Gartner estimates Oracle holds 47.1
percent of the relational database
software market in its hands, while
IBM, the closest competitor, has 21.1
By Brian Prince ment functionality into the database percent.
IBM makes Viper 2 beta public
The public can now get a good engine and automated backup main- The two companies have been
look at DB2 Viper 2, the new- tenance. trading barbs for months over which
est incarnation of IBM’s data “The enhanced security and work- company is the dominant database
server. load management features of Viper vendor. IBM pointed to findings in a
The Armonk, N.Y., company has 2 will extend the technological lead commentary in April by Philip How-released the public beta version of that DB2 has on the competition,” ard, an analyst with Bloor Research,
the product. The beta program started said Bernie Spang, IBM’s director of who said Oracle’s highlighting of a
June 14. data servers. 17 percent gain in new license rev-
Less than a year after releasing According to IBM officials, since enues for the database and middle-Viper, IBM is promising Viper 2 will the introduction of Viper last year, ware division indicated a slowdown
expand on its predecessor by simplify- IBM’s data server business has been in the growth of Oracle’s database
ing the development and administra- on a roll, producing double-digit data- portfolio.
tion of XML in DB2 with features such base revenue growth in the first quar- IBM officials said such analyst
as a built-in SQL function that allows ter of 2007. comments illustrated IBM’s strength
users to transform XML documents However, Oracle, which is slated in the database space, but Oracle offi-using an XML style sheet. to release Oracle Database 11g in cials said they were not worried and
Other enhancements include bet- July, remains the market-share leader were confident in their company’s
ter integration of workload manage- in the database space. A report by dominance in the market. ´
RUSSIANS FROM PAGE 17 interfaces], there is more cases, it’s like a partner- estatesoftware company in
coming here because they creativity on the customer- ship. We try to build long- Santa Ana, Calif.
want business problems facing side. That leads to a term relationships with our “Russian developers are
solved and they realize better deliverable,” Adam- clients. Our objective is to creative. They have pretty
that there’s a higher level opoulos said. solve business problems strong skills in architec-
of specialization here,” he While Exigen Services is for our clients. The main ture, design and testing,”
said. based in the United States, result of our corporation is said Dmitry Loschinin,
Adamopoulos said a Russian and Eastern Euro- the business objective for president of Luxsoft, in
critical point is that the pean service our clients.” Moscow. “They have very
Russian workers won’t fol- providers are C h e r e v k o strong engineering skills,
low a specification blindly. finding the said one nota- software skills and elec-
“There’s a willingness to same trends. ble success tronic skills.” Loschinin
push back in a good way,” A n d r i y s t e m m i n g said this combination of
he said. “They challenge C h e r e v k o , from this part- skills means that Russian
what they see, they ask m a r k e t i n g nership and engineers also understand
questions to understand, department cultural con- howhardwareandsoftware
they say “no’ more than manager for nection was a work together, leading to
yes’ and they’re very cre- SoftServe, in real estate ap- much of Russian work
ative thinkers.” Lviv, Ukraine, plication that being used in embedded
He said he’s found that said the cul- enables agents systems.
R ussian developers wor k t u r a l a l i g n - NeoIT’s Davison said Russian to virtually fly Loschinin said companies
companies can help custom-
well with the Agile Alliance ment and the ers define problems. over a prop- looking for commodity pro-
methodology, which lends ability to solve e r t y t h e y’ r e gramming for well-defined
itself to effective rapid problems have led to a interested in, inspect it tasks might do better in
development. He also said series of successes for his from all angles and even India or elsewhere. But, he
that the Russian developers company in dealing with buy it online. said, “for new development,
are particularly effective on U.S. customers. He said the technology or systems where you need
jobs where their cultural “We have a good work- was incorporated into a to put a lot of things in place
sensitivity plays a major ing relationship with our larger application from beforeyoustartcoding, Rus-
role. “In areas like social partners in the U.S.,” Real Estate on the World sian talents can contribute
networking sites and [user Cherevko said. “In most Wide Web, or RE3W, a real to success.” ´
