A successful go-for-the-throat threat normally requires the affected company to rethink its business model. Oracle is unlikely to consider this seriously, but it could try to tinker with some of its sales and business practices in order to stem the tide.
So which of the three is IBM's DB2 migration strategy? Frankly, it is very unlikely to be a go-for-the-throat threat. Even with the company's innovative sales approach and the significant improvements to DB2, it is highly improbable that the next few years will witness a massive array of existing large-enterprise Oracle implementations switching over to IBM. Overall IT conservatism, as well as the "stickiness" of Oracle's existing customer relationships, also makes this scenario highly unlikely.
On the other hand, IBM's strategy is at least an ankle-biter today and, if executed properly, has the potential to become a serious leg-chewer over the next year or two. The fact is that information architectures as a whole are becoming more and more important to customer success -- in some cases, even more important than enterprise applications. Therefore, even minor shifts in database usage or administration methodologies could mean major advantages in upcoming cloud and BI implementations.
And that's the real message of IBM's well-thought-out push to encourage Oracle migration. Now, enterprise database customers can be assured that if worse comes to worst, there is indeed a credible and innovative alternative to Oracle for applications ranging from existing very-large-scale business-critical solutions to effectively moving into cloud computing. That, for savvy IT buyers, may be the biggest takeaway from "the rest of the story."
IBM is a client of David Hill and the Mesabi Group. Please note that this blog is a collaboration with my good friend Wayne Kernochan of Infostructure Associates. Wayne kindly agreed that I could use the piece on my blog. Wayne can be reached at Infostructure Associates.
