I work for a SW company. We host the customer's data and they access it via RDP as well the customer doing self-hosting.

So when you're designing you app and making a DB selection, you have to look at what customer base you are aiming at. We have customers that are formal, large corporations in the Fortune 1000 crowd down to a small single standalone facility. The one is so small that the on-staff IT contact is the facility maintenance guy.

We were selling one app --call it App O -- that we absorbed the MS SQL licensing in the setup and monthly maint fees. The costs were such that we would have had to get over 800 users to continue development. We never got above 173 customers using it.

We also have one app that uses Interbase. It's a good solid app (App Ac). You don't even really need a server to run it, but it helps. But App Ac never had the same capabilities as App O, and the development was stifled because we were trying to sell App O.

I won't mention the other because it is a character based system from the 80's that is off a debased FoxBase corruption.

But if you are developing for an expected market of Fortune 500 instead of developing for mom & pop shops makes a difference.