Ed Boyajian on Collaborating with the Postgres Community

Ed Boyajian was interviewed for the Open Source Underdogs podcast, which features leaders from companies that use open source as part of their business model. The host, Mike Schwartz, says “I got a lot of great insights from this interview. And I feel like I only scratched the surface.” We agree.

No single company owns Postgres

Ed and Mike cover a gamut of topics starting with EDB’s relationship and contributions to the Postgres community. Ed says he believes that Postgres being an independent open source community is its strength – much like Linux – and is unlike many other open source projects that are controlled by one company. In the case of Postgres, governance is controlled by a core team – no single entity is responsible.

EDB innovations and contributions to Postgres

Ed went on to talk about EDB innovations and contributions to Postgres, such as parallel query as one example where EDB has played a role as primary contributor. And, Ed goes on to make the point that EDB (like Red Hat in the case of Linux) has tools and extensions beyond the core project. Those advances in technology help deploy Postgres at scale at enterprises where replication, failover and monitoring are all essential.

EDB’s value proposition for customers, Ed says, is its obsession with Postgres and exclusive focus to provide care that no one else can match.

Postgres everywhere—including the cloud

The conversation also covers cloud as an important deployment platform offering customers greater flexibility. Ed makes the point that it’s important to enable customers to deploy anywhere they choose–and that is how EDB is focusing on the change with the emergence of cloud computing.

The Importance of business partnerships

Ed discusses running an open source-based business and EDB sales model with the importance of partnering. About 65% of EDB business worldwide comes through indirect channels, says Ed, who mentions an important agreement with IBM announced late last year.

Give a listen to the 20-minute interview to hear Ed Boyajian talk about EnterpriseDB’s pivot from helping companies solve problems with Oracle and avoid lock-in, to becoming a leading Postgres database company.