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By Sonya Rabbitte, 10 October 2001 11:38

NEWS More than one third of silicon.com readers will fork out to upgrade their database this year - and it's especially good news for Oracle, with 33 per cent of those planning to opt for 9i.
Despite the looming recession, just over 35 per cent of respondents to an exclusive silicon.com survey said they plan to buy a new database in the next 12 months. Oracle beat arch-rival IBM hands down, with 11.3 per cent of readers choosing Oracle databases, compared to the 3.3 per cent who said they would choose IBM or Informix technology. Over 20 per cent of readers opted for 'other', non-specified databases, which presumably includes companies like Microsoft and Sybase. Oracle and IBM have long been pitched against each other in the database market, but the release of Oracle 9i earlier this year appears to have made Oracle the popular choice. Gary Pugh, product marketing manager at Oracle, said the results gave credence to a global trend observed by the company. "We are seeing a polarisation in the market. Microsoft doesn't even make it to a category of its own. People are looking to particular platforms rather than name. They just want the best one to help them deploy," he said. According to Pugh, Oracle is already hitting on IBM's new Informix customer base with 1,000 Informix users downloading copies of Oracle's Informix migration kits in the past few months.
IBM said it was experiencing a quiet period and refused to comment.