Billy Duberstein’s article, If You Invested $1000 in MongoDB’s IPO, This Is How Much Money You’d Have Now, illustrated how much money you would have made if you had invested in the MongoDB IPO — over five times what you bought in at!
Although that’s impressive, what was really striking was the reasoning behind why the analyst thought enterprise databases were such a good bet:
“…the database is a particularly attractive product, even by enterprise-software standards, because it stores and organizes all or part of a large corporation’s most important data. If a company wanted to switch vendors, it would have to lift all of that data from the old database and insert it into a new one. That’s not only a huge pain; it’s also terribly risky, should any data get lost. Therefore, most companies tend to stick with their database vendor over time, even if that vendor raises prices. That’s how Oracle became such a tech powerhouse throughout the 1990s.”
Essentially, database companies are a good investment because, as well as storing your most important data, once your data is captured it’s painful and risky for users to switch. While this is great for investors, it is not always good news for enterprise customers.
One reason why open source has grown and thrived is that it helps users to avoid vendor lock-in. However, what is good for investor profitability is not always good for the end-user or community as a whole. So, is MongoDB the new Oracle, thriving due to a model that prioritizes customer commitment over collaboration?
Download the full article to learn more about the history of Oracle, the growth of MongoDB, and what really qualifies software as open source. If you are a DBA, or an executive looking to adopt or renew with MongoDB, this is a must-read!
