CUPERTINO, Calif., Sept. 20, 2006--A recent survey of enterprise software developers, systems engineers and data center managers revealed that despite strong demand for open source database technology, some significant barriers, including the absence of advanced reliability and failover features, are blocking even wider-spread adoption. The survey, which was sponsored by Solid Information Technology and conducted at last month's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, polled more than 200 IT professionals on a range of topics related to open source adoption in the enterprise.

The most reported obstacle to developing and deploying an open source database strategy was 'reliability,' which was chosen by 36 percent of respondents. Ranked second was 'high availability,' with 25 percent of respondents citing this reason. On the topic of preferred features for open source database software, the overwhelming majority of respondents (81%) indicated that they would be interested in an open source database with 'real-time' capabilities. Additionally, more than two-thirds (68%) of survey respondents agreed that there is a need for open source database technology that is capable of 'six nines' (99.9999 percent uptime) of availability in an enterprise deployment scenario.

"From its fledgling roots as a small community of dedicated software developers, to its growing role in powering the so-called 'Web 2.0' application boom, open source database technology has evolved much more rapidly than many people in the industry anticipated," said Peter O'Kelly, Research Director, Burton Group. "It should come as no surprise, then, that organizations of all sizes are already requiring advanced open source DBMS features, such as six nines of availability, which were once primarily the realm of traditional, proprietary DBMS vendors selling into Fortune 100 deployments."

"These survey results confirm rapidly changing customer requirements for open source software. No longer is a price advantage sufficient, because cost is not the primary driver for enterprises," said Tim Clark, partner at The FactPoint Group.

"Few obstacles remain between open source database innovation and the offerings of the proprietary world," said Alain Couder, president and CEO at Solid Information Technology. "This trend was a key driver in Solid's decision to adapt its online transaction processing (OLTP) storage engine, which benefits from 14 years of mission-critical deployments, to work with the open source MySQL Server. We look forward to meeting growing enterprise demand for advanced open source database technology."

Solid announced in April that it would adapt its OLTP storage engine to work with MySQL Server, allowing businesses to adopt open source relational databases for mission-critical applications. solidDB for MySQL is a multi-threaded, transactional storage engine for MySQL Server. It is designed for implementations that require a robust, transactional database to support heavy transaction volumes and a large number of concurrent users. Available now for download and testing at http://dev.soliddb.com/en/download/index.php, the product will be generally available in Q4 2006.

Complete results of the Solid-sponsored open source database survey are available at: http://www.solidtech.com. Solid will be exhibiting at the November 15-17 LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in Cologne, Germany, where the company will repeat the survey. Results of the international survey will be available in late November.

About Solid Information Technology

Solid Information Technology is the only provider of fast, always-on and affordable database solutions. Solid's customers achieve up to 50% shorter time-to-results and lower operational costs for their applications, while delivering high quality of service to their customers.

There are more than 3,000,000 deployments of Solid's database technology worldwide in telecommunications networks, enterprise applications, and embedded software and systems. Market leaders such as Alcatel, Cisco, EMC2, HP, Nokia and Siemens rely on Solid for their mission-critical applications.

Founded in 1992, Solid has worldwide headquarters in Cupertino, California, and regional offices in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.soliddb.com.