Exclusive Interview with Scott Horn, CMO, EnterpriseDB

Businesses when going digital, data-based strategies become more vital than conventional wisdom. Every company needs a custom strategy for specific problems, which in many cases companies expect to be provided by a database. But the fact is that useful insights always come from properly saved and organized data, to make it easy to coordinate data, hardware, software, people, and procedures. EnterpriseDB is a database management company, whose USP lies in providing reliable solutions that do not give in even in all critical contexts. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Scott Horn, CMO, EnterpriseDB.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

Postgres is the most transformative open-source technology since Linux, and EnterpriseDB (EDB) is the leading contributor to Postgres. With more than 300 dedicated developers and more than 30 percent of Postgres code contributions, EDB is driving innovation in this technology. We believe that within the next few years, Postgres will be the standard for databases in the enterprise.

Our Postgres solutions are designed to help enterprises build new modern open-source applications and help move away from legacy, and proprietary systems. We have achieved 50 consecutive quarters of growth based on the enduring value that Postgres delivers for enterprises. From self-managed to fully managed Postgres in the cloud, EDB delivers our customers the most complete and robust solutions in the industry. This has resulted in Postgres becoming the most prolifically deployed database in modern open-source data architectures. Developers pick Postgres more than any other database for its technical superiority compared to legacy and proprietary systems.

2. With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company.

Since EDB was founded in 2004, our mission has been to enable enterprises everywhere to harness the full power of Postgres. Alongside a robust independent open-source community, EDB has made Postgres an extraordinary database, superior to legacy proprietary databases and more universally applicable for developers than specialty databases. We use technology to drive better business outcomes and solve our customer's most complex data challenges. Whether on-premise or in the cloud, we are committed to ensuring high availability, reliability, scalability, and security.

In 2020, EDB acquired 2ndQuadrant, a global Postgres solution, and tools company headquartered in the UK. The deal brought together the world's top Postgres experts, and combined decades of experience into one best-in-class technical team. EDB recently announced the majority growth investment from Bain Capital Equity, following an acquisition by Great Hill Partners in 2019, and remains a significant shareholder. These substantial investments have validated the enormous power of Postgres and helped accelerate our engineering and service capabilities globally.

3. Brief us about the proactive Founder/CEO of the company and his/her contributions to the company and the industry.

Ed Boyajian joined EDB in 2008 as President and CEO, and at the time, he saw tremendous unrealized potential. Fourteen years later, he remains more energized than ever about the company and the market. Ed has led EDB through 50 consecutive quarters of recurring revenue growth, and a major acquisition of 2ndQuadrant, and positioned EDB as the largest dedicated provider of Postgres products and solutions worldwide. Before EDB, Ed was the Vice President and General Manager of North America at Red Hat,  where he played a central role in the development of the modern business model for bringing open source to enterprises.

4. What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

EDB builds the future. EDB Postgres outperforms other databases in the most critical contexts including technical performance flexibility and applicability across the broadest number of enterprise workloads and value. Open source is at the heart of this. Proprietary legacy databases like Oracle still account for approximately $40 billion of the market but are no longer technically superior to Postgres and they cost enterprises unjustifiable amounts of money. EDB Postgres solutions give enterprises extraordinary ROI, the most essential element of transformation initiatives.

Specialty NoSQL databases are best suited for narrow use cases, making them less scalable and ill-equipped to handle the heavy workloads of the more complex enterprise applications. Additionally, in almost every instance these specialty databases are open-source projects that are captive to a single company, and thus their future potential is limited.

5. How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead?

I predict that within 5 years, Postgres will be the dominant enterprise database standard. Postgres technology is extraordinary and is improving faster than competing technologies, thanks to the independent nature of the community and EDB's relentless commitment to Postgres innovation and development. Our technology approach delivers a "single database everywhere" to any platform including self-managed private clouds and self-managed public clouds, but our fully managed public cloud is the most important accelerator. The fact that we simultaneously deliver breathtaking cost reductions is the icing on the cake.

Additionally, the fact that more developers love, use, and want Postgres than any other database in the world is an important "tell" on this prediction. Developers and business leaders alike seek data ownership and control and they simply don't have the time or money to waste. That is why they need a Postgres acceleration strategy, and only EDB can provide that.  Some of the biggest companies in the world including Apple, Daimler, Goldman Sachs, and others have already adopted Postgres as their database standard. It's not a matter of if, but of when the majority of enterprises will follow suit.

6. The industry is seeing the rising importance of business and technology enablers like virtualization, convergence, and cloud. How do you see these emerging technologies impact your business sector?

Cloud service providers, who are at their core data center infrastructure and hardware experts, have jumped into the software business, which now includes Postgres. However, these vendors are not database specialists or experts—which costs us dearly when it comes to attracting business. Lack of expertise in Postgres, coupled with new walled gardens that prevent hybrid and multi-cloud solutions, are the two biggest weaknesses. Postgres is a truly open-source database, governed by an independent and robust global community. With EDB, the power of Postgres is significantly enhanced to deliver unmatched flexibility, scalability, and cost savings.