Pythian Group

When we founded Pythian Europe a year ago, we had, as former Oracle employees, a rather black-and-white view of the database world. There was the Oracle database; and then “The Others.”

Here at Pythian, though, we learned that the database world is more colorful than that, and very dynamic. Of course there are passionate debates between our Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server teams over whose DBMS is better. These discussions, however, are friendly and respectful, and when it comes to a concrete situation, the winner is always the customer—his or her business needs and circumstances decide.

We learned a lot about the fascinating history of MySQL and more details about its features from Nicklas Westerlund and Danil Zburivsky, MySQL experts and members of Pythian Europe. Nicklas helped with the migration of a 1 TB Oracle RDB database on OpenVMS to MySQL on Linux. And there’s our Australian colleagues—see Alex’s blog about the Australian Webinar.

Paul Vallée, Pythian’s founder and Executive Chairman really opened our eyes. Paul talks about Oracle’s 11G features with the same enthusiasm he has for MySQL’s federated architecture, or for SQL Server’s peer-to-peer replication technology. You could hardly find anybody who presents his visionary views of the new technology trends like cloud computing, virtualization, or server consolidation with such a deep understanding of the topics.

Here is your opportunity—especially those of you in Europe,the Middle East, or Africa—to confer with Paul Vallée on Thursday, June 4, 2009 12:00 PM–1:00 PM CEST (11AM–12:00 PM GMT) in a free webinar, Database Platform Migration. Read the rest of this entry . . .

I’m pleased to announce that there will be the formal launch of Pythian Europe at the premises of the Canadian Embassy in Prague on Wednesday the 6th of August from 17:00 to 18:30. This historic event will be announced by Mrs. Sameena Qureshi, Trade Counsellor, Embassy of Canada; and Paul Vallée, President and Founder, The Pythian Group. Present will be various members from the press (IT and Business), as well as representatives from Oracle and Sun Microsystems, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Prague, and many more. We will prepare some unusual and very tasty snacks and refreshments.

We would love for readers of this blog to join us, so please consider this your special, personal invitation from me. Please come if you’re in Prague on Wednesday. If you plan to attend, please contact Dan at elbl@pythian.com.

I am traveling to Europe next week to brief major prospects in Germany (Daimler, MAN) as well as to attend to administrative matters at Pythian Europe in Prague and would love to meet any readers of this blog during this trip!

I’m especially interested in meeting:

• DBAs, Applications Administrators and Systems Administrators,
• Potential customers (IT Directors, DBA Managers, Supply Managers for IT), and
• Potential partners (IT product of service companies that could partner with Pythian to delight our mutual customers)

Here is my itinerary:

• Sunday, August: Frankfurt,
• Monday, August 4: Stuttgart,
• Tuesday, August 5: Munich, and
• Wednesday, August 6 through Saturday, August 9: Prague, Czech Republic.

Please reach out to me using vallee@pythian.com if you would like to meet!

That’s right. MySQL now has a user group in Paradise.

I am always looking into connecting with other MySQL professionals, to share the laughs and tears, and to enjoy what we love working with every day, MySQL. I have always wanted to bring us all together, and I thought that this would have a good chance of doing so. Since I live in Malta, this made for the perfect location for it. If you live in Malta, or perhaps in Sicily or Tunisia, and want to take a trip, please do join us at our first meeting.

We will be having our first meeting in Mellieha, and please RSVP to me personally via email, westerlund (at) pythian.com if you want to attend. The date is set for Thursday, July 31^st at 6pm. We will discuss the current use of MySQL, its future, and whatever else comes into mind. I myself would love to hear usage stories for our first meeting, so we all get an understanding of how MySQL is used in Malta and environs.

I will make sure there are some refreshments to be had.

Let’s keep ourself educated and aware of how other people solve problems that we all sometimes encounter, as well as their interesting technical solutions. And let’s have some fun doing so!

It is with great pride that I am able to announce that Pythian is making a large investment in Europe. As of this month, Pythian Europe s.r.o. is fully operational and we have headquartered the company in beautiful Prague. Additional offices are planned in Paris and Malta by the end of the summer.

Pythian Europe is launching with an elite, full-fledged team and I would like to introduce the founders:

On the left is Lukas Vysusil, who joins us from Oracle where he served for 6 years in a variety of roles, including Oracle Applications DBA, DBA Team Lead, Manager of the Configuration Queue for Oracle OnDemand outsourcing services, and also Senior Technology Consultant. He brings a wealth of experience in team leadership, troubleshooting, Oracle Apps, the pressure cooker of consulting in the enterprise database and applications technology space and formal configuration and change management processes to Pythian and will serve as Service Delivery Manager.

On the right is Jan Polnicky, who joins us from Oracle where he served for 6 years in a wide variety of roles. You’ll have to check his linkedin profile for the entire list, but suffice it to say he started out as a developer for Online Services, quickly took on a leadership role in that team, moved to OnDemand where he became a services team lead, then got promoted to EMEA queue manager for configurations, and then got promoted to OnDemand Services EMEA Manager – Release Management where he led a team of up to 15 engineers across geographies (UK, ES, CZ, EG + USA & APAC indirects) doing general Oracle Database & Apps management, tons of preventative maintenance and supervised a number of Oracle Applications upgrade projects. In his spare time, Jan is working on his Ph.D., I kid you not. Jan will serve as a peer to Lukas as Service Delivery Manager.

You may think that’s enough.

You may be thinking, OK, with these guys and the teams they will soon be leading now Pythian has added so much expertise and horsepower in Europe they’ll stand pat for a while.

But oh no. Not me. That was not enough!

To lead these guys, on the centre, we have also added Peter Simecka as Vice President, Pythian Europe. Peter joins us from, you might have guessed it, Oracle Corporation where he started out in 1994. Even before joining Oracle, he had substantial expertise on Oracle/UNIX, dating back to Oracle 4 (I first worked on Oracle 5, but 6 was already out by then). Over his career at Oracle, Peter has led teams as large as 60 engineers, served as Product Support Manager for five years, served as Customer Support Manager for four years, and then built and led the Oracle OnDemand Outsourcing centre in Prague for four years. To say that he brings a wealth of leadership experience, customer support and liaison experience, and outsourced services design, development and delivery experience is a woeful understatement. I am hoping and planning to learn a lot from him.

It’s funny because the way I presented these guys, it makes it seem like I selected each of them individually, but that’s not how it happened at all. I’ll leave that story for another day, or maybe Peter will want to tell it.

So, what are we planning to do with this ambitious operation in Europe? Stay tuned.