Pythian Group

I’m looking forward to traveling to San Jose for this year’s MySQL Conference. If there’s anything that can trump the drama of conf two years ago, where we observed how Sun would handle its new property, and then the drama of last year, where we observed how Oracle would handle the pending acquisition, it’s going to be the drama around this one — the first MySQLConf since the Oracle/Sun merger has been finalized and approved.

I think there is some finality to the changing of the guard this time, since there aren’t really that many companies that could conceivably swallow up Oracle itself! (Maybe I shouldn’t say that — next thing you know they’ll spin it off heh.) But regardless, I am looking forward to getting to know Edward Screven and getting a sense from the keynote and other communications exactly what he’s planning to … DO … with MySQL.

Read the rest of this entry . . .

I had an interesting conversation with Sheeri yesterday. She had pointed out that today was Ada Lovelace Day, a day devoted to highlight and thank the many women in the Information Technology industry for their contributions. She suggested that if I wanted to blog about it she would find that appropriate, given what we’ve achieved here at Pythian.

First, I consider that a huge compliment. And then, a distant second, I told Sheeri – no I don’t think I’ll blog about it, that’s not my thing.

This is the IM conversation that came out of that email exchange when Sheeri and I connected about an hour later. You may or may not find it interesting, but ultimately I thought it was interesting enough to share.
Read the rest of this entry . . .

Here’s what Pythian is cooking up for MySQL Conference this year.

Monday, April 12

8:30am: Get out of bed lazy bones and head to Ballroom B

… because you’re going to want to attend Sheeri K. Cabral’s tutorial in two parts:

MySQL Configuration Options and Files: Basic MySQL Variables (Part 1)

Read the rest of this entry . . .

I am writing because Sheeri sent me a note about a blog post written by Brian Aker, where Brian concludes, quite correctly, that (in Sheeri’s words not Brian’s)


MySQL is now just a branch (the official branch,
but a branch nonetheless, and a bunch of trademark (logo) and
copyright (docs) ownerships).


This is exactly true. No denying it. Why bother. It’s true. It’s also true for the vast majority of open-source projects, by the way.

I replied to Sheeri:


There's no denying that. The product direction will be set by whoever sets the best product management strategy backed by the most effective development effort. And there can be multiple winners.
-Paul


Well, this is the kind of quality output I can be relied on. It might not fit on twitter, but it’s not blogworthy. Sheeri’s word of encouragement:


See, now that would be a nice blog post with a positive outlook that
both Oracle Corp and MySQL community would agree and be happy with,
because both Oracle Corp and the MySQL community feel they can set
"the best product management strategy backed by the most effective
development effort."
-Sheeri


God. My reply was embarassing but maybe I should include it for humour value:


Go for it. Its a tweet for me at the most. No time to expand that thinking into a blog worthy of the blog today.
-Paul


and then, right away,


ah censored it i'll do it.
it'll be short.
-paul


You are now reading the result of this very modest effort.

Here’s the future of MySQL, Drizzle, Monty Program, the Percona fork, etc.

The best product management strategies… should we be lightweight for the web, plug-in oriented like Drizzle? Should we follow Monty’s giant-killing roadmap? Should we focus on performance-oriented patches? The best product management strategies will win.

They can’t win alone. Will they be backed by appropriate investments from effective developers? Effective developers are the ones who convert winning product management strategies into working products. You can’t get there without them and I’ve seen lots of great strategies fail that test (including my own actually).

And there can be more than one winner.

It’s doesn’t matter what roadmap Oracle plots for MySQL. If it’s not the roadmap the community wants, it will lose ground and open an opportunity for another fork. If it is, however, (and NEVER, NEVER underestimate Oracle’s product management because it is outstanding and a big component of their historical success), if it is, however, Oracle can win the long-term hearts and minds, because they can resource quality developers in a way that I don’t think any of the competing forks are capitalized to do (yet.)

Either way, it’s going to be fun to watch.

And more than one player can win.

And regardless, the community wins. Big time.

So, a quick update on the Pythian/Oracle partnership, and what it’s like to be an OPN Platinum partner.

So far, it’s been really worthwhile.

And in under a month from the signing, Oracle has begun sending us amazing quality leads! The first was a doozie, an email made it’s way to us with the subject “OPN Solutions Catalog Message – Request for Information” and sure enough, inside was the full contact information for a prospective ISV partner who is looking for a collaborator to launch a managed service to their customers for operations support on their data-intensive systems. AMAZING!

And, I must say, the OPN group at Oracle are really a class act and know how to get a partner excited about working with them. In the mail today, we received a very nice box and in an unboxing moment that beats the iPhone or Nexus One … well it had no ninjas but it did have a beautiful magnet-latch lid! Inside was a lovely OPN Platinum partner plaque with a plexi stand, a letter of welcome to the programme, and a really cool OPN Platinum Partner grommet-sign tied in a red bow. Impressed!

We owe this to our VP BizDev Pete Ling of course, so here’s a gratuitous hero shot of him holding his prize:

Pete Ling holding his OPN Platinum Plaque

By popular demand, here is my tour of our new World Headquarters.

We moved in today! We’re very proud of it and I’m sure if you check out the video you’ll agree it is pretty Shaktastic. :)

My old friend and collaborator Theo Schlossnagle at OmniTI posted his slides from his Scalable Internet Architectures talk at VelocityConf 2009.

The slides are brilliant even without seeing Theo talk and I highly recommend the time it takes to flip through them, for anyone who is interested in systems performance. If anyone took an mp3 of this talk I’m dying to hear it, please let me know.

For those of you unfamiliar with OmniTI, Theo is the CEO of this rather remarkable company specializing in Internet-scale architecture consulting. They generalize on Internet-scale architecture, not on one specific dimension the way Pythian specializes on the database tier. This allows them to see Internet-scale workloads from a unique systemic, multidisciplinary point of view; from the user experience all the way up the stack, through the load balancer (or not), the front-end cache, the application server, the database server, the operating system, the storage, and so on. This approach lets them build Internet architectures and solve scalability problems in a unique and powerful, wholistic way.

Pythian first collaborated with OmniTI in 2001, and they deserve all of their success and profile that they’ve built since then. Trivia: both Pythian and OmniTI were founded in September 1997 and both companies continue to be majority-owned and controlled by founders (in Pythian’s case, yours truly).

Here’s the slide deck. Let me know your thoughts.

Curt Monash of DBMS2, the database industry analysis and research blog, posted a flurry of Oracle/Sun/MySQL commentaries since the announcement, and upon learning that they no longer appear on PlanetMySQL I thought I would quickly draw the community’s attention to the thoughts of one of our industry’s most respected thinkers on the deal.

It is worth it to read them all. Here they are in reverse order of publication (meaning newest first):

• MySQL Miscellany

• I don’t see why the GPL would be a major barrier to a useful MySQL Fork

• This week is a really good time to actively strengthen the MySQL forkers

• MySQL Storage Engine round-up with Oracle-related thoughts

• Should the Oracle-MySQL Combo face antitrust opposition?

• First thoughts on Oracle Acquiring Sun

I am very excited to be able to link to this press release announcing that The Pythian Group is the founding partner in MySQL’s brand-new “Remote DBA Provider” partnership program. This is great news for Pythian. It is also good news for Sun/MySQL. (Although admittedly nowhere near as attention-getting as Oracle’s announcement of their purchase of Sun Microsystems. Note that Pythian has been an Oracle partner for a very long time already.)

What this means is that MySQL Platinum Enterprise Support for MySQL is now bundled with every Pythian support contract. As a partner at the Platinum-level—the highest-tier support for MySQL—Pythian receives the level of support that most closely meshes with the elite and ultra-responsive level of enterprise infrastructure management that has been our tradition for over ten years.

This will now allow us to provide our customers cohesive and collaborative services of the highest calibre in full co-operation with the brilliant engineers at MySQL. (Something to note—there is currently no other way to get MySQL Platinum Enterprise Support on a monthly-pay basis other than through Pythian; otherwise it is an annual subscription.)

When the matter is related to database management, operations and administration, consulting, architecture, server consolidation, cloud offload, clustering, or sharding, Pythian engineers will take the lead in consultation with MySQL. When the matter is product functionality, emergency or routine product support, enhancement requests, patches, and so forth, MySQL will take the lead as coordinated by Pythian, so that the client always has Pythian fully-informed and in control of the optimal delivery of support.

This partnership represents months of work by Pythian’s Peter Ling in collaboration with Anna Weihl at Sun, with Andrew Waitman’s and my support together with that of Sun’s Kevin Schmidt, Jeff Wiss, and Karen Tegan Padir.

I also want to thank Marten Mickos for his early advocacy surrounding this strategy. Marten, although you have left Sun, you should be happy to know that the community spirit you led with from the top has caught on and not flagged since your departure.

A short post to direct people’s attention to and solicit comments on the following from someone who is admittedly a hero of mine, Richard Stallman:

But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.

“It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign,” he told The Guardian.

“Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it’s very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.”

The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party.

His comments echo those made last week by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who criticized the rash of cloud computing announcements as “fashion-driven” and “complete gibberish”.

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do,” he said. “The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

That blockquote links to the article at the Guardian where Stallman is interviewed and quoted. Please follow it to read the article in its entirety.

What do you think?