🔥 The DB Grill 🔥

Ah, a twentieth-anniversary retrospective. How... quaint. It's always a pleasure to read these little trips down memory lane. It gives one a moment to pause, reflect, and run the numbers on just how a business model that is "sometimes misunderstood" has managed to persevere. Let me see if I can help clear up any of that "misunderstanding."

I must applaud your two decades of dedication to the craft. It's truly a masterclass. Not in database management, of course, but in the subtle art of financial extraction. You've perfected the perplexing pricing paradigm, a truly innovative approach where the initial quote is merely the cover charge to get into a very, very expensive nightclub. And once you're in, darling, every drink costs more than the last, and the bouncer has your car keys.

The claim that your model has "worked" is, I suppose, technically true. It has worked its way into our budgets with the precision of a surgeon and the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Let's do some quick, back-of-the-napkin math on your latest proposal, shall we? I like to call this the "True Cost of Ownership" calculation, or as my team now calls it, the "Patricia Goldman Panic-Inducing Profit-and-Loss Projection."

• Your "Affordable" License Fee: We'll call this the "bait." A tidy little number.
• The "Simple" Migration: You quoted 3 months. My engineers are telling me it's a 9-month monolithic migration misery. I'll multiply their salary and benefits by three, add a 50% "optimism tax" for inevitable delays, and then factor in the therapy they'll need.
• Essential Training: Or, as I see it, the cost of re-educating a perfectly competent team to navigate your uniquely convoluted ecosystem. Let's just pencil in the price of a small island for that.
• The Inevitable Consultants: Ah, my favorite part. You can't just use the product. You need the High Priests of Percona, the certified "Gurus of Go-Live" who bill by the minute and speak in riddles. Their fee appears to be calculated based on the gravitational pull of Jupiter on a Tuesday.

So, when I add it all up—the bait, the migration misery, the re-education camps, and the consultant's new yacht—your "cost-effective solution" will, by my estimation, achieve a negative 400% ROI and cost us roughly the same as our entire Q3 revenue. A spectacular achievement in budget-busting.

From the beginning, Percona has followed a model that is sometimes misunderstood, occasionally questioned…

Misunderstood? Questioned? Oh, no, my dear. I understand it perfectly. It's the "open-door" prison model. You champion the "freedom of open source" which is marvelous—it gives us the freedom to enter. But once we're in, your proprietary monitoring tools, your bespoke patches, and your labyrinthine support contracts create a vendor lock-in so powerful it makes Alcatraz look like a petting zoo. The cost to leave becomes even more catastrophic than the cost to stay. It's splendidly, sinfully smart.

So, congratulations on 20 years. Twenty years of perfecting a sales pitch that promises a sports car and delivers a unicycle with a single, perpetually flat tire… and a mandatory, 24/7 maintenance plan for the air inside it.

Your platform isn’t a database solution; it’s a long-term liability I can’t amortize.