Driving the Open Source Road?

Contributed by Gary Carter

With nearly 10 million downloads over the past five years, Postgres is the leading enterprise open source database. In a report The State of Open Source RDBMSs, 2015,* Gartner gives some compelling directions for IT professionals on their road to open source. Their advice? Adopt an open source relational database as a standard for new applications and for migrating those that don’t need special capabilities.

Mapping an open source database strategy starts with some important considerations – you can go it alone with software available on the Internet, use open source software and hire a consultant for coding and support, or work with a vendor that provides a comprehensive solution, including commercially supported versions, tools, upgrades and support. 

The challenge is maneuvering these choices. 

EDB’s guidance? Start deploying your new applications on an open source relational database first for easy technical and business wins, and then start to migrate existing applications for additional cost savings.

Why?  Simply put – costs and subscriptions:

     1.  Cost: Gartner calculated that EDB’s Postgres Advanced Server was 8% of the cost of Oracle. EDB’s server cost $41,400 over three years compared to Oracle’s list price of $473,100. (See page 8 of the report.)

     2.  Subscriptions: Open source vendors like EDB offer subscription-based pricing models that are more cost-effective and flexible than the licenses sold by traditional vendors like Oracle.

Roadmap of 5 Postgres Adoption Paths

Over the past 10 years, EDB has worked with enterprise customers that have deployed the open source version of Postgres and EDB’s enhanced EDB Postgres Advanced Server. Using these experiences and input from enterprise users, EDB developed a roadmap of five Postgres adoption paths. Each path includes usage profiles with the pros and cons of each. 

The adoptions paths are: 

     1.  Go it alone: Download certified open source Postgres binaries and deploy the database to support your internal workloads using online forums for support. 

     2.  Create your own path: Download the Postgres source code as a starting point and develop the software to suit your individual needs. This means also creating your own software development operation. 

     3.  Hire a consultant: Download certified open source Postgres binaries and work with an outside specialist to provide coding to your individual specifications, tools and support. 

EDB broke down the option of working with a vendor that provides a commercially supported version into two paths, one each for its subscriptions based on Postgres. Both include support and software maintenance as well as key mission-critical tools for high availability, disaster recovery, monitoring, management, performance and security. The two commercial options are:

      4.  EDB Postgres Standard features the open source PostgreSQL database plus mission critical tools for high availability, disaster recovery, monitoring, management, performance and security. 

      5.  EDB Postgres Enterprise features Postgres Advanced Server, an enhanced Postgres database with enterprise-class: performance, security, DBA features and Developer features.  Advanced Server, developed by EDB, is always built upon the latest open source code base and also offers database compatibility for Oracle allowing Oracle trained staff to continue using familiar tools and skills while accelerating new development efforts and migrations. 

For deeper insight into the kinds of workloads and business strategies that align with each path to Postgres as well as the pros and cons of each, download our white paper, Which Postgres is Right for Me? 

Gary Carter is Director, Field Marketing, at EnterpriseDB.

*The State of Open Source RDBMSs, 2015, by Donald Feinberg and Merv Adrian, published April 21, 2015.