As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series.
Dan Ashton, Senior Director, Product Marketing covers multiple databases at Rimini Street - Oracle, SAP, IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server.
He presented to me results of a recent survey across 18 countries. It is focused primarily on Oracle databases, but there are plenty of nuggets that likely apply to those from the other large vendors.
Some of the interesting points that I picked up in the session:
- There is significantly more dissatisfaction about the value from databases than the last time Rimini ran such a survey in 2017. Not surprising especially given IT cost pressures during the pandemic.
- Beyond the fees they pay vendors, customers feel they are on a treadmill - "the constant pressure to upgrade in order to remain fully supported not only disrupts business, but wastes funds and resources"
- The different types of support available from publishers may actually be confusing customers. Some support levels don't include critical fixes and certifications. As a result, some customers may have a false sense of security they are covered by the maintenance they are paying for but actually be exposing themselves to risks.
- Customers have tens, if not hundreds, of database instances. While trying to manage the sprawl, they are still looking at a growing number of open source and cloud options to lower their exposure and cost of those from the larger vendors. The survey shows MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB as getting the most looks.
Dan makes a crisp presentation with lots of specific survey data in about 13 minutes. You can also get the fuller report by registering here
