Google flexes its Arm; Metronome runs the meter
Today: Google's first custom Arm server processor is now available, Metronome's new tool could help SaaS companies switch to usage-based pricing, and the quote of the week.
Today: Two data industry legends trot out a new idea for the server operating system, why Microsoft's security lapses could start a customer exodus, and the quote of the week.
Welcome to Runtime! Today: Two data industry legends trot out a new idea for the server operating system, why Microsoft's security lapses could start a customer exodus, and the quote of the week.
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Throughout decades of change in enterprise tech, Linux has remained the foundation. Even Microsoft went all-in on Linux as the operating system for the cloud, and it's impossible to imagine anyone working on a greenfield application choosing anything other than their preferred flavor of Linux as the base.
But this week Mike Stonebraker (creator of Ingres and Postgres) and Matei Zaharia (co-founder and CTO of Databricks) unveiled DBOS, a new company and server operating system that features a database at its heart. It's a clear break from the status quo, which solves some difficult problems and presents some interesting opportunities assuming it works as advertised.
Stonebraker outlined several benefits of this approach.
The company also launched DBOS Cloud, which is aimed squarely at AWS's Lambda serverless development platform. It's limited at the moment to stateful Typescript applications, but it reclaims the original definition of "serverless" when it meant functions, not managed infrastructure.
With billions of dollars invested in Linux and Kubernetes applications, DBOS is going to need a lot more than the $8.5 million seed funding round it raised this week to make a dent in enterprise tech.
Microsoft has taken great steps over the past year — in between managing OpenAI and stoking the hype cycle of a generation — toward renewing its commitment to security after a series of high-profile breaches and missteps. Some prominent customers are not waiting for that commitment to be realized.
The U.S. Department of State moved data into AWS and Google Cloud following last year's devastating Azure breach that allowed Chinese hackers to steal emails and other information from the Department of Commerce, according to The Information. And it is apparently considering "possible bigger cloud deals" with Microsoft's competitors amid growing concerns about its ability to keep government information secure.
Microsoft was hacked last year through flaws in Entra ID, which used to be known as Azure Active Directory and is the only login software Microsoft will allow customers of Office and Windows to use despite several alternatives. That makes it a lucrative business, but if customers as prominent as the State Department aren't willing to risk managing their login information with that software, the strategy could backfire.
"Hadoop was an insane idea, it's like people waking up after a bender and being like, 'what were we thinking?'" — Fivetran CEO George Fraser, not-so-fondly recalling data tools of years past.
Somebody at Broadcom forced CEO Hock Tang to acknowledge customer "unease" about its handling of the VMware acquisition without actually apologizing for anything in a blog post Thursday.
HashiCorp is talking to other companies about a possible sale, Bloomberg reported Friday, but those talks appear to be in the early stages.
Thanks for reading — see you Tuesday!
This post was updated Saturday with the correct spelling of Mike Stonebraker's name.