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>> Hello, everybody.
Welcome to the CUBE's coverage of MongoDB World 2022.
This is the first Mongo live, MongoDB World since 2019.
The CUBE has covered a number of Mongo shows,
actually going back
to when the company was called 10gen,
some of you may recall.
Mongo since then has done an IPO,
I think an IPO in 2017.
It's been a rocket ship company.
It'll probably do 1.2 billion in revenue this year.
It's got a billion dollars in cash on the balance sheet.
Despite the techlash,
it still got a 19 or $20 billion valuation,
growing above 50% a year.
The company just had a really strong quarter
and they seem to be hitting on all cylinders.
My name is Dave Vellante,
and here to kick it off with me is Sanjeev Mohan
who is the principal at SanjMo.
Sanjeev, great to see you.
You've become a wonderful CUBE contributor,
former Gartner analyst.
Really sharp, know the database space
and the data space generally really well.
So thanks for coming back on.
>> You're welcome.
You know, it's just amazing
how exciting the entire data space is.
They used to say all companies are software companies,
all companies are data companies.
So data has become the foundation.
>> Yeah. They say software's eating the world.
Data is eating software.
And so, you know, a lot of little quips here.
But this is a good size show,
if I know, four, 5,000 people.
I don't really know exactly the numbers, but it's exciting.
Of course, a lot of financial services.
We're here at the Javits Center.
Let's lay down the basics for people.
MongoDB is a document database
but they've been advancing that.
So document database is an alternative to RDBMS.
Explain that,
but explain also how Mongo has broadened its capabilities
in serving a lot more use cases.
>> Right. So that's my forte, like databases technology.
But before even I talk about that,
I have to say I am blown away by this MongoDB World
because MongoDB unbeckoned to all of us during the pandemic.
Has really come of age
and it's a billion dollar company now.
We are in this brand new Javits Center
that's been built during the pandemic.
And now the company is holding this event.
They hired thousand people last year.
So I think this company has really grown.
And why has it grown?
It's because it's offerings have grown to more developers
than just a document database.
Document databases revolutionized the whole DBMS space
when NoSQL came up,
because for a change, you didn't need a structured schema,
you could start bringing data in this document model schema,
like varying schema.
But since then, they've added things like search,
so they have Lucene Search.
They added Geospatial.
They added Time Series last year.
And this year, they keep adding more and more.
So like, for example,
they're going to add some column store indexes.
So from being a purely transactional,
they are now starting to address analytical
and they're starting to address more use cases.
Like, you know,
like what was announced this morning at Keynote
was Faceted Search.
So they're expanding,
they're going deeper and deeper
into these other data structures.
>> So they've taken Lucene
and made it a search of first class citizen.
>> Correct.
>> But I want to ask you some basic questions
about document database.
So it's no fixed schema,
so you put anything in there actually.
So it's more data friendly.
They're trying to simplify, you know, the use of data.
Okay, that's pretty clear.
What are the trade offs of a document database?
>> So it's not like, you know,
one technology has solved every problem.
Every technology comes with its own trade offs.
So in a document,
you basically get rid of joining tables with primary foreign
keys because you can have a flexible schema
within single document,
so it's very easy to write and search.
But when you have a lot of repeated elements
and you start getting more and more complex,
your document size can start expanding quite a bit
because you're trying to club everything
into a single space.
So that is where the complexity goes up.
>> So what does that mean for a practitioner?
It means they have to think about what?
How they are ultimately going to structure?
How they're going to query
so they can get the best performance, is that right?
So they got to put some time in up front
in order to make it pay back at the tail end.
Clearly, it's working,
but is that the correct way of thinking about it?
>> 100%.
In the SQL world,
you didn't care about the SQL analytical queries,
you just cared about how your data model was structured
and then SQL would basically search any model.
But in the NoSQL world,
you have to know your patterns
before you invest into the database.
So it's changed that equation
where you come in knowing what you are signing up for.
>> So a couple other questions, if I can.
I got like a number of questions.
So Mongo talks about how it's really supporting mission
critical applications,
and at the same time,
my understanding is the architecture of Mongo specifically
or a document database in general,
but Mongo specifically, you've got a primary database.
And that is the sort of the master, if you will, right?
And then you can create secondaries,
but so help me square the circle
between mission critical
and really maybe a more of a focus on,
I'll say, consistency versus availability.
Do customers have to sort of think about
and design in that availability?
How do they do that?
How are Mongo customers handling that?
>> So I have to say my experience of MongoDB
was that the whole company,
the whole ethos was developer friendly.
So to be honest,
I don't think MongoDB was as much focused
on high availability, disaster recovery,
even security to some extent,
they were more focused on developer productivity
and user experience. >> And simplicity.
>> Simplicity, make it simple.
Make the developers productive as fast as you can.
What really was an inflection point for MongoDB
was the launch of Atlas.
Because with Atlas,
they were able to introduce all of these management features
and hide it, abstract it from the end users.
So now they've got, you know,
like 2014 is when Atlas came out and it was in four regions
but today, they're in hundred regions.
So they keep expanding.
Then a very hyper scale cloud provider
and they've abstracted that whole management.
>> Okay. So Atlas of course is the managed database,
the database is a service in the cloud.
And so it's that cloud infrastructure and cloud tooling
that has allowed them
to go after those high availability applications.
My other question is
when you talk about adding search, geospatial, time series,
there are a lot of specialized databases.
Take time series for instance,
you have time series specialists
that go deep into time series.
Can a company like Mongo with an all-in-one strategy,
how close can they get to that functionality?
Do they have to be, you know,
it's kind of a classic Microsoft.
You know, maybe not perfect, but good enough.
I mean, can they compete with those other areas,
with those other specialists,
and what happens to those specialists if the answer is yes?
What's your take on that,
if that question makes sense?
>> So, David, this is not a MongoDB only issue.
This is an issue with, you know,
any time series database, any graph database.
Should I put a graph database
or should I put a multi-functional database,
multi-dimensional database?
And I really think there is no right or wrong answer.
It just really comes down to your use case.
If you have an extremely, let's say complex graph,
you know, then maybe you should go with a best of breed
purpose built database.
But more and more, we are starting to see
that organizations are looking to simplify their environment
by going in for maybe a unified database
that has multiple data structures.
>> Yeah. Well, certainly, it's interesting
when you hear Mongo speak,
they don't call out Oracle specifically,
but when they talk about legacy,
RDBMS, that don't scale and are complex
and are our are expensive,
they're talking about Oracle first
and of course there are others.
And then they talk about the bespoke databases,
the horses for courses databases,
then they show a picture of that.
That's like the poster child for Amazon.
And of course they don't call out Amazon.
They're a great partner of Amazons.
But those are really the sort of two areas
that Mongo is going after.
Now, Oracle of course will talk about their converged
strategy and they're taking a similar approach,
but so help us understand the difference there.
Is it just because they're sort of Oracle's traditional
RDBMS and have all the drawbacks associated with that?
But by the way, there are some benefits as well.
So how do you see that all playing out?
>> So, you know, it really it's coming down to
the origins of these databases.
I think they're converging
to a point where they're offering similar services.
And if you look at some of the benchmark numbers
or you talk to users,
from a business point of view,
I don't think there's too much of a difference
technology wise.
The difference is that MongoDB started in the document
space.
They were more interested in availability
rather than consistency.
Oracle started in the relation database
focused on financial services.
So asset compliance is what they're based on.
And since then, they've been adding other pieces.
So they differ from where they started.
Oracle has been in the industry for some, since 1970s.
So they have that maturity, but then they have that legacy.
>> You know, I love it
'cause recently Oracle announced the MongoDB API.
And so basic saying,
why leave Oracle when you can just do the MongoDB?
So that to me is a sign that MongoDB is doing well.
'Cause if Oracle calls you out, (chuckles)
whether you're Workday or Snowflake or Mongo,
you know, whomever,
that's a sign to me that you've got momentum
and you're stealing share in that marketplace.
And clearly, Mongo is,
they're growing at 50-plus percent per year.
So thinking about the early,
I mentioned 10gen earlier on,
I remember one of the first conferences I went to,
Mongo conferences,
it was all developers, a lot of developers here as well,
but they have really, since say 2014,
expanded the capabilities.
You talk about Atlas,
you talked about all these other types of databases
that they've added.
It seems like Mongo is becoming a platform company.
What are your thoughts on that
in terms of them sort of up-leveling the message?
They're now a billion-dollar plus company.
What's the next, you know, wave for Mongo?
>> So Oracle announced MongoDB APIs.
AWS has DocumentDB.
Azure has Cosmos DB.
So they all have API compatible APIs,
not the source code
because, you know, MongoDB has its own SSPL license.
So they have written their own layer on top.
But at the end of the day, you know,
these companies have to keep innovating
to catch up with MongoDB
because MongoDB can announce a brand new capability
then all these other players have to catch up.
So other cloud providers have 80% or so of capabilities,
but they'll never have 100% of what MongoDB has.
So people who are diehard MongoDB fans,
they prefer to stay on MongoDB.
They are now able to write more applications.
Like you know, MongoDB bought Realm
which is their front end,
like if you're in social media kind of thing,
you can build your applications and sync it with Atlas.
So MongoDB is now at a point
where they are adding more capabilities
like developers, like, you know, 5G is coming,
autonomous cars are coming.
So now they can address IOT kind of use cases.
So that's why it's becoming such a juggernaut
because it's becoming a platform
rather than a single document database.
>> Yeah. So Atlas is the near to midterm future.
Today, it's about 60% of revenues
but they have what Mongo calls self-serve
which is really the traditional on Prem stuff.
They're connecting those worlds.
You're bringing up the point that they're,
of course they go across clouds,
you're also bringing up the point
that they've got edge plays.
We're going to talk to Verizon later on today.
And they've got edge activity going on with developers.
I call it super cloud, right?
This sort of layer that floats above.
Now, of course, a lot of the super cloud concept
says we're going to hide the underlying complexity,
but for developers, they might want to tap those primitives.
So Mongo presumably will let them do that.
But that hybrid, what we call super cloud,
that is a new wave of innovation. Is it not?
And do you agree with that?
And do you see that as a real opportunity for Mongo
in terms of penetrating a new TAM?
>> Yes. So I see this is a new opportunity.
In fact, one of the reasons MongoDB has grown so quickly
is because they are addressing more markets
than they had pre-pandemic.
Also, there are all gradations of users.
Some users want full control.
They want an IS kind of, some want PAs,
and some businesses are like, you know, we don't care.
We don't want to deal with the database.
So today, we heard MongoDB Serverless went GA.
So now they have serverless capability, they have PAs,
but if you're more into Kubernetes,
they have Kubernetes operator.
So they're addressing the full stack
of different types of developers, different workloads,
different geographical regions.
So that's why their market is expanding.
>> Yeah. We're seeing abstraction layers,
you know, they started a physical virtual containers,
serverless, and eventually super cloud.
Sanjeev, great analysis.
>> Thank you so much. >> Thank you so much
for taking your time
to come on the CUBE. >> Pleasure.
>> All right. Keep it right there.
We'll right back right after this short break.
This is Dave Vellante
from the Javits Center at MongoDB World 2022.
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