News Review: Ingres Open Source Buyout from CA
Yet another twist in the Ingres saga, as CA float it off independently. But have CA forgotten what they use Ingres for?
It seems only yesterday when I was commenting on the decision by CA to Open Source the Ingres relational database (see Ingres Open Source = Graveyard or Second Life ), in July 2004.
At the time, I considered that there was significant business logic in the decision. A genuine heavyweight Open Source DBMS would be able to compete with the likes of MySQL, with the ability to handle massive volumes of data. On the business side, revenue would come from commercial support, even though the software itself could be free.
Now the world has changed again with the Management buyout of Ingres Corp from CA.
The new Ingres Corp
I suspect that the writing was on the wall for Ingres as a result of the reorganisation last April, when Ingres became part of the "others" division. Now, however, CA have sold the product and many of the staff to a Silicon Valley private equity firm, which itself has only been going for a year.
However, one of the most impressive things about this transaction is the management team, which reads like a "who's who" of database heavyweights:
Ingres Corp is now a company of 100 employees (most of whom are ex-CA, who have moved across to the new organisation), with plans to grow it significantly.
- Dave Dargo (CTO): 15 years Oracle, including responsibility for the Oracle on (OpenSource) Linux programme.
- Emma McGratten (Engineering): 11 years running the CA Ingres engineering team.
- Andy Allbritten (Support & Services): ex-Oracle VP for Support and Services.
- Dev Mukherjee (Marketing): ex-Microsoft Servers General manager for Marketing.
In addition the OpenRoad development tools (which are tightly coupled with Ingres itself) and other products like the Enterprise gateway are also included. Even the Follow the Sun support teams are moving. However, OpenRoad will not be Open Sourced yet (try saying that in a hurry!)
We are promised that aggressive marketing will start soon. Coincidentally (?) the announcement was made on the same day that Microsoft released the latest version of SQL Server. That is called timing !
Reactions
Looking at the Ingres Newsgroups, there is a mixed reaction.
One DBA complained that his company was just in the middle of negotiating a move from the earlier closed-source versions of Ingres to the new OpenSource Ingres R3, just as the announcement was made.
Others responded positively, since many had complained in the past that CA had not really marketed, or put R&D into Ingres. With the new company there will have to be a strong focus.
And existing customers should still be supported, often by the same people as before.
CA's decision
Whilst this appears, in my opinion, to be very good news for Ingres, I am slightly puzzled by why CA have agreed to it: Don't they realise that a huge percentage of their software is deeply reliant on the Ingres database ?
Unicenter R11 is due to be launched, which uses Ingres as it's only relational database. Won't the marketing people at CA feel a bit exposed at seeing their products dependent upon a non-CA database?
Challenges
In the past, one of significant aspects of the Ingres sales proposition was that it was being actively used and promoted within CA itself. Therefore, anyone who bought Ingres would be purchasing a product with a significant locked-in installed base, which would guarantee longevity. Now, things have changed. The "used by CA" tag no longer has the same credibility. Ingres Corp is out on it's own in the wide world, and will have to fight on it's own against the likes of MySQL.
The competition will be fierce. Oracle have just recently announced a free (yes - free!) version of Oracle Express for Linux. SQL Server has just seen a major enhancement. And MySQL is beginning to move into the big league, with an improved optimizer, views and triggers.
One big question for all "Ingressers" (if indeed that is the correct collective name) is whether the Ingres development programmers and support team will remain with the new company in the medium term.
One thing is clear to me, Ingres Corp is unlikely to have the same marketing muscle as Computer Associates. On the other hand, it should have a more focused approach to selling the product. I wish them well.
Reviewed by Dennis Adams in November 2005
