IBM might offer a free version of DB2 database next year

IBM might offer a free version of DB2 database next year

With Open Source, software products in the database market becoming popular, commercial vendors in this field like Oracle and Microsoft are feeling the heat. Both Oracle and Microsoft have decided to launch a free variant of their database products in the market in the coming future. And the latest to join them might be IBM, which is contemplating the possibility of offering a free version of their own DB2 software product.

Teo Wan Ping, IBM Singapore’s brand manager for information management spoke to a media group and said that the company might potentially offer a free starter edition of DB2, as part of the company’s strategy to gain mindshare for its database product. IBM currently does not offer any free version of this product and looking at their commitment to open source software, it becomes more so necessary for them to offer a free solution in database field.

IBM does provide a free Java-based Cloudscape database which they contributed to the Open Source community sometime back. However, DB2 is their prime offering in this market. Releasing a free scaled down version of this product might help IBM boost its footprint in the database market in the future as most developers prefer to upgrade to paid applications after testing their product out on a free release.

As per market statistics, Oracle currently dominates the database market with a share of around 34.1%. IBM and Microsoft follow it with 33.7 percent and 20 percent respectively.