MariaDB says it is building a database-as-a-service based on open source principles after offloading its old DBaaS before going into private ownership.
The MySQL fork is a popular relational and transactional database with some analytics capabilities, and is used by companies including Nokia and Samsung.
The commercial entity, which works alongside the open source database, first launched a cloud database service called SkySQL in 2020. However, after a disastrous IPO and a search for funding, MariaDB stopped selling its database service in October 2023. In December last year, a separate business – also called SkySQL – secured $6.6 million in VC funding to continue selling the database service.
MariaDB, the company, secured a private equity buyout from K1 Investment Management in September, when it appointed CEO, Rohit de Souza, a veteran of MicroFocus, HP, and Oracle.
Speaking to The Register, De Souza says MariaDB is planning to build another database service and serverless system through closer collaboration with its open source community, which might arrive later this year or early next year.
De Souza tells us: "We will have a databases-as-a-service option probably before the year is out, we're also making a very strong push for a serverless option, which we will push into the community as well. It is difficult to set a time frame on that because there's lots of i's to dot and t's to cross, but we're heading down that path.
"We certainly don't want to go back down and repeat [the approach of SkySQL] because we very intentionally didn't pursue that because of the way that had been structured was almost having them compete with the cloud hyperscalers, which is crazy."
According to De Souza, the SkySQL economics "didn't quite work out."
"To start with, the product wasn't really there. You had a bunch of people behind the curtain. That's OK with one or two customers, but you quickly run out of the ability to fool customers into thinking this is purely as-a-service, scale-up, scale-down. The second bit of it is that it was done with the SkySQL team securing large paid contracts with the hyperscalers. This was the contracted capacity they were planning to resell to customers, but large enterprises can secure better deals from the hyperscalers than we ever could. So the economics don't work."
Instead, MariaDB plans to offer its database service within the existing framework of enterprise customer contracts with the hyperscalers, he says.
In a message to The Register, SkySQL CEO Nithin Rao said: "SkySQL has evolved significantly since the spin-off from MariaDB. While there were challenges before the spin-off (before my involvement), my team and I have since addressed them, improving both cost structure and operational efficiency. Today, SkySQL delivers a highly cost competitive DBaaS solution that simplifies database management for customers.
"In fact, Rohit and I are exploring ways to work more closely together and align our efforts. Our focus remains on delivering an exceptional managed cloud database solution," he added.
MariaDB, the database, was sharded out of the open source relational MySQL. MySQL had been part of Sun Microsystems since 2008, but when Oracle bought Sun in 2010, MySQL co-founder Michael "Monty" Widenius forked the code to a new open source database, MariaDB. Historically, it had been used mostly as a transactional database, but has added features to support analytics for both offline and live data.
Last year, Peter Zaitsev, an early MySQL engineer and founder of open source consultancy Percona, said he feared the lack of new features in MySQL was a result of Oracle's focus on Heatwave, a proprietary analytics database built on MySQL. He had previously defended Oracle's stewardship of the open source database. He later said the release of MySQL 9 was underwhelming.
De Souza tells us Oracle's approach to MySQL presented a growth opportunity for MariaDB. "We're the preferred option for anybody with MySQL, because the MySQL guys are trying to convince their customers to move to Oracle in some form, and onto Oracle cloud. We continue to migrate applications to these guys and if I look at the customer traction that we've got over the last six months, I'm very bullish," he says.
The CEO also sees the existing open source installed base as a good opportunity as they look to use MariaDB elsewhere in their organizations.
De Souza says: "MariaDB is installed in over a million customer environments. This is why that community is so important. The discussion with the Foundation is that 20 to 30 million developers have used or are using the software. That's a huge asset. We're not trying to educate millions of developers on what MariaDB is. But we can try to get that development community to adopt something new."
Before going private, MariaDB had adopted a mix of licensing approaches in relation to its open source community, including a Business Source License (BSL) for commercial products and GPL v2 for Enterprise Server. In November 2023, the CEO of MariaDB Foundation, which manages the open source project, said "sanity" had returned to MariaDB with its new management team.
MariaDB Foundation CEO Kaj Arnö told The Register in 2023 that there had been some "dark cloud" in its relationship with MariaDB the company. While goodwill seems to be returning, the company will have to wait and see if the money follows. ®