Market and Technology Luminaries Converge at the First Annual MySQL Users Conference

SEATTLE, Wash. - (April 6, 2003) - MySQL AB, developer of the world's most popular open source database, today announced that the first annual MySQL Users Conference, to be held this week, April 10-12, in San Jose, California, has a full agenda that promises to create a defining event for the MySQL technology and business communities. The three-day conference now has over 50 scheduled sessions offering an in-depth look at MySQL technology by the top MySQL and database experts in the world as well as new research and insights into the impact of MySQL and open source on business.

"We are proud to be able to offer a conference of this caliber," said Mårten Mickos, MySQL AB CEO. "It comes at an important juncture for both MySQL technology, as it quickly evolves as an enterprise-level database, and the open source movement, which is clearly having a significant and growing effect on the software industry. This conference will serve as a forum to share big ideas, business plans and technology expertise, and it is the first of what will be an important annual event for MySQL's users, customers, partners and friends."

New META Group Research on MySQL and the Database Market Presented

Technology industry analyst Charlie Garry from the META Group will present a session titled, "Open Source, MySQL and the Commodity Effect." Mr. Garry's presentation will outline new thinking and research on the growing acceptance of open source software to supplant costlier proprietary software. He will address the effect open source databases will have on the $12 billion enterprise database market and what traditional database vendors will do to provide the feature/function that drives the value side of the equation.

The META Group recently released two new reports featuring MySQL titled "MySQL: Open Source and the Commodity Effect" (http://www.metagroup.com/webhost/ONLINE/882172/d2033.htm) and "MySQL Open Source Essentials" (http://www.metagroup.com/webhost/ONLINE/643500/d2006.htm).

Other business session highlights of the MySQL Users Conference include:

Stacey Quandt, industry analyst from Giga Information Group, will examine case studies of MySQL deployment and delve into the costs, benefits, flexibility and risk of deploying an open source database in a session called, "Business Cases: MySQL and Total Economic Impact."

MySQL users panel on "Open Source in Government." Representatives from NASA, the US Census Bureau, the state of Rhode Island and the National Center for Atmospheric Research will discuss their MySQL applications and issues surrounding open source in the public sector.

Open source advocate Bruce Perens will discuss how open source works for business, where it works, and how the open source philosophy is consistent with making a profit in a session called "Open Source and Business."

MySQL AB CEO Mårten Mickos will provide an in-depth overview of MySQL's unique dual-licensing business model, which has recently been highlighted in articles in The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine.

MySQL Users Conference technology sessions and tutorials will be led by some of the top MySQL and database experts in the world, including Michael (Monty) Widenius, MySQL CTO and co-founder, David Axmark, MySQL co-founder, Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP, as well as MySQL and industry experts Paul Dubois, Jeremy Zawodny, Tim Bunce and Brian Aker.

The MySQL Users Conference is sponsored by Intel, Novell, Rackspace Managed Hosting and Sun Microsystems. Other sponsors include Emic Networks, TechExcel, Lasso Development and Developer's Library. MySQL Users Conference sponsors and many other organizations will be available to discuss their MySQL-related technologies and services at the MySQL Users Conference Exhibition Hall.

To see a complete conference agenda and register for the MySQL Users Conference 2003, please visit the MySQL AB Web site at http://www.mysql.com/events/uc2003/.

About MySQL

MySQL AB develops, markets and supports the MySQL database server, the world's most popular open source database. With an estimated 4 million installations and over 27,000 downloads per day, MySQL is quickly becoming the core of many high-volume, business-critical applications. Major corporations such as Yahoo!, Lucent Technologies, Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, Motorola, NASA, Silicon Graphics, HP and Xerox rely on the ultra-fast, highly-reliable MySQL database. MySQL is available under the free software/open source GNU General Public License (GPL) or a non-GPL commercial license. For more information about MySQL, please go to www.mysql.com.

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