On-premises DBMS revenue is alive and well. In previous posts in this series I’ve discussed the DBMS market’s overall extraordinary 22.3% ($14,5B) growth in 2021, Amazon’s dominance of nonrelational DBMS revenue overshadowing the $2.3B contribution of nonrelational pureplays, and the impact of open source-based offerings. This time, I’d like to dispel a common misperception.
On-premises DBMS revenue is still growing for some vendors, and its growth is good by historical standards. But concerns loom…
In 2021, on-premises DBMS revenue grew by $2.2B. Between 2011 and 2016, overall annual market growth was similar to that number. In percentage terms the market grew in mid-single digit percentages early in the decade, as it had for many years before. But between 2016 and 2017, the cloud engine kicked in, pushing overall growth into double digit percentages and starting the extraordinary rise of the past few years.
On-premises revenue growth, then, continues along a stable trend, but it may be near a turning point as some vendors begin to decline there. Half of the 2021 growth was attributable to Microsoft. Another quarter was from Oracle, and the rest went to another two dozen vendors. Several grew their on-premises revenue more than $50M: Huawei, Teradata, Rocket, Intersystems and MongoDB. Most of these vendors are generating significant cloud growth now, especially Microsoft, and others are catching up at last.
But some DBMS market leaders registered a drop in on-premises DBMS revenue: Cloudera, IBM, Broadcom, Software AG, Actian, HPE, MarkLogic and MicroFocus. And not one of them is among the top ten in Cloud DBMS revenue, which is a broader warning sign for all of them. If they don’t get in gear in the cloud, the market will pass them by – if on-premises revenue is dropping and cloud revenue is not keeping up with the market, troubles lay ahead.
Overall, the bulk of on-premises growth is relational. Microsoft and Oracle dominate the numbers, and Microsoft has no on-premises nonrelational offering. Among the pureplay nonrelational players the story is mixed: MongoDB and Datastax accounted for nearly $100M of the on-premises revenue growth, while Cloudera, HPE snd MarkLogic combined lost over $65M there.
Gartner clients interested in pursuing this analysis can find the total revenue numbers in Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide, 2021 and the Cloud numbers in Market Share: Enterprise Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2021. I subtracted the latter from the former to do the on-premises analysis. And for a thorough look at trends, my colleague Robin Schumacher’s piece Market Share Analysis: Database Management Systems, Worldwide, 2021 is an excellent reference.
The Gartner Blog Network provides an opportunity for Gartner analysts to test ideas and move research forward. Because the content posted by Gartner analysts on this site does not undergo our standard editorial review, all comments or opinions expressed hereunder are those of the individual contributors and do not represent the views of Gartner, Inc. or its management.
Comments are closed