IDC Korea: Demand for cloud-based and in-memory databases is a growth driver

According to a recent report by IDC Korea (CEO: Yoo-Sook Hong, www.kr.idc.asia) (Korea Relational Database Management Systems Forecast, 2015-2019, Doc #KR321015179), the domestic RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) market was estimated at 530 billion won last year, and is expected to reach 555 billion won this year.

In addition, it is projected to grow at an annual average rate of 5.2% over the next five years, reaching 683 billion won in 2019. The domestic RDBMS market is expected to see a steady increase in demand driven by data warehouse replacements, next-generation projects planned by the financial sector, and RDBMS expansions resulting from the growth of corporate data.

It is expected to reach 683 billion won in 2019.

Factors driving the growth of the domestic RDBMS market include increased sales of integrated systems (DB appliances), rising demand for in-memory databases, and the expansion of public cloud-based database services.

Integrated systems, which combine servers, storage, and software such as RDBMS, are being introduced for purposes such as accommodating OLTP or OLAP database tasks and integrating databases into a single system by configuring hardware and software in an optimized combination. RDBMS vendors are expected to strive for hardware performance improvements to reduce Disk I/O, along with software performance enhancements.

▲ Domestic RDBMS Market Forecast, 2015–2019 (Unit: Million KRW) Source: IDC, 2015

The increasing use of public cloud services is providing a new growth opportunity in the domestic 'Database as a Service' market, and public cloud usage is on the rise due to advantages such as provisioning, auto-scaling, and pay-as-you-go billing.

Initially, there may be fluctuations in revenue as existing RDBMS license sales transition to cloud subscription licenses. To minimize this, it is necessary to guide companies to differentiate between RDBMS tasks used in existing on-premises environments and those used in public cloud environments, and to configure public cloud-based database services primarily for development, testing, and new services.

Due to the advantages of in-memory computing, which enables high-speed data processing, it is being utilized in various software fields, including data analysis areas such as Business Intelligence. Among these, the RDBMS domain is one of the software fields that has utilized in-memory computing technology from the very beginning.

Recently, the demand for in-memory databases utilizing column compression technology has been increasing, particularly in business areas that require high-speed data processing and rapid analysis results. Accordingly, as in-memory databases support columnar data and data compression features, the applicable business areas are expected to expand.

Do Sang-hyuk, a senior analyst at IDC Korea responsible for analyzing the domestic RDBMS market, noted, "While demand in the database market increased last year due to factors such as data warehouse modernization projects and enterprise-level database volume contracts, the overall growth rate of the domestic RDBMS market fell short of initial forecasts due to revenue declines at some vendors." He predicted that future demand for cloud-based databases and in-memory databases will become new drivers for the growth of the domestic RDBMS market.