A Guide to Lower Database TCO

A recent Computerworld article, 'MySQL Breaks Into the Data Center' revealed how MySQL has become the world's most popular open source database and why corporations intent on lowering their cost of operations are using it to further commoditize their IT infrastructure.

MySQL reduces the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of database software by:
· Reducing database licensing costs by over 90%
· Cutting systems downtime by 60%
· Lowering hardware expenditure by 70%
· Reducing administration, engineering and support costs by up to 50%

Other experts are highlighting what many believe is a new era of databases. In the Computerworld article, Charlie Garry from the Meta Group is confident that: "the future of the database market will be the standardization on MySQL."

After harvesting huge efficiencies from using open source software such as Linux and Apache, many companies are now targeting their database infrastructure for the next round of cost savings through commoditization. Indeed, savvy IT managers are exploring the use of an entire enterprise open source software stack known as LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) as a way to further improve operational efficiency.

Measuring The TCO Benefits Of MySQL

Major corporations have found that MySQL delivers costs savings in many different areas of their business. The four major sources of cost savings that you can expect to see in your business are:

1. Reducing Database License Fees. A study by Meta Group into comparative database costs shows that MySQL can be at least 90% less expensive than products from other vendors.

2. Better Reliability Avoids Expensive Downtime. System downtime is often the most expensive cost of any application. As businesses have moved from batch processing to real-time enterprise systems running critical customer service or online sales systems, the impact of any outage directly impacts the bottom line.

3. Improved Performance Reduces Hardware Expenditure. By improving performance, MySQL applications can typically be run on lower cost, commodity hardware such as Intel based Linux servers. In eWeek's performance tests, compared to Microsoft SQL Server and IBM's DB2 7.2, MySQL was three times faster. IDC estimates that deploying on Intel Linux will reduce hardware costs by about 60%. MySQL's efficient performance can enable an additional 20% in savings resulting in nearly 70% lower hardware-associated costs than running Oracle on Unix.

4. Reduced Administration, Engineering and Support Costs. A combination of low complexity, high reliability and a wealth of support resources lowers the cost of developing, maintaining and supporting database applications using MySQL. Using MySQL, a mid-size company could easily free up 25-50% of the time of an experienced database administrator and improve the efficiency of development teams by 15%. Assuming a team of five developers and one administrator, savings would be in the region of $50,000 in loaded salary time and $10,000 in reduced training costs.

This article is based on a complete white paper in which you can learn how organizations such as Cox Communications, NASA, Sabre Holdings and Yahoo! have improved database reliability, performance and TCO using MySQL. You'll also see how these techniques can apply in your organization.

Get the full white paper at http://www.mysql.com/tco (http://www.mysql.com/tco)