Here are my Top 3 Takeaways from the event:
MongoDB is growing – Though the vendor is not breaking out numbers, there are some key metrics that show how well the vendor is doing. For instance, MongoDB has broken the 10M download mark. Certainly nothing to guarantee revenue, but it makes a large qualified market for MongoDB to sell its licenses. The vendor shared that it has now 2000+ subscription customers and over 300k people have taken MongoDB education classes. The Opensource project has 35000 MongoDB user groups (MUGs) and MongoDB now has over 1000 partners. All impressive numbers that show that MongoDB is offering an attractive product.
Key product Progress – On the product side MongoDB is making progress, with a focus on the recent addition on the storage layer, something the vendor did not have at its first MongoDBWorld a year ago (more here). All key product advances have been neatly packed into press releases (they are here) – and let’s comment on them:
- Performance Wars to re-start - MongoDB claims the performance crown over Cassandra and Couchbase (see here) – In a test performed by United Software Associates using the Yahoo Cloud Serving Benchmark (YCSB). The test throws the performance challenge out to the two other databases and I am sure both vendors will respond sooner than later (Couchbase also has their user conference this week) – so stayed tuned.
From my perspective: As useful and important performance tests are – they always struggle on the comparison side. And every customer situation is different, so we recommend to take them as one measurement point, but strongly recommend customers to run their own benchmarks for critical performance pieces.
- Visualization matters – In the past BI tools / visualization vendors like Tableau, SAP Business Objects, Qlik and IBM Cognos have used MongoDB as a data store for more advanced and more complex content. Now MongoDB turns this around by providing a standard connector for these tools, supported by MongoDB. Certainly a better solution for MongoDB customers as they get their database of choice being able to support a variety of front end tools. For sure this will start another discussion on back end vs. front ends in business data, but it is good to see the backend side to catch up. And showing MongoDB’s market power and customer needs, MongoDB will start with Tableau first, no surprise. But it shows the power of MongoDB, getting Tableau on stage at the Day 2 keynote (similar as having Docker CEO Gollub on Day 1).
- More coming in MongoDB 3.2 – With the upcoming release of MongoDB schedule for later this year, MongoDB is pushing the yardstick further out in regards of value creation for customers. Customer want to make sure documents are being useful and valid for their purposes, so document validation is a key new capability. But when you store vital information in documents, you must secure them, so MongoDB adds encryption for data at rest. Providing the above mentioned visualization support certainly required MongoDB to create more view across collections, but why have the capability locked up for visualization only, so MongoDB exposes it as a separate capability to developers, too. And lastly souping up administration tools is never a bad choice for a technology product, the new mongoScout allows administrators and developers to understand better what is going in their MongoDB databases.
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| Full Sessions at MongoDBWorld |
Once again, it is land & expand – The popular go to market and sales approach of open source vendors was part of the briefings (see the Alteryx and Acumatica approach to it here and here). It was good to see both CMO Eisenberg and CRO Delatorre walk us through the go to market in synch on all key topics, such harmony is seldom found between a CMO and CRO / Head of Sales. With 10 million downloads it is clear that MongoDB needs to carefully decide where to invest marketing $s, sales resource follow up, upsell opportunities etc. It looks like the team has a good handle on the process, the investors are investing more in go to market, with the focus being business growth in Europe and Asia, with an overall goal to sell more through partners. After all CEO Ittycheria stated that a working demand side is key for the success of startups, so it is clear there is a focus on this (key) side of the business.
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| Very MongoDB Green |
MyPOV
A very good user conference for MongoDB, that is growing well in both product and go to market capabilities. Given some executive changes, including the CEO, quite a remarkable outcome, not many startups come out strong after management changes. On the product side there has been more continuity with Horowitz at the helm and MongoDB is looking for more scale and growth of its subscription sales potential. By pointing to the popular visualization area, the vendor very likely is betting on a winner. Enterprises struggle often to make visualization tools work and to take them live in general, so making this integration easier creates value for enterprises and on the flipside revenue potential for MongoDB.
On the concern side MongoDB needs to manage growth well. A good problem to have, nonetheless a challenging one. Investors and customers are getting used to growth in market numbers and product capabilities quickly, and delivering on these consistently is not an easy task. MongoDB has shown it can tackle complex engineering projects with its storage plans, but that process is far from over and needs to be managed well with high quality releases, good knowledge dissemination as well as partner uptake and education. A lot of things to orchestrate.
The good news is that MongoDB does not face a competitor with an identical (or very, very similar) value proposition. That means that as long as MongoDB can keep up a differentiating story to the incumbent database vendors that enterprises use, and as long as MongoDB keeps executing - it will do well. We will be watching and analyzing.
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