This study provides an analysis of vendor market shares for the server-based database management systems (DBMS) market in Western Europe for 2004, and also provides a forecast market sizing for 2005?2009. The relevant functional markets that are analyzed in this study are relational database management systems (RDBMS), pre- and postrelational DBMS, object-oriented DBMS, and XML database management systems. The study does not include information on personal (single user) databases, or on free-standing database administration tools or utilities.

The report analyzes forecast market sizes and RDBMS market share by 16 Western European countries as well as the relative contributions of the different types of DBMS. Revenues are tracked on the basis of license revenues, including both initial license fee and ongoing license renewals and maintenance payments. Services revenues (training, consultancy, implementation assistance, etc.) are not included in this analysis. All revenues are shown in millions of U.S. dollars.

"The DBMS market will continue to consolidate, and it will become increasingly difficult for vendors that are outside of the established market leaders to achieve a profitable business model based on license revenue," said Rob Hailstone, IDC's Western European Software Infrastructure Research director. "However, there will remain some niches that will support a small number of smaller vendors, and open source will provide an alternative business model based on services revenue rather than product license."