EP 275: Liquibase, Open Source & Databases w Dion Cornett, President, Datical

com. You're listening to another DevOps chat. We've got a nice DevOps chat for you today.

Happy to introduce you to the newly minted president at Datical, Dion Cornett. I didn't mess that up. And thank you very much for this introduction.

I'm very happy to be on your podcast today. Thanks. Thank you, Dion.

So listeners of our podcast are no strangers to Datical. You know, CTO Rob Reames is a frequent guest here. You know, we make fun of him and his Big Lebowski sweaters, but it's always refreshing to hear Bob Roberts take on on DevOps databases, the DevOps market in general, pontificating on anything Robert likes the prettification about.

But it's also my several fresh, great sabbatical. So, first of all, welcome aboard. Thank you.

And I always like to give my audience a flavor for who's talking. Would you mind my asking you to read your bio, but would you share a little bit of your background for the audience that you, I think, is most pertinent to dactyl? I'd say if I did characterize myself as that I'm a opensource guy.

I bleed open source. I believe it's a better production model for software. You know, this combination of meritocracy, of ideas and transparency leads to more elegant code.

And so my background has been one of sort of having creer that aligns with this philosophy. So I spent nine years at RedHat and a couple of different executive roles, ran North American, not named account sales and then ran global strategic alliances. I moved from there to take over sales at IDB and Open Source Database Company.

That was well, yeah. It wasn't quite so popular in 2013, but we really grew that business seven fold in three years. That that set me up for a CEO job.

I did do something outside open source, but it was a sort of big data challenge company called Reach Force that we successfully sold to another company in the space called Lead Space. And then I was I was actually taking some time off an introduction to a board member, spent some time with radical and just sort of fell in love with the concept. T.

and to all the challenges as it relates to Data Moresby and really sort of seen the struggles that go on and building, maintaining a big, powerful database and how central that is, virtually any application. And you look at some of the top banking or telecom type customers we have no data is a core of some of the value that means companies create. And then and then even at reach force.

Right. Big data company in the Martek space battles data is just paramount, is all maintaining databases and trying to update, upgrade, you know, maintain those databases in the context of fast changing application requirements as a non-trivial exercise. And so when a company came along, they had this combination of the open source that sort of in my DNA and then try solving this challenge around database change management.

And it just seemed like a great fit. Absolutely. So, you know, another thing let us get out of the way early on is in today's world, when will you point to president?

Know there was a time as we were talking CEO and president were one person then from a governance point of view, that's a bad model. We expect for the most part. Woodroffe, CEO for president.

President. You have various responsibilities. Some some are more of a CEO.

O.. But, you know, being responsible for revenue kind of activities, just which was yours, you know. What are you responsible for it?

Got it. Yeah. So formally, my responsibilities are sales, marketing product.

And that is sort of the genesis here. And I have a great relationship with Derik, CEO of the company. We have been on the job for a month now and I think we team well even through my recruitment process and through that.

But Eric has built a amazing culture here, and this is one of the things you never know when you start a new job. It's just sort of, you know, what is the synergies between the team? And and Eric's a very effective leader.

He's built a great culture in terms of the depth and the value of the solution that Danielle has is sort of undisputed. Right. We've got multiple high six figure customers and even a seventh take your customer.

I mean, these are these are solving demanding problems in big enterprises. And their company's been very good at that. I was born all four very specific charter.

Right. How do we. Better engage and collaborate with our community to push innovation out to the market faster, and as your listeners may know, Alan, the real foundation for Radicals and Open Source project called Liquid Base Liquid Basses.

And one things I also do at RedHat was I ran the venture portfolio there. I've looked at literally hundreds of open source business plans made doesn't plus investments, and sat on a few boards of companies that RedHat invested in and Danica's or with a top 10 or LICA basis or of a top 10 project as it is, you look at the thousands and thousands open source projects. And so how do we work with that community again and collaborate fashion that we're really pulling innovation, pushing it back and driving as much value into this challenging database problem as we can?

Absolutely. So you said a lot there. Let's let's take a more formed by one.

So first of all, liquid base, it's something we've mentioned in past podcasts and past content, webinars and stuff that we've done with radical. But maybe you're going to change this and I hope you will be. I know in my mind when I think of of the article, I don't think liquid bass and those liquid bass has a tremendous following.

I just don't. It seems like that, right? And I'm not blaming anyone or anything like that, but I just I don't connect the two.

And maybe that's part of what your mission needs to be. Absolutely. We want this connection to not only exist, be robust again.

We've got a great team here, great culture, great people. We weren't we weren't use that to be excellent stewards of the community. You know, part of what motivate people's here is this is a big challenge to solve.

You saw a comment earlier about Mack the Maverick kind of style that Robert has. And I think it's appropriately so. Right.

We're breaking some glass. T. operates.

And so that's that's liquid base. And, you know, dactyls a set of capabilities built on top of that. We need to make it clear, though, to that core is our foundation and that, you know, we want to be, again, as good stewards as we can of that look based community.

Fifty million plus users. And in that, you will see this become much more right. Our identity and everything we do, how we act, behave, where we invest in what we do to try and push value forward into our customers.

Excellent. , as I call it. I also have a view of where the open source movement.

You know, the whole open source community is. And that is, you know, we've moved from the cathedral and the bazaar to what I called the Big Brother stage of open source, where seemingly every open source project was kind of sponsored or in fact owned by a single vendor. And that kind of inhibits collaboration on a industry basis.

Right. It's like Oracle wasn't going to contribute to a sequel, right? It's equal was far from over.

But let's say once Oracle board, I ask you are my ask you out. Look. That was the reason Maria and the others popped up, right.

Those people were ensure that Oracle was going to play nice, frankly. But that's you know, that's old. The new model is what I call the foundational error of open source, where we have like the Linux Foundation or the Eclipse Foundation or the Cloud Foundry.

Chad, did you know they're these not for profits that are. They all, quote unquote, own the open source project through the communitys benefit. I'm not aware of a foundation like the liquid base kind of playing field, are you or is that.

No, don't. I'm very familiar, the foundation model. Obviously, Red was for a pioneer in this, which worked with Fedora.

And we actually implemented a foundation model at IDB as well. And so if you even if you look today, really, B dot org is a separate legal entity, separate present. It's have engineers.

And the real purpose there is that pride, confidence to the users that regardless of vendor acquisitions that you discuss, the capabilities of that project will go forward. And we don't give them a month on the job here. We don't have a foundation.

So they will look right asking you. It is certainly a concern out there, but it's you know, it's a measure one. Right.

So where that what are the tradeoffs for the value in, as you talked about, the different phases of open source? I think it's it's unfortunate that there was a point where open source was this sort of and you use the phrase democratization of technology. That was a phrase also used by Matthew Zoellick, like the former CEO of RedHat.

And he also talked about this fashion statement thing where people open source is successful. I mean, everything you use on the Internet, I say, is open source for the most part. So it is clearly one, right, that battles sort of over and people said, hey, I want to glom onto this.

And so there was sort of a group of companies that attempted to co-opt, you know, the branding around open source without really understanding the nuance of what it meant to be a steward of the community and collaborate well. And in some ways, I think that's where a right to a skewed vision and we'll avoid that. It adaptix all, you know, again, we're gonna be good stewards of the community.

We recognize that it's got to be participatory. Most of the community members are people that have jobs at companies who would recognize in an IBM or SJP or other places like that. And they're taking time to be part of this community because it provides some value to what they're doing in their professional life.

And so we've got to recognize that we have to contribute to that value attempts to sort of usurp what they've done and go off and monetize it without the never, never work. Because, you know, if if it really is important functionality, someone will just do a fork and Monitise at around. It's really about providing these services.

And I use this phrase earlier where you have a meritocracy of ideas and that that sort of lifts everyone up. Right. So we can provide higher value to customers that need the specifics of an enterprise offering.

Or as we have, brand is a local based pro. And then the people there, they're rather committed for their specific needs that they're getting multiples of return also on that investment for the problems they're trying to solve. And it really is where this community is the perfect word for it, because it really is this joint effort to make everyone better off.

Great. Yeah. We're running out of time.

I want to give you one more thing that you want. I want you in your mind to fast forward. Six months.

Twelve months. Take your pick. What effect of you had on GaveKal?

You know, I think that we have to look at it, so part of what we're doing is we're taking a blank sheet and we're saying, hey, if we're going to start today and look at the trends in the market, cloud micro services, no sequel, new sequel here. These are all things that weren't necessarily the case when Liquid Base was originally founded by Nathan 10 years ago. What would it look like today versus where we are and where are the gaps between the perfect DevOps solution for database and what we have in the community today?

And sort of how do we help guide and steward that into a place that really solves the problem that we're facing? T. infrastructure continues to evolve.

And so I think if, you know, if we can look back in a couple of years and say, look, this has been the evolution of the product and it's much easier to use. It's much easier to implement that at a time to value is relatively quick. And it is really allowing the day here.

We're trying to let database keep up with all the DevOps advances that we've made around the application. If we see the database not being the drag on application, timeliness, speed, effectiveness that it can be today, then I know we've been successful in sort of this reinstill minute re-engagement community and pushing that innovation into the product. I agree with you, Diane, I promised I'd get out of here in fifteen minutes.

I know you had another appointment, but I want to invite you back. Maybe we'll do a video next time and we can dig in a little deeper. You know, I love talking about open source, as do you, it appears, and then right next to you.

So I think it's a great topic for us to continue. I wanted to wish you all the success in the world, though. Gotta go.

It's a great bunch of folks over there. And you're a great addition to the team. Oh, thank you very much.

I appreciate the kind words, Alan. And yeah, I look forward to future conversations. Immigration certainly will.

All right. Dion Cornett, new president at Datical joining us here on DevOps chat. This is Alan Shimel.

And you just listen to another DevOps chat. Have a great day everyone.