Before answering that question, here's a link to a background article:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10152448-16.html

It is very hard to tell what is going on there with the mysterious
"infrastructure" element. Does anyone know what that might be?

The problem of course is that MySQL's amazing revenue story is getting
played as an open source story, but Sun sells lots of stuff that isn't
open source (including hardware). For instance, if Sun sold an M9000
with a MySQL subscription why on earth wouldn't they call that MySQL
business? "Sun Sells a Server" is not a headline. "Sun increases
MySQL Revenue 50% in One Quarter" is a great headline.

Is that what's going on?

--
Roy

UK Ingres User Association Conference 2009 will be on Tuesday June 9, 2009
Go to http://www.iua.org.uk/join to get on the mailing list.

On Feb 5, 10:44*am, Roy Hann <specia... (AT) processed (DOT) almost.meat> wrote:
surely they wouldn't fudge their figures like CA used to do.....

still, the job market says their are many more vacancies for MySQL
than Ingres

www.jobserve.com permanent / contract last 7 days

Ingres 5
MySQL 351

perhaps someone from the MySQL group has an answer ?

On Feb 5, 10:38*am, "michaelnewp... (AT) yahoo (DOT) com"
<michaelnewp... (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:
It's popular. What do you want to know?

toby wrote:

If you are asking me, what I want to know is what "infrastructure" means
in the context of Sun's revenue figures for MySQL.

--
Roy

UK Ingres User Association Conference 2009 will be on Tuesday June 9, 2009
Go to http://www.iua.org.uk/join to get on the mailing list.

Roy Hann wrote:

Well, as always, it pays to go to the primary documents. In this case
Sun Microsystems Q209 [sic--see below] Quarterly Results Release (see
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/investor.../Q209_SLD.pdf).

Before I say anything, note that Sun's fiscal year starts in July, so
they're already reporting their Q2 '09. Also, recall that Sun announced
the completion of the acquisition of MySQL AB on February 26 2008,
somewhat less than a year ago.

For convenient reference here's a conversion table from "Sun Years" to
something we can understand:

Sun The Rest of Us
Q1 08 Q3 07
Q2 08 Q4 07
Q3 08 Q1 08 <-- Acquisition of MySQL AB completed
Q4 08 Q2 08
Q1 09 Q3 08
Q2 09 Q4 08
Q3 09 Q1 09 <-- Today

So let's take a look at page six of the above referenced document, which
is the Billings Disclosure by Category. Under Software Billings there
is a line item called MySQL/Infrastructure.

At face value we are invited to assume this line item is all about
MySQL. Whatever "infrastructure" is, it's apparently too unimportant to
merit any explanation at the bottom of the page, unlike some of the
other line items. However, closer inspection makes it clear that the
shoe is on the other foot and that infrastructure is the real
cash-cow, by a factor of three!

To compare apples-to-apples, the sum of billings in this line for Q3 07
to Q2 08 (that is, the last four quarters in which MySQL contributed
*no* billings) is $201M. The sum of billings for Q3 08 to Q2 09 is
$264M. So assuming the billings for "infrastrucure" didn't take a
massive tumble, the net contribution to billings by MySQL is roughly
$63M during the last four quarters--maybe less, or about 23% of the
value of this line item.

Another thing to note about this page is that under each line item it
shows the year-to-year change. This is with respect the same interval a
year ago. So for instance, in Q1 09 we see that billings
for "infrastructure"+MySQL were up 111% with respect to Q1 08. But Q1
08 was shockingly poor, with the lowest billings--by a long way--of any
quarter in this line. More importantly even than that though, there
were no billings contributed by MySQL in Q1 08. So it is not an
apples-to-apples comparison.

The first relevant comparison will be Q4 08 to Q4 09, and we're still
six months away from being able to do that. I mention this only as a
kind of innoculation against claims of massive revenue growth for
MySQL that we may see in the trade comics; Matt Asay's above referenced
blog is an example of the sort of credulous bullshit we can expect.

BTW, none of this analysis is intended to equate vendor billings with
customer value. Quite the contrary, this shows that customers are
getting loads of MySQL for free, and that's good value. If Sun feels
like subsidizing the development of MySQL from other revenue sources
that is fine with me.

Just don't try telling me that "MySQL's sales catching up with Red
Hat's" because it ain't, not by a long way.

--
Roy

UK Ingres User Association Conference 2009 will be on Tuesday June 9, 2009
Go to http://www.iua.org.uk/join to get on the mailing list.