MySQL Completes Another Record Year

More Corporate, Industry and Community Support for World's Most Popular Open Source Databas

CUPERTINO, Calif. - MySQL AB today announced that 2004 has been another year of record sales, partnerships, technical achievement and adoption of its open source database. By the end of the month, the MySQL database server will have been downloaded more than ten million times this year, solidifying its position as the world's most popular open source database.

This year, thousands of companies have selected MySQL to power their Web sites, critical business applications and packaged software due to its superior performance, reliability, ease-of-deployment, and significant cost savings. New MySQL corporate and OEM customers include CitySearch, Conseco, Evite, Friendster, General Dynamics, H&M Rowells, Hillerich & Bradsby (Louisville Slugger), Harvard Business School, Hoover's Inc., Lockheed Martin, Lucent Technologies, and Nortel Networks.

“MySQL's success is a reflection of open source software coming of age in corporations and organizations around the globe,” said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. “As we grow as an enterprise software and service vendor, we continue to be indebted to our developers, active user community and industry partners for their invaluable contributions and feedback. But this is just the beginning -- we plan to deliver even greater benefits to the database market in 2005.”

According to InformationWeek research published in November, open source databases such as MySQL continue to gain significant traction in mainstream corporate applications. Of the hundreds of companies interviewed, 42 percent of them are already using open source software in their production databases - with another 33 percent currently considering an open source deployment. (Full report at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51201599)

”MySQL has allowed us to save more than $1 million in database licenses and hardware costs," said Shakeel Sorathia, director of Engineering for Citysearch. "At the same time, MySQL has significantly improved the performance of our site for our users. The performance of MySQL is lightening-fast."

Technology Milestones

MySQL has delivered a number of significant product and technology achievements this year, including:

• MySQL 4.1 - this upgrade to the MySQL database server features advanced querying capabilities through subqueries, faster and more secure client-server communication, new installation and configuration tools, and support for international character sets and geographic data.
• MySQL Visual Tools - announced last week, MySQL has expanded its potential market by shipping a new line of easy-to-use visual database tools. The MySQL Query Browser and MySQL Administrator are designed to further simplify database management for developers, DBAs and users.
• MySQL Cluster - the industry's first open source enterprise-scale database clustering technology for applications requiring continuous availability. MySQL Cluster combines the MySQL database with a clustering architecture, to deliver 99.999 percent availability to mission-critical database applications.
• MaxDB - the SAP-certified open source database established its position in MySQL's product portfolio, serving both SAP and non-SAP customers with a range of licensing, support, training, and consulting services. During the year, MySQL released native PHP and Perl drivers for MaxDB, expanding the functionality, performance and benefits for application developers.

MySQL Partner Program

MySQL now has nearly 800 companies in its worldwide Partner Program. Since its launch at the company's users' conference in April, the program has added hundreds of ISV's, systems integrators, consulting firms and database tools vendors who embed MySQL in their own solutions or provide products and services that support the MySQL user community. MySQL's top-tier strategic partners include Embarcadero Technologies, GoldenGate, HP, Novell, Quest Software, Rackspace Managed Hosting, SAP and Veritas.

"The MySQL Partner Program offers companies the opportunity to build a relationship with MySQL AB and to market their solutions to the millions of MySQL users worldwide," said Bertrand Matthelié, director of Alliances for MySQL AB. "Joining up as a partner can give firms a competitive advantage, additional revenue opportunities and a faster time to market by utilizing partner-only resources."

More information on the MySQL Partner Program is available at http://solutions.mysql.com/

About MySQL

MySQL AB develops, markets and supports a family of high performance, affordable database servers and tools. The company's flagship product is MySQL, the world's most popular open source database, with more than five million active installations. Many of the world's largest organizations, including Google, Sabre Holdings, The Associated Press, Suzuki and NASA, are realizing significant cost savings by using MySQL to power Web sites, business-critical enterprise applications and packaged software. MySQL AB is a second generation open source company, with dual licensing that supports both open source values and corporate customers' needs in a profitable, sustainable business. For more information about MySQL, please go to www.mysql.com.

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MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the USA and other countries. Other products mentioned may be trademarks of their respective corporations.