David Postle, chairman of the U.K. Ingres Users Association, said Burkhardt's appointment fits in with the company's stated strategy of going after large financial institutions first and hoping other customers will follow.

"For Ingres to make this strategy work, they have to make the applications as simple as possible to port over from Oracle, and I think they still have some work to do in this area from what I've seen," said Postle, a director at Leeds, England-based Ingres systems integrator, Luminary Solutions. Postle also criticized Ingres for failing to communicate enough with its British customers, especially smaller ones. "I don't understand why they haven't held some sort of Ingres 2006 launch event for existing customers," he said.