Open-source database firm EnterpriseDB is setting up in the UK with the aim of attracting Oracle-deserting users.

The firm is one of a pack of firms including MySQL and Ingres that are using open-source technology to prise away customers concerned by acquisition and maintenance costs of the big database vendors. EnterpriseDB uses the Postgres database but differentiates itself through migration tools intended to make switching from Oracle relatively painless.

“It’s great that open-source software is, in inverted commas, ‘free’ but if you’re talking about moving systems, it’s the moving of the systems that’s the real cost,” said Steve Bale, European general manager at EnterpriseDB.

“[With EnterpriseDB] you can move about 75 percent of your applications from Oracle without any programming. We want to fit in somewhere between customers who say Oracle is a sledgehammer and MySQL is a small hammer.”

Bale aims to have a central London office set up in the next two months.