WHITEPAPER. Dollars and Sense: Using Ingres Database. by deb woods, Ingres Corporation

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1 WHITEPAPER Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database by deb woods, Ingres Corporation

2 table of contents: 3 Executive Summary 4 How Over-Engineered Software Increases TCO 4 Open Source Technology: Growing Up the Stack 5 The Advantages of Open Source 6 Multifaceted Cost Savings of Open Source 7 tco Savings Associated with Open Source 8 Ingres Corporation: A Leader in Open Source Software and Support 9 Measuring the TCO Benefits of Ingres Database 9 reduced Database License Fees 9 Less Downtime through Increased Reliability 10 reduced Hardware Costs through Improved Performance 10 Lower Administrative, Engineering, and Support Costs 11 Ingres Database: Easier to Use, Less Expensive to Support 13 Conclusion About the Author Deb Woods is vice president of product management at Ingres. She provides leadership regarding future product direction and is responsible for the Ingres products in the marketplace. She is also responsible for Ingres Learning Services and the Ingres VIP program. She has been committed to bringing open source solutions to the marketplace for the past eight years and continues this endeavor through Ingres. Deb has held numerous leadership positions in the technology industry, contributing in developing leading strategies for product development. Most recently, Deb was the vice president of product management at Red Hat, where she worked with customers and partners to bring the Red Hat Enterprise Linux products to the marketplace. Table of Contents ::

3 Executive Summary Forrester Research estimates that 80% of application requirements can be met using only 25% of the features and functionality that closed source database applications offer; while the Gartner Group states that open source technologies provide significant opportunities to lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increase Return on Investment (ROI). Adding open source software to the data center has become an increasingly strategic way for CIOs to reduce the total cost of their systems infrastructure, with TCO savings in excess of 75% or more. Gartner identifies Ingres Database as an exceptional open source database that has the necessary functionality to support mission-critical systems, such as rollback, redo, database mirroring and more. Ingres has helped thousands of enterprises worldwide reduce TCO and increase ROI by eliminating database license costs; minimizing system downtime; reducing hardware expenditures; lowering administration, engineering, and support costs; and providing a single platform for development, proof of concepts, and production. :: Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database ::

4 How Over-Engineered Software Increases Total Cost of Ownership For years, proprietary database companies have consistently added new features that are seldom, if ever, used. In fact, Forrester Research 1 estimates that 80% of application requirements can be met using only 25% of the features and functionality that closed source database applications offer. Historically, the market has been dominated by a few large incumbents, each consumed with introducing upgraded proprietary technology at ever-inflated prices, on an almost-annual basis. Paradoxically, the continued addition of unnecessary features results in overly complicated systems that suffer from the bottlenecks of bloatware. Slower, resource intensive, and difficult to maintain, these types of systems tend to perpetuate costly downtime, and require significantly more end-user education and IT support. Worse still, most database users today would prefer simpler, easier-to-use database products, and most IT professionals would prefer database products that are easier to support. Nevertheless, IDC 2 reports that the market for relational database management systems (RDBMS) is growing at a healthy clip. In 2007, global sales spiked 12.6% to $18.8 billion compared to $16.7 billion in Just as Linux helped drive down the price of proprietary UNIX servers by offering lower-cost, more reliable, commodity servers, many believe that the time is ripe for a change in this burgeoning database market. While open source database products make up only a small percentage of that $18.8 billion figure, Forrester Research recently published a report showing that the open source database market currently stands at $850 million and is expected to grow by more than 40% to $1.2 billion by Obviously, more enterprises are deploying open source databases than ever before, with many planning mission-critical deployments in the coming years. Open Source Technology: Growing Up the Stack Open source refers to software that is distributed with its source code so it can be modified and freely redistributed by end-user organizations and vendors to meet unique business needs. According to the nonprofit corporation Open Source Initiative (OSI), The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory [and proprietary] vendor lock-in. Some organizations are reluctant to integrate open source technologies into their IT infrastructures because they fear it represents a sacrifice of functionality, support, performance, or security. Yet, the Gartner Group 3 predicts that 95% of the Global 2000 will be using open source software by the end of this year. Further, at the beginning of 2008, Gartner predicted that, By 2012, 80% of all commercial software will include elements of open source technology. The 1 Information Week, Open Source Databases Adopted for New Apps, July 21, The Unix Guardian, Volume 8, Number 26, July 10, Gartner press release, Gartner Highlights Key Predictions for IT Organisations and Users in 2008 and Beyond, January 31, 2008 Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database ::

5 report goes on to say, Many open source technologies are mature, stable, and well supported. They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment. A recent IDC 4 study corroborates those predictions by finding that open source software is being used by 71% of the developers in the world and is in production at 54% of their organizations. Fully half of these global developers claim that use of open source is increasing in their organizations. IDC predicts that open source will play a role in the life cycle of every major software category at some time and that open source will fundamentally change the value proposition of packaged software for businesses everywhere. Open source technologies provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment. The Advantages of Open Source Corporate acceptance of Linux laid a foundation, both technically and culturally, for the broader adoption of open source technology. Now, leading organizations are using open source database technology to further increase operational efficiencies by driving down the TCO for new and existing applications. By integrating open source solutions into the IT infrastructure, enterprises can keep development costs low while proving in new solutions. In fact, choosing an open source solution that can scale from proof-of-concept to production is key in minimizing both risk and cost. Other TCO benefits of open source include: Zero upfront licensing fees Reduced development and marketing costs through free community participation Complete visibility into all product capabilities, flaws, and roadmaps Power to influence or drive product roadmaps Extensive scalability Pay-as-you-go commercial support and training Significantly lower support and maintenance costs High levels of innovation and flexibility A scalable business model that can be modified to meet changing requirements as your business grows or slows Additionally, when you choose open source, you say yes to standards-based technologies and no to costly vendor lock-ins. Essentially, open source returns control of IT to the CIO and provides more choice about who you want to work with, and where and how to allocate your cost savings. 4 BusinessWire, IDC Reveals the Real Impact of Open Source, August 14, 2006 Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database ::

6 Multifaceted Cost Savings of Open Source The commercial open source business model is creating radical shifts in the ROI/TCO decision-making process for enterprises everywhere. In traditional ROI, every software initiative needs to increase revenue or reduce costs by more than the dollars spent on the solution. Thus, to achieve positive ROI, the higher the investment, the bigger the return must be. Alternatively, many organizations have experienced the extreme cost and frustration of negative ROI by choosing a closed source RDBMS solution. Consider just such an example presented by open source pundit Matt Asay 5 in the ECM space, you pay [a proprietary ECM vendor] $1 million for your system, another $3-4 million for consultants to make it work and set up the workflows. Six months later, your business processes change and no one can afford to reinvest in the consultants to make the system work again. So the system falls into disuse. And that ROI is negative $4-5 million. What a waste. In traditional TCO, one must consider the financial statement of deploying the solution throughout its entire lifecycle. For optimum TCO, a database solution must not only have lower (or no) upfront costs, but must also slash cost of operation throughout the entire lifecycle. So in addition to considering the upfront cost of software, you must also factor hardware, staffing, training, and downtime into your TCO calculations. Interestingly, in a study conducted by IDC 6, software cost represented only 15% of the TCO of deploying an Oracle database application. Hardware, staffing, training, and downtime all contributed more to the TCO than the software. Figure 1: TCO Breakdown of Database Application 15% 17% Hardware Staffing 28% 21% Training Downtime 19% Software 5 Matt Asay, Sipping rather than gulping down your IT, May 02, IDC, Maximizing the Business Value of Enterprise Database Applications on a UNIX Platform Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database ::

7 In a study on the commercial adoption of open source, the 451 Group 7 reports the following key findings: Lower cost remains one of the top reasons for open source software adoption. Saving money on software licenses is seen as the greatest opportunity for cost savings (even though licenses often represent only a fraction of the total cost of an IT project over its life time). While organizations often begin their exploration of open source with the goal of obtaining cost-saving benefits, they soon find that other benefits may well outweigh the financial objectives. After open source software adoption, organizations find that the primary benefit shifts to flexibility. TCO Savings Associated with Open Source Software license 73% Maintenance contracts 54% License management 46% Support 27% Development 27% Productivity 27% Professional services 19% Operations 16% Hardware 13% Testing 12% Staffing 12% Training 10% The 451 Group, Cost Conscious: A practical guide for understanding and calculating the financial benefits of open source for enterprise IT projects, Report 2, November 2006 Without a doubt, cost savings associated with open source databases are very real. In fact, Forrester Research 8 reports that typical cost savings range from 20% to 55% over a three-year period, depending on the selected open source database product, the size of the deployment, and the complexity of the applications supported. Yet, as the 451 Group study suggests, flexibility becomes the biggest benefit over the lifecycle of the solution and flexibility manifests in multiple ways: Shorter prove in cycles gives you more flexibility about when to begin. With open source, you know the product roadmap, so you can choose to engage earlier in the process. 7 The 451 Group, Cost Conscious: A practical guide for understanding and calculating the financial benefits of open source for enterprise IT projects, Report 2, November Data Management News, Forrester: Open source databases should be part of every database management system strategy, July 30, 2008 Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database ::

8 Because open source enables more people from a variety of backgrounds to get involved in the development and testing stages, there are more eyes on the code, more tests being conducted in more environments, and more stresses on the system. Ultimately, this results in a more stable design. By having so many people involved upfront, bugs are found and worked out earlier in the process which results in less downtime and customer pain. Ingres Corporation: A Leader in Open Source Software and Support The open source DBMSs are generally missing some or all the necessary functionality to support mission-critical systems, such as rollback, redo, database mirroring and other capabilities. Ingres is the exception, as it does contain the necessary functionality. Donald Feinberg The Gartner Group 9 When you seek an open source database application to support your mission-critical processes, you must be sure to choose a commercial open source company with a history of success in enterprise-wide, mission-critical environments. To be considered commercial, the open source technology must be supported by a financially viable entity one with a history of success in mission-critical environments, that provides global 24x7 support services, and that can guarantee technical performance and availability. These key features distinguish a commercial open source company from an open source project. While there are many open source projects, there are relatively few truly open source companies. Alfresco, Red Hat, and Ingres are all examples of commercial operations that make it possible for the enterprise to consume open source technologies with long-term confidence. First created as a research project at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1970s, Ingres has grown to help manage the most demanding enterprise applications of Fortune 500 companies. Built on more than 30 years of technology investment, Ingres is a recognized leader in commercial open source that provides the enterprise with proven reliability as well as value and flexibility to over 10,000 enterprise customers. Core Ingres technology forms the foundation, not only for Ingres Database technology, but for other industry-leading RDBMS systems as well. Ingres Database is proven in large deployments, across all industries around the world. Ingres Database offers high-volume transaction processing, high availability, multi-platform support, and security for mission-critical application deployments. Ingres customers run a range of mission-critical business systems on our database, including the processing of billions of dollars in financial transactions, the management of large production lines, and the global scheduling of large aviation fleets. Ingres provides dedicated, professional support from online access to on-site support on a 24x7 basis to our enterprise customers and ISVs in 20 languages and more than 50 countries. 9 Open Source Database Management Systems are Maturing and Usable, January 10, 2008 Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database ::

9 Measuring the TCO Benefits of Ingres Database Many organizations have found that Ingres Database delivers cost savings in many different areas. Five common cost-savings themes emerge throughout our customers experiences, and these themes indicate major sources of cost savings that your business can expect to achieve as well: Elimination of software licenses and associated costs Less downtime through increased reliability Reduced hardware costs through improved performance Lower administrative, engineering, and support costs The simplicity of a single platform for development, proof of concepts, and production Reduced Database License Fees As Figure 2 shows, when you choose Ingres, you will automatically reduce your TCO by at least 42% by simply removing the costly license-fee component. Ingres Database SQL Server Sybase ASE Oracle enterprise Edition Enterprise Edition Enterprise Edition License $0 $24,999 $24,995 $47,500 1st Year Support $7,995 $8,299 $5,499 $10,450 2nd Year Support $7,995 $8,299 $5,499 $10,450 3rd Year Support $7,995 $8,299 $5,499 $10,450 3 Year TCO $23,985 $49,896 $41,492 $78,850 Compared to Ingres 52% 42% 70% Figure 2: A 3-year comparative look at licensing and support costs Less Downtime through Increased Reliability System downtime is often the most expensive cost of any application. As businesses move from batch processing to real-time enterprise systems running critical customer service or online sales systems, the impact of any outage negatively impacts competitive advantage and profitability through lost productivity, lost revenue, increased call center load, increased IT costs and demands, and dissatisfied customers. While these variables are difficult to factor into a lifetime TCO metric, they are extremely important to consider nonetheless. For larger organizations, savings can be measured in millions of dollars per year. Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database ::

10 Reduced Hardware Costs through Improved Performance Today, Intel-based commodity servers can lower infrastructure cost substantially over large proprietary hardware solutions such as MPP, VAX, and Unix based platforms. Because Ingres Database is high-performance, it can typically run on such lower-cost commodity hardware. Noel Yuhanna 10, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, notes that cost savings seen with this approach vary with server type, but enterprises can save 25 % or more. Lower Administrative, Engineering, and Support Costs A combination of low complexity, high reliability, and a wealth of support resources significantly lowers the cost of developing, maintaining, and supporting database applications using Ingres Database. The elegant and uncomplicated architecture has numerous benefits that positively impact your bottom line: System administration in Ingres is easier and less expensive. Regardless of skill level, and Ingres administrator will undoubtedly accomplish more in less time. Engineers are far less likely to make mistakes. Complex closed systems often harbor hard-tofind bugs that are not apparent until deployment. Uncomplicated systems help reduce down time. Non-complex tasks can be allocated to less expensive DBAs, helping enhance overall productivity and cost-effectiveness of your IT team. Additionally, Ingres delivers support and service offerings through our online service delivery platform known as the Ingres Service Network (ISN) which helps eliminate time-consuming browsing, poring through often unrelated information, and waiting for expert help from outside. Unlike traditional support and service offerings, the ISN is a collaborative forum open to all members of our community, including our customers and ISVs. This network delivers personalized and proactive service and support using advanced knowledge management, personalization, and collaborative technologies: ISN contains an aggregated index of relevant Ingres product information, including forums, previous cases, FAQ documents, knowledge base articles, and technical documentation. Ask questions and get answers in public forums. Get live, instant Support from an Ingres Support engineer. Share information with the Ingres community and participate in community discussions. ISN provides proactive services to help you manage your solutions as well as providing remote dba services to help reduce your overall cost. 10 Forrester Research, Top Ten Ways to Reduce Your Enterprise Database Costs, 2008 Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database :: 10

11 Ultimately, using Ingres Database, a mid-size company could free up 25-50% of an experienced database administrator s time and improve the efficiency of the development team by 15%. Assuming a team of five developers and one administrator, savings could be in the region of $50,000 in loaded salary time and $10,000 in reduced training costs. Figure 3: A sample TCO calculator from The 451 Group that factors the costs and savings of technology products over time Ingres Database: Enterprise-Strength Software that is Easier to Use, Less Expensive to Support Before there was Sybase, before there was SQL Server, there was Ingres. Ingres Database is a proven, commercially supported, open source relational database management system that can reduce your IT costs as well as your time to value. Ingres continues to drive both technological and business innovation, providing the enterprise features you need at an open source price point. Product highlights include: Security features for Sarbanes Oxley / HIPPA Compliancy. Ingres supports roles, role separation, and Kerberos authentication to meet the demands for increased data protection. Ingres also provides the robust auditing features many current regulations require to protect your sensitive data. Web 2.0 Support. Ingres provides the features needed for today s web-based business applications. These include support for complex, distributed transactions, XML support, advanced development and flexible deployment for service oriented architecture (SOA). Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database :: 11

12 Scalability. Large tables can be divided into partitions, based on range, a list of values or a hash value to improve performance. The table appears as a single entity to users, but access is improved by eliminating partitions for data retrieval. Ingres supports multiple levels of sub-partitions to give you the ability to design tables to match your usage requirements. Ingres Database also helps manage growing amounts of data in a cost-effective manner using a variety of compression algorithms. High Performance. To fully exploit the capabilities of SMP and multi-core platforms, Ingres processes queries in parallel across all available CPU resources, which can dramatically improve the performance of your queries. Multilingual Applications. As businesses expand beyond national borders, the ability to store and present information in multiple languages is rapidly becoming a requirement for any database. Ingres supports all facets of Unicode, which lets you store data in multiple languages in a single database. Flexible Backup and Recovery. Data integrity is provided by transaction journaling and the ability to back up data online or offline. Recovery can be complete to a specific point in time for the entire database, or for a more confined set of data. High Availability. Information in Ingres can be centrally located or distributed across geographically dispersed servers using sophisticated multi-master replication to provide high availability failover sites or workload distribution. Ingres can also run on clusters of servers, providing transparent high availability and as well as scalability benefits. Backward Compatibility. Everything changes over time. However, with Ingres, your applications won t need to change when you upgrade your database. Our commitment to backward compatibility ensures that programs written for Ingres will continue to work unchanged with newer versions of Ingres. In addition, database upgrades occur in place. There is no requirement to unload and reload your data when upgrading your Ingres software. Extensive Development platform options. Ingres supports development with JDBC, ODBC,.NET, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, and Eclipse remote data connectivity, so developers can use a wide range of development tools to build applications that leverage Ingres and protect your investment in your staff s existing skills. In addition, Ingres provides tremendous savings for your organization while reducing overall project risk by enabling your developers to proceed directly from proof of concept to production without need for application modification. Extensive Platform Support. Ingres runs on virtually every popular operating system, including Linux, Windows, VMS and many varieties of UNIX. Multi-platform support gives you the ability to choose the most appropriate system vendor, increasing your flexibility. Easy-to-use tools. Ingres includes a sophisticated, GUI-based tool, Visual DBA, for remote administration. In addition, many popular database management tools such as Toad, Nagios, SQuirreL support Ingres Database. Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database :: 12

13 Best Support in the Industry. Ingres support organization offers 24x7 follow-the-sun support with one of the highest satisfaction ratings in the industry. In addition, Ingres supports our products for an unprecedented 15 years to help minimize disruption ensure stability and security of your environment. Conclusion Adding open source software to the data center has become an increasingly strategic way for CIOs to reduce the total cost of their systems infrastructure TCO savings in excess of 75% or more with the dollar savings ranging from $250,000 to several million dollars. For thousands of companies worldwide, Ingres has proven lower TCO by: Reducing database licensing costs Cutting system downtime Reducing hardware expenditure Lowering administration, engineering, and support costs Providing a single platform for development, proof of concepts and finally production Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database :: 13

14 NOTES Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database :: 14

15 NOTES Dollars and Sense: Lower TCO and Increase ROI Using Ingres Database :: 15

16 About Ingres Corporation Ingres Corporation is a leading provider of open source database management software and support services. Ingres powers customer success with the flexibility, cost savings, and innovation that are hallmarks of an open source deployment. Ingres supports its customers with a vibrant community and world class support, globally. Based in Redwood City, California, Ingres has major development, sales, and support centers throughout the world, and more than 10,000 customers in the United States and internationally. For more information, visit INGRES CORPORATION : 500 ARGUELLO STREET : SUITE 200 : REDWOOD CITY, CALIFORNIA PHONE : FAX : : For more information, contact info@ingres.com 2008 Ingres Corporation. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Ingres is a trademark of Ingres Corporation in the United States and in other countries. All other trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. WP-308A