Re: so what happened
Um, not sure which small businesses you would mean here. There are smaller players but the trouble is the big boys have a habit of buying them up once they get to a certain size. I'm not sure you'll find a viable small company that supplies enterprise database software anyway, there are some in the applications and collaboration arena who compete quite successfully with MS and Oracle.
The other thing is that you quite often need to get applications accredited to common criteria standards, and small companies can't afford that. When your department says all IT products must be evaluated to EAL 4, regardless of appropriateness, well...
Trouble with the big boys and applications is that they market leaders and turn them into also rans.
It will be interesting to see how the new model affects those departments with universal licences which give unlimited usage for database and middleware products.