Demand for relational database management systems (RDBMSs) is still strong, despite earlier predictions that the maturing market would plateau. Worldwide revenues from RDBMS software grew 12.1% in 2007 to reach $18.6 billion (£9.5bn).

According to research by IDC, growing competition for the ‘mid-market’ segment of the RDBMS sector and “increasing emphasis on enhancements such as security
and data compression” are key drivers of that growth.

Oracle remains the biggest player, holding almost half the market and growing its revenue by 13% in 2007. Over the year, its market share increased from 43.7% to 44.1%. IDC suggests this upswing was mostly attributable to the sale of add-ons for the core Oracle database, and “unusually high” early adoption rates for the upgrade, Oracle Database 11g.

IBM grew its database revenues by 13.3%, slightly faster than Oracle, but remains in second place with a market share of 21.3% despite the combination of its DB2 and Informix database revenues.

Microsoft’s market share dipped slightly over the year from 18.4% to 18.3%, with its revenue growth rate of 11.2% slower than the overall market pace. IDC says “some
of this sluggishness [is] attributable to the uncertainty of release schedules” for its SQL Server RDBMS.

Further reading

Solid structures – The relational database has evolved with business’s changing information demands