I recently had the opportunity to attend the Cloud Expo Europe in London with our team at MariaDB, where we promoted SkySQL, our cloud database solution. The event was packed with talented software developers and DevOps engineers, and we had some amazing conversations at the MariaDB booth with attendees who shared their insights on how they use databases in their work, and how MariaDB is a great option for any kind of workload.
One of the most exciting parts of the event was the interest that developers had in some of our unique products. We talked about ColumnStore, a MariaDB storage engine suitable for analytics, which enables real-time data processing and parallel data ingestion, offering increased performance and scalability. Developers were thrilled to learn about Xpand, a distributed SQL solution that elastically scales both reads and writes in a linear way, and MaxScale, a database proxy that can make a cluster look like a single logical database. They were positively surprised to learn that MaxScale can also import and export data to Kafka, connect MongoDB applications to a MariaDB database, perform automatic failover and transaction replay, and more.
During my conversations with attendees, I heard about some common challenges that developers and DevOps engineers face when using databases, such as scalability, performance, and security. It was fascinating to see the different ways in which people were addressing these challenges and how MariaDB could help to alleviate them.
Many of the developers I spoke with were interested in how SkySQL could improve their database management experience. SkySQL offers scalability and high-performance, with strong security features to keep data safe. I was able to explain how SkySQL could help alleviate the common challenges that developers face with database management.
In addition to discussing our solutions with attendees, I also had the opportunity to talk about some of the newest features in MariaDB. Our support for JSON data types and spatial data processing generated a lot of interest from attendees, who were excited to learn about the new ways in which they could use databases in their work.
I also had a chance to connect with potential partners and even friends from the open-source community at the event. It was great to hear about their success stories, how and why they are using MariaDB, and how we can continue to improve our products to be ready for the future.
Overall, Cloud Expo Europe was an incredible experience for our team and especially for me. It was a great opportunity to connect in person with my colleagues, developers, DevOps engineers, and friends to hear about their experiences with databases. I’m grateful for the opportunity to get insights and a wider perspective of the current ecosystem around cloud and data products and look forward to continuing to connect with the community as we work to improve the power and performance of cloud databases at MariaDB.
Oh! And I got to visit London 10 years after moving out from there. It was fantastic to see The City, Canary Wharf, Old Street, and Shoreditch once again.
