This IDC study presents the vendor shares in terms of total software revenue for the relational database management systems (RDBMS) market in 2011, with growth rates from 2009 and 2010. It also includes commentary and analysis on the market in 2011 and the market's future prospects.

"The accelerating growth of this market reflects the continued growth in demand for database management driven by dramatic increases in enterprise data and a corresponding desire for better business intelligence from that data," says Carl Olofson, research vice president for Database Management and Data Integration Software research at IDC. "The RDBMS market is likely to look quite different after a few years. The technology is moving toward high degrees of scalability and in-memory function, including memory-based technology that will begin to displace the current disk-based technology within the next five years."