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by Jonathan Schwartz
 Across the globe and across segments of the market, the U.S. economy is having an impact on anyone running very large multinational businesses. I'm seeing it in my travels and conversations, the pressure to cut and consolidate has never been higher. And the tradeoffs are getting harder to make.
This is why it's critical to examine all of the options out there for not only saving dollars today, but for positioning your company for growth and opportunity in the long term. This is where Sun can help. Specifically, we can help you: drive cost savings via open-sourced database technology, namely MySQL, drive greater cost savings through virtualization and eco(nomic) and environmental solutions, and help you with some simple product refresh alternatives that will drive cost efficiencies.
Let's start with the recent news from one proprietary database vendor that outlined its intent to raise prices. Therefore, it's probably not surprising to hear that 16 percent of database users have replaced proprietary databases with open source databases, and by 2008 nearly 70 percent plan on using open source databases1. Sun and our partners can help you with that transition.
As you may know, MySQL is enormously popular — Google, Yahoo!, The New York Times, Nokia — a hugely diverse mix of global companies are using it for the highest scale applications imaginable. The odds are good your teams are already using it (you should ask them, or ask us — we track downloads) in its free/unsupported version. MySQL is a fast, easy-to-use and reliable database developed and marketed at a fraction of the cost of proprietary software by using an open source approach. These cost savings are passed on directly to the customer.
Savings will vary of course between companies and projects, but on average, companies are experiencing per-project savings of between $250,000 and $500,000. Larger
projects, or enterprise deployments, are expecting savings in excess of $10 million.
Real and Dramatic Savings
I'm seeing more and more CIOs formalize approval to use MySQL in deployment with a commercial subscription — backed by Sun's global support team, on a 7x24 basis, just as we support Solaris and our server and storage infrastructure. Savings will vary of course between companies and projects, but on average, companies are experiencing per-project savings of between $250,000 and $500,000. Larger projects, or enterprise deployments, are expecting savings in excess of $10 million.
In one notable instance, a customer I was recently with saw a more than 90 percent reduction vs. their proprietary alternative. The savings are real, and dramatic. So it's not surprising that CIOs are moving quickly to reduce unnecessary spend by deploying open source database technology in their datacenters.
You'll find some impressive facts and figures and price savings estimates, in these resources — a guide to lower database TCO whitepaper and the MySQL savings calculator.
If you've already begun MySQL implementation and are looking for even greater efficiency through virtualization or consolidation for your systems we've recently launched the Eco Scale for MySQL solution. It's a great alternative for those of you who are seeing massive growth in demand being driven by the deployment and adoption of new Web-based services. Especially those of you who've previously deployed ad hoc solutions that have created existing solutions that are both costly and inefficient. As a result, you've likely also seen increased administration cost and complexity, increasing cooling and power costs, a larger carbon footprint, all of which is having an impact on your precious datacenter space.
You're not the only one. We're constantly talking to customers who need innovative datacenter infrastructure alternatives to proprietary software, to get more out of existing hardware through virtualization or to consolidate into a smaller footprint for environmental or economic reasons.
Opportunities for cost savings abound. I'd be happy to have my systems engineering teams educate your staff about a whole new set of commercially-supported open source infrastructure that provides greater flexibility, innovation, choice — and massive savings. From databases, operating systems, application servers and development tools — you've got a lot of choices, even if some proprietary vendors are saying otherwise.
Jonathan Schwartz
CEO and President
Sun Microsystems
blogs.sun.com/jonathan
1 2006 Gartner RDBMS market share report
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