Introducing ThrustDB

What is ThrustDB? It’s distributed, MySQL compatible DBMS that is designed to run in the cloud (AWS, Azure, etc) and be deployed, run and monitored by the same engineers who write the code that makes it work.

Open source DBMS’s have a problem, if anyone can get the code and build it themselves, how do the developers of it make money? Traditionally they don’t make nearly as much as they’d like, and you get all sorts of weird things like special enterprise editions and special monitoring modules, etc that they actually charge for. And if it’s too reliable and works too well, then the customer’s incentive to pay drops dramatically. It just works, why pay?

Thrust! The stuff that makes jet airplanes go.

Did you know that most commercial airlines don’t own the jet engines on their planes? They don’t even rent them. “What?” you may ask, how do the jet engine manufacturers actually make money then? It’s easy. The airlines pay for the “thrust” the engines provide! Yes, really. They pay for time in the air (Power by the Hour) and time in the air means the jet engines are operational. The jet engine is easily the most complex part of the airplane, the most safety critical, and the thing that makes it go. If the engine is operating sub optimally, things get expensive quick.

So instead an airline will contract out with a jet engine manufactures, usually General Electric Aerospace, or their subsidiary CFM International (which together hold 55% of the commercial jet engine market) to provide the jet engines. They install the engine, maintain the engine and replace (as needed) the engine. They designed and built the engine, so they know best how to make it sing. That airline pays for the jet engine’s time in the air, so f the plane is flying, both the airline and the jet manufacturer are getting paid. The interests of the airline and the jet manufacturer are aligned. As long the engine works agreed specification, the airline is happy. As long as the plane is flying, the jet manufacturer is happy. No unnecessary upgrades, no waiting for things to break and then asking for $$$ to fix it. Just smooth operation with few failures or problems.

And so that’s where the name ThrustDB comes from, as the most complex and difficult to maintain system in any companies IT stack, the deployment, monitoring, disaster recovery, etc happens by the same people who wrote the code that makes it work. We make what makes your application go.