systems, Windows, UNIX or Linux that can do that."

'Compelling Features'

"It's really the depth of the product," Rich Niemec, CEO of TUSC and president of the International Oracle Users Group (IOUG), said.

"When we looked at Oracle, we looked at recoverability and availability together," Niemec said. "If you have one corrupt block of data, you could be working on every other part of that table other than that block, and you can recover that block while everyone is working on the other parts of the table. That was a compelling feature."

Oracle also cited its non-escalating locking capability. "If you have lots of different applications going after the same data, it doesn't lock the entire database or the entire table," Demurest said.

"We lock only the information that needs to be locked, so that's an incredible scalability feature that Sybase and IBM have not really been able to answer," he added.

Oracle: 'Not Just a Database'

Oracle also boasted of its data warehousing capabilities, which allow its software to manage very large databases by splitting data into partitions.

"We have four different partitioning schemes that we provide," Demurest said. "We think of ourselves as more of a technology infrastructure company, not just a database, but we have a database application/server combination that is very hard to compete with. Plus, ISV (independent software vendor) support for Sybase is nowhere near what it is for Oracle."

No Weekend Work

Oracle said its customers can do almost 100 percent of their database maintenance online, without stopping the database or kicking users off.

"We used to joke about the 63 hours," Niemec said. "That's how long it is from Friday night to Monday morning, and that's how long it took to do some of the maintenance operations. Oracle's online maintenance is another compelling feature."

"It seems like an unglamorous set of features, but the end product is a database you never take down for any reason, and that's really our goal," Demurest noted. "People don't want to work on weekends."

Sybase: Loyal Customer Base

Sybase has been in business for 18 years, but in recent years, the company's market share has shrunk at a steady rate. However, as Sybase's finances have become more stable -- the company has reported 16 straight quarters of operating profitability -- so have customer defections.

In the quarter ended March 31st, revenue inched up just 1 percent to $229.1 million -- still below Wall Street estimates -- but cost controls kept the company in the black.

Sybase's special niche is among financial services companies. This week, for example, it released software that helps financial institutions comply with the Patriot Act of 2001, which mandates that banks and other financial institutions monitor all transactions for suspicious activity.

Sybase: Better Balance?

One reason that some IT managers lean away from Oracle and toward Sybase is that Oracle is generally perceived as expensive.

Federal mortgage lender Fannie Mae in Washington, D.C., for example, now uses both Oracle and Sybase.

When asked why he chose Sybase last year, William Banick, director of Fannie Mae's database management system, said he was interested in "technology that [would] deliver business value in the most cost-effective manner."

"Sybase has found a good balance between value-added features and quality," said Banick. "It's one of the most stable technology platforms we have."

Oracle Customers: It's Expensive

In April, a survey of more than 500 Oracle customers by Morgan Stanley and the IOUG found that 43 percent of respondents cited price as the number one reason why they would move to a new company -- although 57 percent said they would not consider moving away from Oracle database software.

"It makes life easier," Niemec said. "When you look at the depth of what you can do for your business with this product, it's really a pretty small price."

While Oracle's relatively high cost appears to be no barrier to its popularity, Sybase seems to have found an unassailable, if small, market niche as well. Both companies are fiercely opposed by two monster powers in the database business -- Microsoft and IBM -- but, at least for now, both seem able to hold on to their slice of the database pie.