EU Oks Oracle Acquisition of Sun and MySQL

22 January 2010 Geoff Zeiss

After a three-month investigation by the European Commission, the EU has decided that the acquisition has the “potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products.”  Of particular concern was Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL with reportedly 11 million installations.

By buying Sun, Oracle acquires the world’s most widely-used open source database MySQL, which Sun bought in 2008.  The Commission concluded that Oracle and MySQL dominate different database market segments. For example, Oracle dominates in the high end, where it competes with IBM and SQL Server and where MySQL has virtually no presence.  The Commission also found that there are viable alternatives to MySQL, for example, PostgreSQL (which underlies PostGIS) and which is a more competitive open source alternative to Oracle’s RDBMS than MySQL. 

In the spatial market, Oracle Spatial and PostGIS are probably the leading spatial database engines, but many RDBMSs now support spatial data including MySQL, SQLServer 2008, Ingres, and several IBM RDBMSs.

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss has more than 20 years experience in the geospatial software industry and 15 years experience developing enterprise geospatial solutions for the utilities, communications, and public works industries. His particular interests include the convergence of BIM, CAD, geospatial, and 3D. In recognition of his efforts to evangelize geospatial in vertical industries such as utilities and construction, Geoff received the Geospatial Ambassador Award at Geospatial World Forum 2014. Currently Geoff is Principal at Between the Poles, a thought leadership consulting firm. From 2001 to 2012 Geoff was Director of Utility Industry Program at Autodesk Inc, where he was responsible for thought leadership for the utility industry program. From 1999 to 2001 he was Director of Enterprise Software Development at Autodesk. He received one of ten annual global technology awards in 2004 from Oracle Corporation for technical innovation and leadership in the use of Oracle. Prior to Autodesk Geoff was Director of Product Development at VISION* Solutions. VISION* Solutions is credited with pioneering relational spatial data management, CAD/GIS integration, and long transactions (data versioning) in the utility, communications, and public works industries. Geoff is a frequent speaker at geospatial and utility events around the world including Geospatial World Forum, Where 2.0, MundoGeo Connect (Brazil), Middle East Spatial Geospatial Forum, India Geospatial Forum, Location Intelligence, Asia Geospatial Forum, and GITA events in US, Japan and Australia. Geoff received Speaker Excellence Awards at GITA 2007-2009.

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