[dba-Tech] The battle ground

>From the early 80s to the late 90s Microsoft was the driving force of the
computer PC world. You are not there until your CEO is demonized by many.
;-)

Microsoft was definitely the power to beat or at least work with. As
Microsoft was the King of desktops but relevance of the desktops was slowly
disappearing...is it the end of the PC world?

It will not just the end of the PC world but also the end of the big servers
and their big software. Microsoft has long had a presence in that market but
the real King of that software world has been Oracle and its servers have
been Sun and HP and IBM.

These server companies have been on a buying spree so to position themselves
just to survive the next computer world shift. Oracle bought up Sun and its
Open Source MySQL (which has seriously hurt the creditability of MySQL), IBM
has been moving its markets into more nitch product lines and HP appears to
currently be on the ropes.

What is replacing all these areas of the computer world? Two major shifts;
web based applications and the Open Source databases. 

1. All the newer applications have been moving to the web, this is a world
where the PC holds little relevance. The browser is becoming all-important
and with the arrival of free and Open Source browsers, the price of entry is
also free. Proprietary software has not been surviving as the Open Standards
model has been pushing these products aside.

2. Open Source database products. The server market has long been dominated
with big hardware and the software that supports it; mostly Oracle. The
costs to get into this market has been astronomically expensive. Enter
server capable OS DB like Postgres, new versions of MySQL and the whole
NoSQL group of products. The NoSQL products have replaced the big servers in
two ways; one they are Open Source and free, two; they can run on
inexpensive hardware as they are fully distributive.

The link following this preamble describes the players in this new world.
There is hardly a mention of the old PC desktops and big Servers.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/tech-wars-2012-amazon-apple-google-f
acebook

Jim