Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker » MySQL: Stanford GSB case study (Part II)

October 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MySQL: Stanford GSB case study (Part II)

TAGS: Open Source

Christof Wittig, CEO of db4o, and former student at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, has written an excellent follow-up to his original MySQL case study.

Christof does a great job of tracing the challenges facing MySQL, as well as the way the company has successfully responded to many of them. He also identifies an interesting, parallel trend to how Linux spread:

The first enterprise-wide users of MySQL were Internet-enabled start-up companies which turned to free open source software stacks such as LAMP to get their business off the ground. These companies not only saw the lower cost advantages of open source, but also valued the ability to modify parts of the underlying software to differentiate themselves in their own markets. Over time, some of these companies grew into very successful and profitable large enterprises, including Google, Yahoo!, and Sabre Holding’s Travelocity.

In more conventional companies, initially only peripheral installations of MySQL were used to run websites or departmental solutions. Fueled by positive experience, companies then slowly started to “scale out” MySQL into other departments. With MySQL’s growing brand recognition and enhanced service offerings, even more conservative users started to look into MySQL. MySQL actively promoted the intra-company dissemination of its products.

In 2002, it was absolutely the case that Linux was an "edge of the network" phenomenon. Not anymore. It's everywhere, just as I expect MySQL will be.

And, somewhat humorously, as MySQL has added functionality and tweaked its business model to target traditional enterprises, it's starting to get complaints, as Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, notes:

For the first time we have customers that are complaining. And we used to have no customers complaining. It's a question of expectations: When you have a five-star hotel and you charge virtually nothing, then nobody will complain - even if there is something to complain about. Now as we charge more, they also demand more and we pay even more attention to their requests.

This is obviously a good problem to have.

Christof's case study isn't yet publicly available, but watch the URL above for when it is.

Posted by Matt Asay on October 30, 2006 09:10 AM

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