Thread by @TMFInnovator

I was asked earlier this week why MongoDB $MDB would want to be open source & how it could possibly compete against larger competitors after willingly releasing its code for others to see.

Here is an (admittedly long-winded) answer to those questions.

https://twitter.com/TMFInnovator/status/1149011576655159297

TECHNOLOGY

To start, technology moves faster than any single company can keep up.

Companies who self-describe as “innovative” know they can’t be cutting-edge if they do everything in-house. The wisdom of the crowd provides better products that are more quickly improved upon.

MISSION

MongoDB $MDB recognized this, and set the goal from the start to build a general-purpose ‘document’ database that could be much more flexible than traditional relational databases.

mongodb.com/what-is-mongodb

Document databases (& any NoSQL databases) use JSON-like syntax, which doesn’t require mapping everything out before you can actually start working on your software.

This is much more convenient for developers, while also making it much easier to scale for very large data sets.

This is important because apps grow & require greater things over time. And Mongo $MDB grows alongside its customers.

Its Community Server is initially * free* and offers core functionality to get started. In fact, it has already been downloaded more than 60 million times!

But developers serious about building commercial apps will eventually demand features like disaster recovery and zero downtime.

Mongo's Enterprise Subscription costs money but offers these necessary perks. It is priced based on a customer's # of servers and RAM requirements.

ATLAS

For those who just want to focus entirely on building apps and not be concerned about the behind-the-scenes infrastructure, Mongo $MDB offers a “database as a service” product called Atlas that is fully managed.

mongodb.com/cloud/atlas/pr…

Atlas has been *incredibly* popular with customers and is growing like gangbusters.

Atlas' revenue grew 340% last year!

OPEN SOURCE

So let’s get back to the original question: Why is open source important?

The reason that Mongo’s $MDB growth is knocking it out of the park is because it has focused on solving developers’ problems, rather than focusing making profits on its own products.

This is what sets Mongo apart from $ORCL, $MSFT, and $AMZN -- *even as they offer their own NoSQL databases*.

The latter are focused on how their DBs can complement their ecosystems. But $MDB is focused on innovating & knows profits will come in time from happy users.

Consider the following:

Microsoft's $MSFT Azure DB and Amazon's $AMZN Document DB each require an Azure or AWS account to use. And Document DB costs $200/mo before any data is even transferred.

Mongo’s $MDB Atlas is initially free and will work with any cloud provider.

The cloud titans are pretty clearly building from a perspective of self-interest and are liberally “borrowing” parts of Mongo’s $MDB open source code.

But I have two thoughts on this:

1) Building something on previously-released code is always backward-looking.

Mongo’s CTO says Amazon's Document DB is already six years behind with the code it’s borrowing, and its performance is vastly inferior to Atlas.

mongodb.com/blog/post/docu…

2) No one wants vendor lock in. If you sign with AWS or Azure, you’re accepting their pricing. Which keeps you from shopping for better rates w/ a multi-cloud strategy.

aws.amazon.com/documentdb/pri…

One quote I vividly remember from last month's @CloudEXPO:

“$1 of every $3 being spent in the cloud today is wasted on inefficiency.”

If you're locking in, you're most likely overpaying somewhere.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

While Mongo’s $MDB solutions are more scalable & flexible, it still needs to make money.

Most customers want those previously-mentioned perks & some guidance on how to get everything set up and working efficiently.

So Mongo $MDB charges a toll for subscribers to tap into its expertise and resources.

This open source model made popular by RedHat $RHT (now part of $IBM) is undoubtedly the wave of the future.

https://twitter.com/TMFInnovator/status/1143337807051517954

METRICS

So how well is Mongo’s unique business model working out for them?

Subscription revenue grew 82% in the most recent quarter, which is even greater than the 73% growth in the previous quarter. $MDB is growing faster even as it gets larger!

And as mentioned, Mongo is growing as its customers succeed. The number of customers paying at least $100k per year grew by 50%.

But there's still plenty of room to grow. Six-figure customers represent only 4% of $MDB's overall customer base.

Net annual recurring revenue expansion rate – i.e. this yr’s sub rev vs last yr’s for existing customers – has been >120% for 17 consecutive qtrs.

That is an important sign that Mongo isn’t being displaced by others. Even if it open sources the code and has larger competitors.

DISRUPTION

If you're still with me here, I'll close w/ a quote from Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma:

"Disruptive companies bring a very different value proposition that was previously unavailable, though a new technology or a new business model.”

@claychristensen

That new business model is exactly how Mongo $MDB is disrupting Oracle’s $ORCL four-decade database regime.

CONCLUSION

Rather than locking customers into proprietary licenses for on-premise and quickly outdated monolithic applications, MongoDB is enabling customers to easily build cloud-based, scalable apps that perfectly meet their needs.

Long $MDB.