Interview with CYBERTEC
Any views or opinions represented or expressed in this interview belong solely to the interviewee and do not necessarily represent those of the PGConf.EU 2023 organization, PostgreSQL Europe, or the wider PostgreSQL community, unless explicitly stated.
- In which areas do you expect PostgreSQL to grow most and how does your company contribute to and benefit from that growth?
At the moment we see that large companies are moving to PostgreSQL. Often these are migration projects, because commercial databases such as Oracle and MS SQL are simply too expensive to run at large scale. However, what is important to note: Back in the old days, migration was only about money - now it is also about technical superiority of Open Source in general. We are a provider of PostgreSQL support and we help companies around the world. This means that we benefit directly from anything PostgreSQL related.
- How does PostgreSQL help you bring value to your customers?
I think the key issue here really is: PostgreSQL is problem free. We can deploy Patroni High-Availability 10x faster than anybody could ever install some legacy solution just as RAC. We can fix any bug in PostgreSQL faster than any support helpdesk at a big vendor is ever able to handle things. The trick is: The number of levels between the customer and real developers is a lot lower, which helps us to be faster and more competent. The support guy at Oracle in "god knows where" has no chance to read Oracle code - we have access to everything at the source level Which gives us as well as the client a major advantage. We can look things up - the Oracle 1st level guy does not have this luxury.
- What is your PostgreSQL centered product?
We offer "full stack PostgreSQL". This means we offer:
- 24x7 support for PostgreSQL
- consulting and training
- Scalefield: Full Kubernetes automation for PostgreSQL
- CYBERTEC Migrator: A fully visual tool chain for PostgreSQL to handle migrations
- CYPEX: A full replacement for Oracle APEX and Oracle forms
In addition, there are many things such as monitoring tools (pgwatch), scheduling (pg_timetable), faceting and a lot more. I guess we are pretty much the only ones around, who got everything from automation to zero-downtime support covered.
- How do you foster diversity in your company?
We don’t and we never will. We hire competent people and get rid of incompetent ones. Nobody is hired for being green, blue, yellow, orange, gay, religious or whatever. We hire because of competence, social interaction and technical need. This implicitly leads to diversity because competence does not have colors and it does not have religion. Imagine you only got a job because you are a woman and you know that this is the only reason? That is pure humiliation. We hire people because they are GOOD and not because they belong to a group. Discussing diversity implicitly makes a difference already. There is no difference. There are good people and bad people. In short: I am not interested in discussing people’s gender or whatever - it turns me off completely. I am interested in good social interaction and competence. Nothing else matters - everything else is a pure waste of energy.
- What feature in the last PostgreSQL version benefits your company most?
It is hard to name one because it always depends on the use case. What I really love is what Laurenz Albe added: Having the ability to run explain on queries containing placeholders. That makes life so much easier.
- Which feature is missing in PostgreSQL?
I would love to have an easier way to drop users. DROP USER is not too cool in PostgreSQL. In addition to that, it would be really nice to have better vectorization for faster execution (analytics mostly).
- Why does your company attend PostgreSQL Conference Europe?
Because we love to meet people. It is a team event, we meet old friends, we interact and learn. That is the primary reason. Our technical staff loves those things.