January 11th, 2008
Virgin makes mySQL look bigger
Virgin Mobile’s decision to base its SMS database on mySQL is an important milestone for the GPL database.
This was not Virgin’s first entry into open source. Virgin Mobile also runs Red Hat.
Virgin Mobile is a scaled enterprise. Even though SMS messages are short, integrating them through a carrier is not a simple deal. By using mySQL to do it, and buying mySQL support contracts, Virgin Mobile is calling mySQL enterprise-ready.
That’s important because mySQL has come from the ground-up, under the GPL. It has not always been considered to be scaled, and enterprise class.
In fact many other open source database systems, such as Ingres, make this point explicitly in their sales calls. We’re both open source and enterprise-class, they’ll say.
Which is beginning to sound like a Bill Richardson campaign speech, but I digress.
The word enterprise, as in enterprise database, is almost deliberately vague. It is generally taken to mean a database system scaled for companies with multiple locations and thousands of employees.
But many Web sites, with very few employees, need these kinds of scaled databases. Once people rush to the rail for your social networking offering, you don’t want your database hampering the ability to bring in business.
So the dilemma for mySQL was to support both the small, freebie clients it grew up with while scaling to fit the larger market dominated now by Oracle.
The Virgin Mobile deal doesn’t mean the job is done, but it shows progress in that direction is continuing.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to Linux and Open Source via Email alerts or RSS.
