IBM DB2 on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

One of the impacts of everything going digital is that the amount of data we store and use is exploding. This gets a lot of attention in the Web 2.0 area, but it’s equally true in enterprises.  In many ways databases have been revolutionised by Open Source, I find it hard to imagine the Web without MySQL or Postgres.

That’s at the volume and scale end of the spectrum, in the hard-core enterprise Oracle and IBM remain the power houses that corporate customers use for their mission critical deployments. As a market it’s worth 19 billion dollars according to an IDC report: Oracle has 44% of that market, and second is IBM DB2 with 21%. So I was very happy to see that the IBM DB2 team has certified Ubuntu 10.04 LTS for IBM DB2 7.2 .

This means that the whole suite of DB2 Enterprise Server Edition, DB2 Workgroup Server Edition, DB2 Personal Edition and DB2 Express Edition are validated on Ubuntu 10.04. It’s obvious that this is an important validation for Ubuntu as it demonstrates that the IBM DB2 team believes Ubuntu is an important platform to validate against. That’s not new, as IBM previously validated 8.04 LTS, but it’s worth drawing attention to because the enterprise server space is conservative and this shows IBM’s long-term commitment.

In terms of how partners interact with Ubuntu it’s also pleasing the way that the IBM DB2 team has been able to efficiently update the certification to the next LTS release. The fixed release cycle, every two years, means they know exactly when the next LTS will be available and can calendar it into their development cycles. And that is a benefit that’s important for ISV’s because validation is expensive and uncertain, so making it that little bit easier is a good thing!

While we’re on DB2 I’ll point you at the DB2 Enterprise-C virtual appliances on Amazon EC2.  The objective is to enable developers who are already using DB2 on Ubuntu to have an option on the Amazon cloud, and for those that love Ubuntu and would like to try DB2 an easy route to do so. So check it out!