Popularity Contest

New survey reveals winners of high-stakes government DB game

In an economic downturn, "The President's Management Agenda" for 2002 - which shows that the federal government is the world's largest IT consumer, spending $45 billion a year - is enough to start a stampede among struggling technology companies. But with the massive amounts of red tape involved in selling to the government, it's no surprise that a recent survey by Government Computer News shows heavyweights Oracle and Microsoft leading the pack for installed databases in the federal sector. (See Figure 1.)

Government Computer News conducted a telephone survey of 100 federal readers who identified themselves as database users. In addition to discovering that Oracle products are installed in 41 percent of the IT departments and Microsoft in 31 percent, the survey asked several questions regarding the users' likes and dislikes and future database plans.

The features that the users liked most in databases were ease of use, ease of developing applications, reliable performance, query features, quick response to queries, and user-friendly interfaces. The users were critical if the database software was difficult to learn, hard to manage or maintain, slow to respond to queries, and limited in its query features.

Most respondents develop their own database applications (63 percent), while 41 percent use the database vendors' applications, 35 percent use third-party applications, and 3 percent use some other solution (multiple responses were accepted). Citing "expanding mission and business requirements" and "new applications require new databases," 28 percent of those surveyed say they plan to add a database in the next 24 months. Most respondents (60 percent) have no plans to consolidate databases in that same time. Of those who do (20 percent), the main reasons cited concern the efficiency increases and cost savings that come with managing and maintaining fewer databases.

With competition for government contracts heating up, knowing the end user has never been more important.

— Michelle M. Young

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