Firebird for ISVs: Business Advantages

Dmitry Kuzmenko, IBSurgeon

Learn how to turn ISV challenges into opportunities

with true open-source Firebird database engine

www.ibsurgeon.com

Why Firebird?• The open source Firebird relational database

management system performs excellently and scales impressively, from an embedded, single-user model to enterprise-wide deployments with multiple 500+Gb databases running with hundreds of simultaneous clients.

The mix of high performance, small footprint, supreme scalability, silent and simple installation and 100% royalty-free deployment make Firebird a highly attractive choice for all types of software developers and independent software vendors.

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Ready for development!Drivers:• Firebird.NET• JayBird (Java)• UIB, FIBPlus*, IBObjects*

(Delphi/C++ Builder)• FreePascal & Lazarus• PHP Firebird • FireRuby• etc

Delphi/C++Builder

*commercial softwarewww.ibsurgeon.com

Business challenges for ISV• Current challenges– Tough economy– Increased competition: MS, SAP, Oracle want

SMBs–Operation system diversity: raise of Linux and

Mac push Windows– Customers want more for the same $$– Data growth: more data

• Let’s turn challenges into opportunities with Firebird!

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Turning challenges into opportunities:Tough economics: lack of $$ and

customersChallenges• Customers cannot

afford “before recession” prices software and solutions

• At the moment some customers cannot pay at all (or does not want to pay up front)

OpportunitiesHit old market leaders:1. Drop your price with free license of

database 2. Start sell your soft as cheap

subscription: no up-front payments3. Gain market share: create free

version of application and boost adoption with free database licenses.

Bonus of the recession: now customers reveal the real value of software and zero price for database looks very attractive. Free is a very good price, indeed.

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Turning challenges into opportunities: Competition with SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, etc

Challenges• Big vendors of business

software is in tough situation too, and now aim to the smaller customers than they used to sell in: they are trying to adopt their “one size fits all” solutions to SMB and niche markets

Opportunities• Firebird is not only free, but

also self-managed and almost DBA-free database - this enables price competition not only at license level, it radically decreases TCO

• Competing with big vendors give you additional exposure and PR: “gods do not eat potato”.

Bonus of the recession: staff and expenses reduction attracts attention to pragmatic solutions, which can be maintained by existing IT department resources.

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Turning challenges into opportunities: Operation systems diversity

Challenges• Customers has heterogeneous

environments: even small office can have a mixture of Linux, Windows and Mac OS X computers and notebooks

• Customers want to migrate from Windows and Office to Linux and Open Office to reduce overall IT costs and want to migrate business software too

• Customers do not want vendor “lock-in”, they want to have choice and control

Opportunities• Firebird can be deployed at all major

platforms with no additional cost. Migration is one-step easy process: just backup and restore

• Firebird bundles perfectly with all major cross-platform frameworks: Java, PHP, Ruby, .NET/Mono, Lazarus

• Enormous opportunities to gain new customers with cross-platform solutions

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Bonus of the recession: while trying to reduce overall IT budget, companies often decideto switch to free Linux operation system and Open Office and pay part of saved money for new cross-platform business software.

Turning challenges into opportunities: High customers requirements

Challenges• Customers still want high-quality

software with rich feature set, delivered in time and for the low price

• Customers want to enhance software and IT infrastructure to match the changing needs, but want to keep these expenses low

Opportunities• Now price of custom solutions, based

on free tools and free database, can be competitive with big vendors software, and better satisfy needs of niche markets and customers with special and/or high demands

• Open source based solutions are much better prepared for changes and enchantments

Bonus of using open-source:“One size fits all” software from big vendors is hardly adopted for specific needs, and never been 100% adopted for the needs of particular customer, so they are giving up niche markets, due to implied license and patents costs involved.

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Turning challenges into opportunities: Data growth

Challenge• Data growth across all customer

segments: small and medium business, enterprise and web data

• Big databases requires very expensive hardware to operate at adequate level

• Big databases requires outrageously expensive licenses to run at already expensive hardware

Opportunities• Firebird supports databases up to

32Tb: there are several real-world solutions with 500Gb+ databases. 1Tb database exists.

• Eliminate “toy databases” (Oracle Express, SQL Server Express), which have restriction in size (<4Gb)

• Small footprint allows to re-allocate customers’ IT budgets from hardware to software

Bonus of using Firebird: Easy and transparent scaling with modest hardware investments to get excellent result.

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Summary: don’t miss the chance!

• Directions of new economy are fully aligned and supported by Firebird:– “Pay as you go” and avoid up-front payments– Diversity: no more vendor lock-ins– Pay for real values: focus on business, not

brand-names

It’s time of enormous opportunities for true open source platforms like Firebird.

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How to use this presentation

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• Questions? Answers: ppt@ib-aid.com

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