Percona is now “passing” its Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) platform known as Everest to become a full open source project. Logically named OpenEverest, the stewardship of this project will be taken on by Solanica, a newly formed company, positioned as a cloud-native database platform player that specialises in running and managing data workloads anywhere. Solanica claims to enable users to get their first database up and running in minutes… a freedom factor that Percona will be hoping serves OpenEverest well, even as it stays involved as an interested parent in the project while it expands into other areas.
Data practitioners at Percona suggest that this move is timely, especially given the fact that sovereign data controls are currently growing in importance. IDC analyst Rahiel Nasir commented on LinkedIn recently to say that the sovereign cloud market is estimated to be worth $400billion by the end of the current year.
For databases, being able to run the team’s choice of database on its own choice of platform is argued to be a strong fit within modern accepted best practice approaches to data sovereignty i.e. by using Kubernetes and a team’s open source database of choice, users can avoid lock-in around data.
“Over the past few years, we’ve been building Percona Everest with a clear goal in mind: to deliver a powerful yet approachable DBaaS experience on Kubernetes,” blogged Peter Zaitsev, founder and CEO of Percona.
Adoption first, then vision
But says the enigmatic Zaitsev, as adoption grew, so did the vision. One theme the team consistently heard from the community was a desire to see Everest support an even broader ecosystem of databases, well beyond those supported by Percona.
“We listened carefully,” he pledged.
It became clear to the team that the Percona Everest that users desire is not the best fit with the Percona business model (in the wider commercial sense of the company being pure open source, but also operating as a trading commercial entity) and so, as such, a different solution was clearly in order.
As Percona Everest now becomes become OpenEverest; it will retain the same open source (Apache 2.0) license and become a multi-vendor project built with open governance at its core.
… and so to CNCF
The intention is to donate OpenEverest to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), ensuring long-term independence, transparency and community-driven innovation.
“To support this next phase, a new company called Solanica has been formed. Solanica is fully dedicated to the success of OpenEverest and operates with the singular focus and agility required to build a truly broad, vendor-neutral database platform. Sergey Pronin, who has led Percona Everest for several years, and I will both be deeply involved in this new venture,” said Zaitsev.
The next act
Percona remains committed to OpenEverest and will actively contribute integrations and expertise for the databases it knows best: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Valkey. Percona will also work closely with Solanica to deliver for users running these technologies on the OpenEverest platform.
Looking ahead, users are promised a route to faster development driven by a focused team and an expanded community, support for a wider range of database technologies and a stronger, more flexible platform with open governance and vendor neutrality. Existing Percona Everest customers will see no immediate changes. The company remains committed to honouring current contracts.