Mythbusting: SQL Server isn’t a market leader

In terms of big customers, Microsoft have been playing catch up with regard to databases. Some of our competitors have had a much stronger foothold into the enterprise space, with huge deployments in huge customers. That’s probably where this myth originates. But the fact is that we’ve been closing the gap for some years now.

A 2009 report on database market share showed Microsoft in second place to Oracle. One key thing to note though is that the rankings were determined by revenue. Given the differences in the cost of SQL licenses and our competitors, is it surprising that Microsoft would be behind, particularly taking into account the huge discounts offered to charitable customers? If you look at the same data in terms of units shipped, from that same report, Microsoft has shipped more units than IBM and Oracle combined.

Gartner’s latest magic quadrant put Microsoft firmly in the leaders quadrant, above all the others in terms of ability to execute.

Myth: busted!