By Rick Whiting with Charles Babcock
From InformationWeek
As horror stories about lost or stolen data abound, Oracle is gearing up to debut Oracle 10g Release 2.0, the latest version of its flagship database with improved data-management and backup capabilities. Some of the new features are also designed to help companies comply with the data-protection requirements mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulations.
Oracle began selling 10g (the "g" stands for grid computing) in February 2004, and some 30,000 customers--15% of Oracle's customer base--have upgraded to it. The company hopes 10g 2.0 will get more Oracle 9i customers to upgrade.
"I think it's a more stable release," says Forrester Research analyst Noel Yuhanna, speaking about 2.0. "Typically, customers shy away from the first release of any major upgrade."
Oracle is in a dogfight with IBM in the database market--recent Gartner numbers gave IBM a 34.1% share of the $7.8 billion worldwide relational database market in 2004, with Oracle holding a 33.7% share. Microsoft, meanwhile, has been steadily increasing its market share, reaching 20% last year. Read More
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