Cloud database vendors: What, us worry about Microsoft?

Competition compromised?

While Microsoft claims that it is striding confidently toward a utility-computing future, competitors such as Pankaj Malviya, CEO of LongJump, say Redmond's ability to compete is fundamentally compromised.

"Microsoft has traditionally made their money by selling software licenses, maintenance, and ready-made applications -- all of which goes against the nature of cloud computing. They are reacting to the market by attempting to also provide hosted tools, but they have no real history in providing services of this type," Malviya wrote in an e-mail. "The question for Microsoft is: Will its hosted solutions cannibalize their on-premise solutions business, and which approach will take precedence?"

Others say the open-source bias of the cream of the SME market -- Web 2.0 startups -- will shut Microsoft out.

"Microsoft doesn't support Linux, has no open-source exposure on interfaces and lacks adoption by open-source fans," wrote Bob Zurek, CTO of EnterpriseDB. The vendor, which sells an Oracle-compatible database based on open-source PostgreSQL technology, is beta-testing an on-demand version of the database hosted on Amazon.com's EC2 app hosting platform.

And noting that EnterpriseDB's service will feature full relational database features upon launch, Zurek claims his solution will beat SSDS in a head-to-head technical showdown.

But what about MySQL, the apparent current favorite among Web 2.0 developers? The open-source database, recently acquired by Sun Microsystems, doesn't have a cloud database version, though it allows partners to sell a conventional Web-hosted one to customers.

"We aren't ready to make any new announcements at this time, but it's an area that's being evaluated as we integrate with Sun Microsystems," MySQL vice-president of marketing, Zack Urlocker said. But he added, tantalizingly, "Sun certainly has the expertise in massive scale and cloud computing that could make for an interesting story."