Will Open Source Databases Make PLM Affordable?

Budget and cost. These are important elements of every IT solution. PLM is not an exclusion from this list. There are lots of debates about PLM systems cost lately. Few days ago, I was discussing one element of PLM system total cost of ownership related to “up-front cost” – The Future battle of PLM upfront cost. Move to services / subscription model is clearly one of transformation in PLM TCO. Thinking more about PLM cost structure, I wanted to point on the cost of database licenses. My hunch, the majority of PLM software today runs on enterprise  RDBMS platforms such as Oracle and MS SQL Server.

My attention was caught by the following article Feds Move To Open Source Databases Pressures Oracle on IW Gov blog. The affordability of open source database solutions has government IT attention. I specially liked the beginning of the article

Under implacable pressure to slash spending, government agencies are increasingly embracing open source, object-relational database software at the expense of costly, proprietary database platforms. That’s putting new pressure on traditional enterprise software providers, including Oracle, to refine their product lineups as well as their licensing arrangements.

Future in the article, there is an assessment how much companies can save as a result of moving to open source database solutions such as PostgreSQL.

Moving to open source software can help agencies slice database costs by as much as 80% because open source providers aren’t hamstrung by the conventional business and licensing practices employed by large database companies such as Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and Sybase, according to Boyajian. “The traditional, burdensome licensing practices of the big proprietary guys have really started to put new kinds of pressure on government agencies,” he said. “Most of the licensing firms have come up with very inventive ways to make sure the price per year goes up and not down, and that’s in direct conflict with the way government agencies are trying to operate now.”

What is my conclusion? I smell the change towards free and/or low cost software. It comes with broader use of open source and expansion of service based business models. The combination may work as well. For those companies that feel comfortable with open source, it can provide a significant cut in IT expenses. It would be interesting to see if existing PLM providers will roll out a support for open source databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL in a near future. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg