🔥 The DB Grill 🔥

Well, isn't this just a breath of fresh air. I do so appreciate vendors who start with lofty ideals like "an open world is a better world." It has the same calming effect as the hold music I listen to while disputing an invoice. It lets me know right away that my wallet is in for an adventure.

Your mission to empower organizations without locking them into expensive proprietary ecosystems is particularly touching. It's truly innovative how you've redefined "no lock-in" to mean 'you're only locked into our specific flavor of open source, our support contracts, and our consulting ecosystem.' It's the freedom of choice, you see. We’re free to choose you, or we’re free to choose catastrophic failure when something breaks at 3 AM on a holiday weekend. I admire the clarity.

And the new support for OpenBao is just the cherry on top. It gives me a wonderful opportunity to do some of my favorite back-of-the-napkin math. Let's sketch out the "Total Cost of Empowerment," shall we?

• Software License: $0. A beautiful number. You lead with your best feature.
• Migration Planning & Execution: Let's see... we'll need our three most senior database engineers, plus a project manager, to stop everything they're doing for, what, a conservative six months? At their fully-loaded cost, that’s a breezy $450,000. That's assuming they don't discover any 'unexpected complexities,' which is vendor-speak for 'we're about to double the timeline.'
• New Staff Training: Our team is brilliant, but they aren't fluent in every new tool that pops up on a blog. We'll need training. Your "official" training partners are, I'm sure, very reasonably priced. Let's budget a charming $50,000 for a week of PowerPoints and lukewarm coffee.
• The Inevitable Consultants: Around month eight of the migration, when our team is exhausted and everything is on fire, we'll need to call for help. Your "Professional Services" team will swoop in like heroes, billing at a modest $400 an hour. To untangle the mess and finish the project, we'll need them for... let's be optimistic and say 1,000 hours. That's another $400,000.
• Enterprise Support Contract: And of course, we can't run this in production without a safety net. Your "24/7/365" support package, which promises a real human will eventually answer the phone, probably has a price tag that looks more like a zip code. Let’s pencil in $250,000 per year, because I'm feeling generous today.

So, for the low, low price of $0 for the software, we've only spent $1,150,000 before we’ve even fully migrated. The ROI on this is simply spectacular. We're projected to save tens of thousands on licensing, meaning this investment in "openness" will pay for itself in just under… 46 years. I’m sure the board will be thrilled.

"Our mission has always been to empower organizations with secure, scalable, and reliable open source database solutions..."

And I feel so empowered just thinking about presenting this business case. You're not just selling a database server; you're selling a character-building experience for CFOs. The sheer creativity involved in turning a "free" product into a seven-figure line item is something to behold. It’s like a magic trick, but instead of a rabbit, you pull my entire Q4 capital expenditure budget out of a hat.

Thank you so much for sharing this exciting update. It's been an incredibly clarifying read. I'll be sure to file it away for future reference, right next to our collection of expired coupons and timeshare offers. I look forward to never reading your blog again.