Database, Application and Middleware Wars

The changing dynamics of the IT industry is going to increase in the next year versus slowing down.

• Oracle's acquisitions in the last few years in the middleware space has the potential to significantly increase it's power to challenge IBM in the middleware space.
• Oracle's acquisitions in the application space the last few years allows Oracle to go toe to toe with SAP in the business applications space.
• Sun's backing and support brings a lot of power to MySQL and the web platform of LAMP.
• The open source world and Internet are changing how people think daily.
• The innovativeness of the world wide web is creating new companies at an unbelievable rate. The creativity of this space is going to change the world in ways we can't even imagine.
  

I almost see this as Oracle having two big aircraft carrier task groups one facing IBM and the other facing SAP. MySQL is like a very fast attack boat that now has a powerful nuclear submarine flying the Sun flag to protect it. Microsoft is another big aircraft carrier task group that everybody is wondering where it is going. The database, application and middleware battles that will occur over the next year is sure to change the face of the IT industry more than we can possibly imagine. This does not even include all the Internet companies like Google, MySpace, YouTube and others that are changing the world everytime we blink. Or maybe more importantly all the new little startups on the Internet that are being born every day.

I look at this like back in the day when DEC was the second largest computer company in the world and everyone was wondering if they could catch IBM. If back then you had said that in the future a PC company is going to purchase DEC, people would have thought you were crazy. I have the great luxury of traveling in the Oracle and open source worlds. In the Oracle world, I see the incredible power Oracle technology brings to large companies that have complex problems to solve. In the open source world my mind is literally boggled every week with all the incredible, incredible creativity and innovativeness that I see in Internet companies. If you look around everyone can see that rate of change in the world is accelerating. The Internet is spawning new change agents in the world at an exponential rate.