[ Thanks to Matt for
this link. ]
“From IBM’s perspective, DB2 and Microsoft’s SQL Server do not
compete head-to-head in the large-enterprise space. ‘We don’t see
Microsoft in competitive bids,’ said Lori Bosio, a spokesperson for
IBM. ‘They come in on the small end of the market and try to [push]
themselves up.’“Microsoft said it has established itself as an enterprise
player and has the robustness and scalability to meet the demands
of world-class, enterprise-scale database services. Microsoft
points to SQL Server customers Nasdaq, Barnes and Noble, Home
Shopping Network, and the World Bank.“On the middle and low ends of the database market, Microsoft
and IBM increasingly will be bumping heads. IBM is moving into the
middle and low-end markets with DB2 Express, a scaled-down version
of DB2 that gives organizations the choice of Windows or Linux and
comes with 65 database automation tools that simplify
administrative tasks. The product, released in June, lacks
scalability features, such as clustering. IBM said that about 64
percent of the new developers working with IBM wish to port to DB2
Express for Linux…”