Thursday, 26 April 2007

MySQL Hits USD 50 M Revenue, Plans IPO

A provider of open-source database, MySQL, has hit an estimated USD 50 million in revenue. The company is planning on becoming a publicly traded company. "It's still in the pipeline," Chief Executive Marten Mickos said. “We’re making good progress, doing all the things we need to get...

A provider of open-source database, MySQL, has hit an estimated USD 50 million in revenue. The company is planning on becoming a publicly traded company.

"It's still in the pipeline," Chief Executive Marten Mickos said. “We’re making good progress, doing all the things we need to get done", he added.

In 2002 the company had garnered revenue of USD 6.5 million and USD 34 million in 2005.

Mickos said, "Profitability isn't a specific goal yet, but we aren't burning cash. We go a bit above breakeven, a bit below breakeven."

"It removes one obstacle that some customers may have dealing with us. Conservative customers want to deal with public companies," Mickos said. "And by going public you get the currency to do acquisitions."

"We're not trying to eat Oracle's lunch. We're trying to eat their dessert," Mickos said. "We love to compete with them and win customers from them. At the same time, we don't want to fall into this David-vs.-Goliath strategy where everyone says 'Go, MySQL, go! Go kill Oracle!' There's an old Chinese (proverb): if you focus on one competitor, ultimately you become like them, and we don't want to do that."

"What we really want to be known for is the online database," Mickos said.