Enterprises are increasingly using the open source PostgreSQL database. Read in this Q&A where the growth is coming from and how some of it is from users in the cloud.
By Sean Michael Kerner
February 21, 2020
Among the mostly widely deployed open source databases is PostgreSQL, which is also often referred to simply as Postgres.
One of key vendors in the PostgreSQL community is EnterpriseDB, which provides a commercially supported distribution of Postgres. A primary competitor of EnterpriseDB Postgres has long been Oracle’s namesake database, but simply replacing Oracle isn’t the only use case for PostgreSQL, according to Ed Boyajian, president and CEO of EnterpriseDB.
Under Boyajian’s leadership, EnterpriseDB (also known as EDB) has grown for 40 consecutive quarters as demand for Postgres has built steadily. In October 2019, the companyrevealed a new partnership with IBM that Boyajian says will help further accelerate EnterpriseDB’s growth, with IBM selling EnterpriseDB Postgres as the IBM Data Management Platform for EDB Postgres Enterprise. In this Q&A, Boyajian talks about why he thinks PostgreSQL has enjoyed sustained popularity and where it is finding new deployments.
Why is the business still growing and what will the EnterpriseDB partnership with IBM add to the mix?
Ed Boyajian: It starts and it ends with the technology. We continue to make Postgres better and Postgres has become an incredibly strong database.
If you look inside our business, about 70% of our growth comes from existing customers who are expanding the various ways they’re using Postgres. Thirty percent of our business growth comes from new customers who are using Postgres for the first time.
With IBM we’ve had a long-standing informal relationship, and now we’ll have a much more formal relationship that puts IBM in a position to bring Postgres products to market as part of their overall data and AI initiatives.