MySQL AB

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MySQL AB

Type	Subsidiary of Sun Microsystems
Founded	1995
Headquarters	Uppsala, Sweden and Cupertino, California, USA
Key people	Mårten Mickos, CEO Dennis Wolf CFO and EVP Mark C. Burton, EVP Sales Zack Urlocker, EVP Products Kaj Arnö, VP Open Source Community Relations Ulf Sandberg, SVP Worldwide Services Clint Smith, VP General Counsel Larry Stefonic, SVP Asia Pacific Kevin Harvey, Chairman Allan Larsson, Founder Michael Widenius, Founder David Axmark, Founder
Industry	Computer software, IT Services
Products	MySQL Server MySQL Cluster MySQL Enterprise MySQL Workbench
Revenue	$40 million,^[1] 2006
Employees	400
Slogan	To make superior data management available and affordable for all
Website	www.mysql.com

MySQL AB (founded 1995) is a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems, dual headquartered in Uppsala, Sweden and Cupertino, California, USA with offices in other countries (Paris, France; Munich, Germany; Dublin, Ireland; Milan, Italy; and Tokyo, Japan). The company is the creator and owner of MySQL, a relational database management system as well as related products such as MySQL Cluster.

With around 400 employees in 25 countries,^[2] MySQL AB is one of the largest open source companies worldwide. Around 70% of the employees work for MySQL from their home offices.^[3]

On 16 January 2008, MySQL AB announced that it had agreed to be acquired by Sun Microsystems for approximately US$1 billion.^[4]^[5]^[2]^[6]^[7] The acquisition completed on 26 February 2008.

Together with Linux, Apache, and PHP, the MySQL Server forms one of the building blocks of the LAMP technology stack. The company claims a user base of over 5 million MySQL installations worldwide and over 10 million product downloads in 2004.

1 Business model
2 History
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Business model

MySQL AB representatives are commonly cited as 'champions' of what they claim to be a 'second generation' of open source companies.^{[citation needed]} The revenues of both first and second generation open source companies usually derive from selling support, consulting services, and training for their products.

What generally distinguishes this 'second generation' consisting of companies like MySQL AB and Trolltech from earlier 'open source' business models is dual licensing - while the software may be made available under the provisions of some open source license the software is in fact owned by the commercial companies who seek to derive revenues from selling traditional software licenses.

As an example: MySQL AB make MySQL available under the GPL at no charge but sell it under other 'more traditional' licenses to clients who do not find the GPL to be ideal for their purposes (such as inclusion of MySQL AB technology in a closed source product).

Other sources of revenue for MySQL AB are providing support and consulting as well as training and certification for MySQL Server. Together with some additional services MySQL also provide this as a subscription based product called MySQL Enterprise which is also resold by other companies like Dell, HP, and Novell.

[edit] History

1995 Company founded by Michael Widenius, David Axmark and Allan Larsson
2001 Mårten Mickos elected CEO
2001 First round financing by Scandinavian venture capitalists
2003 Second round financing by a group of investors headed by Benchmark Capital
2003 Partnership agreement concluded with SAP, acquiring the full commercial rights to MaxDB
2003 Acquired Alzato, a subsidiary of Ericsson
2005 MySQL Network subscription service launched
2006 Third round financing by Intel Capital, Red Hat, SAP Ventures, and others
2008 Announcement of acquisition by Sun Microsystems