>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas! It's theCUBE. Covering Edge 2016. Brought to you by IBM. Here's your host, Dave Vellante. >> Welcome back to IBM Edge everybody. This is theCUBE's fifth year covering IBM Edge. We were at the inaugural Edge five years ago in Orlando. Marc Linster is here and he's joined by Lenley Hensarling. Marc is the Senior Vice President of Product Development. And Lenley is the Senior Vice President of Product Management and Strategy at EDB, Enterprise Database. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. >> Male Voice: Thank you. >> Okay, who wants to start. Enterprise Database, tell us about the company and what you guys are all about. >> Well the company has been around for little over 10 years now. And our job is really to give companies the ability to use Postgres as the platform for their digital business. So think about this, Postgres is a great open source database. Great capabilities for transactional management of data. But also multi-model data management. So think about standard SQL data but think also about document oriented, think about key-value pair. Think about GIS. So a great capability that is very, very robust. Has been around for quite a few years. And is really ready to allow companies to build on them for the new digital business but also to migrate off their existing commercial databases that are too expensive. >> What's the history of Postgres? Can you sort of educate me on that? >> Sort of the same roots back with System R, where DB2 came from, Oracle came from. So Berkeley, that's where the whole thing started out. Postgres is really the successor to Ingres. >> Dave: Umhmm. >> And then it turned into PostgreSQL. And it has been licensed under open source license, the Postgres license since 1996. And it's a very, very vibrant open source community that has been driving forward for many years now. And our view is the best available relational and multi-model database today. >> It's the mainspring of relational database management systems essentially >> Marc: Yeah. >> is what you're saying. And Lindley, from a product standpoint, how do you productize that, open source. >> Open source really, companies that have a distribution of open source for database and operating system, whatever the open source company most people are acquainted with, is Red Hat and Linux right. And so, we do the same thing that they do but for Postgres database. We take the distribution, we add testing, we add some other functionality around it so you can run Postgres responsively as Marc likes to say. So high availability, capability, fail-over management, replication, a backup solution. And instead of leaving it as an exercise for a customer, who wants to use open source, we test all this together. And then we validate it and we give them a complete package with documentation and services that they can access to help them be successful it. >> So if Michael Stonebraker were sitting right here, I say Michael, what do you think about Postgres? I'd say I had to start Vertica because we needed a new way. Yet, sort of PostgreSQL, is the killer remains the killer platform in the industry, doesn't it? >> Male Voice: Umhmm. Why is that? It's interesting when you talk to guys like Stonebraker, it's sort of dogma almost. But yet, customers, talk with their wallet. >> And it is, >> He did a very, very nice job of architecting it. It is a database that is extensible. The reason we add the first JSONB or document oriented implementation in the relational database space is because it was designed to make it easy to add new capabilities, new datatypes, new indexes, et cetera, into the same transactional model. That's why we have JSONB. That's why we have PostGIS. That's why we have key-value pair. So it was really well architected. And when you think about who else, not just Vertica has taken this engine >> Dave: Yeah. >> It is in Netezza, it is in a bunch of other. >> Dave: Master Data. >> Lenley: Greenplum. >> Greenplum yes. So it's a really robust architecture. Very, very nicely designed. It just does the job and it does it really well. Which is, what you want a database to do, right. It's not that exciting but it's really stable. It really works. The data is still there tomorrow. That's what really the requirements are. >> And to translate a little bit, Marc mentioned PostGIS, which is geo spacial capability for the Postgres database. And so we distribute that along with Postgres and test it so that you know it works. And he mentioned H-Store, so that's how you can actually store internet of things data really well into Postgres. And we talk about SQL, noSQL databases, so they're document databases. And the ability to have personalization at the same level you can in a document oriented database but in a structured SQL database are the kinds of things that have been added to Postgres over the years. Again, it's because of the basic architecture that Stonebraker put in place as an object relational database. >> It's so interesting to look at the history of database. Talk about Stonebraker, he's been on a number of times. It's just fascinating to listen to one of the fathers of this industry. But 10 years ago, database was like such a boring topic. And now it's exploded. Now you got Amazon going after Oracle. Oracle fighting the good fight. So many noSQL databases coming in. SQL becoming the killer big data app if you will. >> Male Voice: Umhmm. >> Why all of a sudden did database get so interesting? >> What happened was, application models changed. Led by Facebook, led by Amazon and Google. They said, let's refactor the applications and let's refactor the way we handle storage. >> Dave: Umhmm. >> And that led to the rise of the polyglot of databases is what a lot of people are saying. You have fit for purpose solutions and you may have three or four or five of them in your overall architecture. One thing about Postgres is, we're able to, because of the datatypes support that Marc mentioned, fit into that well. We don't try and do everything so if somebody says, I'm going to use Mongo for data capture, or I'm going to use Cassandra for capturing my internet of things data. We have what we call foreign data wrappers in the Postgres world. We call them just Enterprise DB Adapters but to Mongo, to Casandra, to Hadoop and can do bidirectional data there and just keep that data at rest over there in the other world. But be able to project relational schema onto it. We can push our data into those. We've got a great use case we've been talking about with a customer who had over a petabyte of data. And in the past what you do is, you'd go buy an expensive archiving solution and add that to it. Now, you just use Hadoop distributed file system. Push the data off there as it ages and have a foreign data wrapper that allows you to still query that data when it's out of your basic operational dataset. And move forward. >> Can I call that a connector or? >> Lenley: Yeah, a connector, that's not a bad idea. >> And it's interesting because If you guys remember Hadapt, probably. [Male Voices] Yeah. Yes. >> They came out, they were the connector killer. >> Male Voice: Umhmm. >> And it failed. >> Male Voice: Yeah. >> Seems like connectors are just fine. >> Male Voice: Yeah. >> And one of the really interesting things is, we call it data federation right. With philosophy here is, leave the data where it is. There are some data that should live in Hadoop or Cassandra. If I'm doing an e-commerce site with transactions and click streams, well, the click streams really should live in Hadoop. That the night natural place for them. The transactions should be in a transactional database. With the foreign data wrapper, I can run queries without moving the data, that will allow me to say, well, before you bought the brown teddy bear, which pages did you look at? >> Dave: Yeah. >> And I can do that integrated system and I can do a fit for purpose architecture. And that's what we think is really exciting. >> And that's fundamental to this new sort of programming or application models. >> Male Voice: That's right. >> The one that you were talking about is moving five megabytes of code to a petabyte of data. As opposed to moving data which we know has gravity and speed of light issues and so forth. >> Thank you for that little brief education. Appreciate it. So let's get into your business now, your relationship with IBM. What customers are doing. You mentioned IoT data so talk more about your business and your relationship with IBM and what you guys are doing for customers. >> There are a couple of things. We mentioned Oracle. And there are all the new databases. And then there's your, dare we say, legacy, proprietary databases as well. And people are looking to become more efficient in how they spend. We've done another thing with Postgres. We've added Oracle compatibility in terms of datatypes. So we support all the datatypes that Oracle does. And we support PL/SQL, they're sort of variant of stored procedure language. And implemented a lot of the packages that they have as well. So we can migrate workloads from Oracle over into an open source based solution. And give a lot cost effectiveness options to customers. >> Dave: Steal. This is a way that I can sort of have Oracle licensed database licensed and maintenance avoidance. >> Lenley: Yes. Yeah. >> Where possible, right. >> Where it makes sense. Where it makes sense. >> Obvious my quorum, I keep, but let's face it, the number one cost component of a TCO analysis of an Oracle customer is the database license and maintenance cost. >> Male Voice: That's right. >> It's not the people. One of the few examples I can think of where that's the case. There's always the people cost. [Male Voice] That's right, that's right. IT is very labor intensive. But for an Oracle customer, it's the database license. Cuz they license by Core. >> Male Voice: Yup. Cores are going through the roof. >> Male Voice: That's right. It's been great for Oracle's business. Although, wouldn't you agree, Oracle sees the writing on the wall that the SAS is really sort of the new control point for the industry. You see the acquisition of NetSuite and competition with Workday >> Male Voice: Yup. >> and the like. >> But the database remains the heart of the business. >> And really it's movement to the cloud, both private cloud and public cloud. And so we've been doing work there. We've had public cloud database as a service solution on Amazon for, what, [Marc] Four years. >> Four years, Marc. And have gained a lot experience with that. And were running that sort of running a retail, you can license the database and we'll provision it there. And so what we've done recently is change our perspective and said, let's put this into hands of customers. And let them standup their own database as a service. But also do it in a way that they can choose what workload should go to Amazon and what workload might go to their private cloud, built on open stack. And be able to arbitrage that if you will. Because they now have a way to provision the databases and make a choice about where to put it. >> So that's a bring your own license model that you just talked about? >> Bring your own license model or >> Are you in the Marketplace and, >> We're in the Marketplace in Amazon, where we can supply it that way. But customers have shown a preference for bring your own license. They want to make the best enterprise deal they can with a vendor like us or whomever else. And then have control over it. >> Amazon obviously wants you to be in the Marketplace. I won't even mention but I talked to some CEOs of database companies and they say, you know, we're in the Marketplace but we get in the Marketplace, next thing you know, Amazon is pushing them towards DynamoDB or you know. >> Male Voice: That's right, that's right. >> Now Amazon's come out with Aurora and Oracle migration and you know the intent to go after that business. Amazon's moving up the stack and you got to be careful. >> They are. But the thing about Amazon is that, they're a pure play in the cloud company. >> Dave: Yup. >> And all of the data shows that it's like a mix, it's going to be a hybrid cloud. Half the company in this world [Dave] Not Angie Jassie's data >> Eighty percent of the people in the cloud are going to be on-prem, still continuing their journey through virtualization. >> Dave: Yeah, that's right. >> Let along going to the cloud. But we want to be something that let's them put what they want in the public cloud and let's them manage on the private cloud in the same manner. So they can provision databases with a few clicks. Just like they do on Amazon. But do it in their data center. >> You doing that with Softlayer as well or not yet? >> Lenley: Not yet. >> Marc: Not yet. >> We've built this provisioning capability ourselves. And it came out of the work we did putting up databases on Amazon. >> So what are you guys doing here at Edge. Edge is kind of infrastructure show. Database is infrastructure. >> We're talking about our work with Power. >> Power is a big partner for us. Power is I think very, very interesting for our database customers. Because of the much higher clock speeds and the capabilities that the Power processor has. When I'm looking at Power, I get more oomph out of a single core which really for a database customer is very, very interesting. Because all databases are licensed by Core. >> Dave: Right. >> So it's a much better deal for the customer. And specifically for Postgres, Postgres scales very well with higher clock speeds. So by having, let's say, by growing performance, not by adding more cores but by making the individual cores faster, that plays very, very well to the Postgres capabilities. >> Okay, so you are a Power partner, part of that ecosystem that IBM is appealing to to grow the OpenPOWER base. And what kind of workloads are you seeing your customers demand and where you're having success? >> Across the board. Database is mostly infrastructure capabilities so there's a lot of interest that we're seeing that, for all kinds of applications really. >> What's the typical Power customer look like these days? You got some Oracle, you got some DB2, you guys are running on there, what's the mix? Paint the picture for us. >> I think the typical Power customer is the typical enterprise company. And, [Dave] Little bit of everything. >> It's a little bit of everything. But one of the key things is that, people are also looking at what they've got and the skills they have in place. You were talking about people cost right. [Dave] Yeah. >> And their understanding of management. Their understanding of how to manage the relationship with the vendor even. And then saying, look, how can I move into the new world of digital transformation and start my own private cloud options and things like that in an efficient way. That makes efficient use of hardware I have in place and has a growth curve and new hardware that's coming out that fits my workloads. >> Dave: Umhmm. >> And the profiles that Marc was talking about. >> And also the resources. Which is very interesting when we look at these new digital applications with Postgres. Because you can do so much in Postgres from geographic information systems to document oriented to key-value. But you can do that with your existing developers through existing DBAs. They don't need to go to school to learn a new database. And that's also a very, very, interesting capability. So you can use your existing team to do new stuff. [Male Voice] Yup. >> What's happening in IoT, what problems are you solving there and where's the limit? >> Sensor data collection. >> Lenley: Yeah. Real interesting because sensor data tends to come in all different forms. We have customer who collects temperature sensor, temperature data. But the sensors are all sending different data packets. So because we can do document oriented or key-value, we can easily accommodate that. In the old days with the relational model, I had to do all kinds of tricks to sort of stuff all that into a relational table. My table would be almost empty at the end because I'd have to add columns for every vendor et cetera. Here, now I can use put all that into the same format and provide it for analysis. So that's a real interesting capability. >> And it's interesting too because we've got really strong geo spacial data support. And the intersection of that, with IoT is a big deal. They track your iPhone, they know where we are. They know what's going on. That's sensor data. They know which lights in which building, which you know, louvers that are controlling HVAC are malfunctioning or not. They want to know specifically where it is, not just what the sensor is. And some of that stuff moves around. And it gets replaced in a new place in the building and such. So we're well setup to handle those types of workloads. >> What's interesting, when IBM bought the weather company, [Lenley] Yeah. >> And they thought okay great, they're getting all these data scientists and weather data, that's cool. They can monetize that but it's an IoT play, isn't it? [Male Voice] Right. Right. >> Talk about sensor. >> It's reference data. It's reference data for other company specific IoT plays. To have a broader set of sensors out there in their region and understand what's happening with weather and things. And then play that against what their experience is, managing new building or manufacturing processes, everything. >> So what's the engagement model. I'm a customer, I want to do business with you. How do I do it, how do I engage? >> Well, a lot of our businesses direct with us. Others through partners. And then a lot of customers come to us because they want to get off legacy systems. But really, what they do is, once they understand the database and the capabilities, they say, okay yeah, you can do the Oracle stuff. But what I'm really going to do with you is my new things. Because that's really exciting and it helps me kind of put a lid on the commercial license growth. So maybe I'm not going to get off it, but I will stop growing it. So I will start doing my new stuff on Postgres. Whenever I modernize something, Postgres is going to be my database of choice. If I already open up an application with its whole stack, this is one of the changes I'm going to make. And then the database as service, is very, very interesting. So these four entry vectors and what happens is, quite a few customers after a short time when they started with project or applications, they end up making Postgres as one of their database standards. Not the only one. But they make it one of the database standards so it gets into the catalog and every new project then has to consider Postgres. >> It's interesting, there's a space created as Microsoft sort of put all their wood behind the era of becoming a competitor to high end Oracle. And with this last release, they probably are on there, arguable. But they've also raised their prices too. And they've made the solution more complex. So there's this space that was vacated for like a ton of workloads and Postgres fits in there just about perfectly. We see enterprise after enterprise come to us with a sheet that says, now we're going to get some of this noSQL stuff. We're going to keep Oracle or DB2 over here for these really high end things. Run my financials, run my sales order processing, my manufacturing. And then we got this space in here. We got a slot for relational database and we want to go open source. Because of the cost savings. Because of other factors. It's ability to grow and not be bound to, hey, what if the vendor decides they're going to go for a new cooler thing and make me upgrade. >> Dave: Right. >> And I want to stay there and know that there's still being an investment made. And so there's a vibrant community around it. And it just fits that slot perfectly. >> You got to pay for that digital transformation and all these IoT initiates. You can't just keep pouring [Male Voice] Somehow. >> down to database licenses. [Male Voice] That's right. >> Tell me, we have to leave it there. >> Thanks very much >> Male Voice: Alright. >> for coming to theCUBE. >> Thanks so much. >> We appreciate the time. You welcome. [Male Voice] Enjoy it. Keep it right there buddy. We'll be right back with our next guest. This is theCUBE. We're live from IBM Edge 2016, be right back. (upbeat music)