Technology Players Are Rapidly Flocking to Open-Source Software
Salesforce, Microsoft, and Oracle Are on an Acquisition Spree
The open-source focus
So far in this series, we’ve looked at recent acquisitions by Salesforce.com (CRM), Microsoft (MSFT), and Oracle (ORCL). Oracle’s recent acquisition of StackEngine is focused on Docker, an open-source software project whose underlying code is free to download and use.
Microsoft’s latest acquisition of Metanautix Quest data compute engine can integrate data across traditional data warehouses such as the SQL Server, open-source NoSQL databases such as Cassandra and MongoDB, business systems such as Salesforce.com, and a plethora of other cloud and on-premises data stores.
Microsoft’s and Oracle’s recent acquisitions point to a rising competition in the cloud space as well as increasing interest in open-source software.
A primary reason companies are migrating to open-source software is because they want to avoid proprietary software and have the freedom to change their systems at their convenience. Open-source software is also gaining popularity because it allows businesses to lower their software costs.
Open source is rapidly gaining traction
The above graph shows the most common popular open-source databases that run on Docker, including MongoDB, MySQL, and PostgresSQL. The double-digit growth of open-source databases is posing a significant threat to Oracle. The company claims it holds a larger revenue share than its four closest competitors combined—IBM (IBM), Microsoft (MSFT), SAP AG (SAP), and Teradata.
To know more, you can read Open-Source Databases Are Set to Overtake Commercial Databases.
According to a TechRepublic article in May 2015, MongoDB dominates the database field, measured exclusively by the volume of mentions it gets from social media and news articles. MongoDB is an open-source NoSQL database developer that raised $231 million in 2014.
Market Research Media, a consultant firm, expects spending on NoSQL technology to reach $3.4 billion by 2020, from less than $1 billion in 2013.
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