Where database blog posts get flame-broiled to perfection
I’ve just reviewed the preliminary materials for our next potential database migration, starting with a blog post titled, ‘Being a Tale of Databases... and the Redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge, DBA.’ My quarterly projections are already weeping. It seems we’ve moved from technical whitepapers to Charles Dickens fanfiction as a sales tool. Adorable. Before we get swept up in the Christmas spirit and sign a seven-figure deal, let’s review what this charming narrative is actually selling.
First, the narrative framework itself. We’re meant to see our current, fiscally responsible database management as a miserable, pre-redemption Scrooge. The subtext is clear: if you care about budgets, you’re a bitter old miser who needs their proprietary solution to find joy. The only chains I see, however, are the ones Jacob Marley is dragging, which look suspiciously like a three-year contract with punitive exit clauses. Humbug.
They talk about "CPU-bound nights" and rattling disks. I talk about Total Cost of Ownership. Let’s do some quick math on this "redemption," shall we? The sticker price is just the down payment. We must factor in The Ghost of Data Migration Past ($150k for a specialist consultant who speaks fluent legacy-system), The Ghost of Mandatory Training Present ($75k in lost productivity while our team learns a new dashboard), and The Ghost of Consultants Yet-to-Come ($200k/year for the "premium success package" we'll inevitably need when their 'one-click deployment' takes 300 clicks and a blood sacrifice). The true first-year cost isn't the price on the quote; it's a rounding error away from our entire R&D budget.
The promise of a magical new world where Write-Ahead Logs and binary logs live in harmony is lovely. But what happens when we want to leave this magical world? This entire "tale" is about converting our DBA to their specific gospel. Once "Scrooge" is redeemed and our data is snugly in their cloud-native, hyper-converged, AI-driven platform, migrating away will cost more than Tiny Tim's medical bills and the entire Cratchit family's Christmas goose budget combined. This isn't redemption; it's a beautifully gift-wrapped cage.
Let's talk ROI. They'll promise a 300% return on investment based on "operational efficiencies" and "reduced query times." Let's be generous and say their system saves us $100,000 a year in server costs. With our "true" first-year cost approaching $525,000, we're looking at a five-year journey just to break even. By then, this vendor will have been acquired twice, the platform will be considered legacy, and we'll be reading another heartwarming tale about Ebenezer Scrooge, DBA Part the Fourth: The Great Migration to Quantum-Ledger-Chain.
They're not selling a database. They're selling a multi-year subscription to their own story, and we're the suckers expected to fund the production.
It's a very creative effort, I'll give them that. The marketing department clearly had fun. But the only "redemption" I'm interested in is redeeming our capital for projects that don't begin with a literary allusion and end in financial ruin.
Keep trying, though. It’s sweet.