Let me introduce myself, I’m Colin Charles.
Percona turns ten years old this year. To me, there is no better time to join the company as the Chief Evangelist in the CTO office.
I’ve been in the MySQL world a tad longer than Percona has, and have had the pleasure of working on MySQL at MySQL AB and Sun Microsystems. Most recently I was one of the founding team members for MariaDB Server in 2009. I watched that grow into the MariaDB Corporation (after the merger with SkySQL) and the MariaDB Foundation.
For me, it’s about the right server for the right job. Today they all support a myriad of different features and different storage engines. Each server has its own community that supports and discusses their pros and cons. This is now true for both the MySQL and MongoDB ecosystems.
I’ve always had a lot of respect for the work Percona does — pragmatic engineering, deeply technical consulting (and blog posts) and amazing conferences. A big deal for me, and a big reason why I’m now here, is that Percona truly believes in the spirit of open source software development. Their obvious support of the open source community is a great pull factor for users as well.
I just spent time on the Percona Live Europe conference committee. (I’ve been involved in MySQL-related conferences since 2006, and was even Program Chair for a couple of years). There, I got to see how the conference is evolving beyond just stock MySQL to also include MongoDB and other open source databases
Recently I visited a customer who was not just interested in using a database, but also in offering a database-as-a-service to their internal customers. I discussed OpenStack with them, and knowing that Percona, the company I now represent, can support the architecture and deployment too? That’s kind of priceless.
We’re all crazy about databases and their position in the overall IT structure. They provide us with cool apps, internet functionality, and all sorts of short cuts to our daily lives. Percona’s role in providing solutions that address the issues that infrastructure faces is what really excites me about my new journey here.