Originally published July 20 2005
Travel search engines getting ready for Asia Pacific region
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Taking a cue from comparison portals in the U.S., travel search engines in Asia are gearing up to challenge the existing channels of travel distribution in the region. The development has already showed signs of igniting a debate over the competency of such online tools.
st salvo on Monday when it released Oracle 10g release 2, an upgrade to its "grid" database that adds better security and management.
What's new: Oracle, IBM and Microsoft are releasing major upgrades of their databases with advanced features, as a handful of open-source companies try to enter the low end of the market.
Bottom line: The entrenched database vendors are focusing on automation, simplicity and management features to stave off competition from upstart open-source companies.
More stories on databases IBM's response is code-named Viper, the next major edition of its DB2 database, due in the second half of next year.
The company intends to begin an "open beta" program in August or September for Viper, which is now being tested with a small number of customers, according to an IBM representative.
Combined, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft last year garnered more than three-quarters of the dollars spent on corporate databases, according to market researcher IDC.
But despite the big three's commanding presence, several upstart database companies are making a go at the relational database industry, counting on open-source products and business models to lure away customers.
Open-source database company MySQL reports that its revenue doubled last year, to about $25 million.
Meanwhile, since the beginning of this year three companies--Pervasive Software, EnterpriseDB and GreenPlum--have launched commercial database businesses around the PostgreSQL open-source database.
Oracle, in fact, highlighted database and database add-on sales in its strong fourth-quarter earnings report last month.
But the effects of open-source pricing and products are already being felt, according to Noel Yuhanna, an analyst at Forrester Research.
"The pressure is on and is starting to build up," Yuhanna said.
Established database vendors "will be lowering prices in large deals, probably offering more discounts just from the pressure of open source."
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