“A terrific alternative for database users”

Mike Babin, director at IBM for Worldwide Database Sales, shares his views on DB2 and the competition with GAURAV PATRA

What is your view of the Indian market as far as database use is concerned?

The Indian market is a fast-moving one and is very critical for a company like ours. Unlike other stagnant markets across the globe, the Indian market is steadily growing and we see viable business opportunities here. We are primarily focusing on data-intensive industry verticals like insurance, banking, BPO, manufacturing and government. As far as databases are concerned, this market is surely dominated by our competitor, Oracle. But now we are poised to provide an alternative to all corporate customers who use their databases.

What alternative are you talking about?

IBM’s star product DB2 is a terrific alternative for database users because it perfectly addresses the total cost of ownership issue. Customers are finding Oracle installations very expensive. We provide a low-cost product and our software also costs less. Even on the functionality front, we can claim that we provide a better solution. The effort required to support a DB2 installation is less than what is required by Oracle databases. Lastly, our product performance is standardised by all means. So we have industry-leading benchmarks for transaction processing, leading benchmarks for key ISVs like Peoplesoft or SAP. CIOs are now under tremendous pressure to reduce the cost of ownership and bring value to the business through IT, and that’s where IBM’s product has great value. We are seeing a lot of interest from our customers in DB2.

What major trends have you witnessed in database technology in recent times?

Today, data is a treasure for any business, be it the SME segment or large enterprises. In the enterprise segment, huge quantities of data are created and have to be stored somewhere in digital format. That should also be digitally managed. IBM’s key focus is the one transactional database—be it banking or retail transaction. It seems that unstructured information like faxes, e-mail messages, Web pages, etc, have great value as an intellectual asset for a company. The trend we see is to store and manage that data, and provide that data at any given point of time for different applications and to different users. We have a product for that known as IBM Content Management, which provides a perfect solution for unstructured information.

Another trend witnessed these days is government regulations. Internationally, there is tremendous emphasis on data security in the government sector. Most of the information in this sector is essentially on paper. Now different governments are realising the importance of storing the information digitally. One example is the US government, where information has to be kept, managed and verified. These government regulations are also driving the database market.

Oracle, as you just acknowledged, is the clear leader in the database segment in India. How capable is IBM of competing and challenging this dominance?

Six to seven years ago IBM did not have open-system database products. But Oracle had established itself as a provider of database software on the Unix platform. It’s only from that time that we actually introduced our first open-system database product, which means we started with a zero market share. Since then we have been constantly growing and increasing both our market presence and share because of the reasons I mentioned earlier. Not surprisingly, recent Gartner-Dataquest reports mentioned IBM as the No 1 relational database provider.

IBM considers all enterprise applications equally important. In India as well as the rest of the world, we are focusing heavily on working with application providers, ISVs and software vendors to educate people about DB2. Our partnership strategy, which we started with our open-system database business, is vital for us. As a matter of fact, a major chunk of Oracle’s revenues comes from these application providers. And Oracle itself is into the applications business. Unlike our competitor, we are not in the applications business, and that’s why our business interest does not clash with that of our partners. We are in the middleware business. We just provide the building blocks that the application providers need. This strategy is going to drive IBM’s growth.

In India we are focusing on the SME segment, which has tremendous growth potential. We are also introducing DB2 Express in India very soon and we are quite excited about it. The company has released DB2 Express midmarket-aimed database software with a price tag that’s around half of what IBM initially estimated for the product. Available for Linux and Windows, DB2 Express is intended to offer easy installation and tools for simplifying administration, features IBM hopes will attract businesses with small IT departments. The company is also targeting the product at independent software vendors who can build DB2 Express into their own applications.