Oracle Execs See Solid Adoption Rate For 10g Database

Oracle customers will migrate to the vendor's next-generation 10g database as fast or faster than they did to the 9i database, company executives told financial analysts in New York on Thursday. About half of Oracle's customer base migrated to 9i in the two years after its June 2001 debut, and about 60% now run it.

Ten percent to 20% will adopt 10g in 2004, said Andrew Mendelsohn, senior VP of database server technologies, and "two years to get to 50% is a pretty good guess." CFO Jeff Henley predicted the adoption rate could be faster, given 10g's new capabilities. Mendelsohn also predicted that some of Oracle's database customers who now run 8i or earlier releases of the database will upgrade directly to 10g.

Oracle plans to ship the database next month. But despite repeated questions from analysts, Henley and other Oracle executives refused to disclose pricing or packaging plans.

While Oracle's database competes head to head with IBM's DB2, the Oracle executives made it clear that they intend to use 10g to counter gains by Microsoft's SQL Server database in the small- and midsize-business market. Mendelsohn argued that features in 10g that make it easier to install and manage, combined with a low total cost of ownership, make the database more competitive against SQL Server. "We want to keep Microsoft out of our accounts."