MDB competitors

Hey guys, with MDB’s earnings tomorrow I was doing some research and cake across this article with a short position.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4266979-mongodb-running-spa…

What I mainly found interesting is how while MDB is currently the market leader, google, AWS and Microsoft Azure all are gaining market share and as the author posted all have both AI/Machine learning as well as large free cash flow in order to support expenses needed to gain market share.

While this may not be an issue for this earning report or even for another year or more I do wonder if this will be a significant risk for MDB moving forward, especially given the current valuations.

Would be nice to get a good discussion going for anyone who has time to read the article

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Would be nice to get a good discussion going for anyone who has time to read the article

I read and commented the article. The author does not know what “dollar based net retention rate” is

Author’s reply » Thanks for your feedback. Could you clarify what you mean by dollar based net retention rate?

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4266979-mongodb-running-spa…

The author does not know who David Skok is

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4266979-mongodb-running-spa…
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4266979-mongodb-running-spa…

Companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, IBM, and Google are a few of the giants vying for dominance within this market.

Goliaths are always eating David’s lunch

Initially I was skeptical of MongoDB but changed my mind with Atlas. From the article

MongoDB Atlas represented 23%, 7% and 1% of total revenue for the fiscal years ended January 31, 2019, 2018 and 2017, respectively.

Talking of giants, I would not short Atlas! :wink:

Denny Schlesinger

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This was bought up last week.

Two things Inphanint.

According to the Cloud Database – Global Market Outlook (2017-2026) report, the global cloud database market accounted for $6.12 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $495.26 billion by 2026.

Just wow. That’s the kind of market you want your stocks to be in!

and

  1. When that article came out, 29th May, https://db-engines.com/en/ranking didn’t show the data from May just yet. Showed data up to April. You can see the growth on the right hand side and MDB was clearly growing faster than the alleged ‘competitors’. Now that May is out, this is the first time I’ve seen MDB in the red.
    However, MDB’s popularity dwarfs the combined of the mentioned competitors. And this is what it’s all about. Developer mindshare and experience with the use of databases will drive the market. For the time-being, those competitors are currently meaningless.

As meaningful as amazon’s opendistro for their elasticsearch is to Elastic.
https://discuss.opendistrocommunity.dev/ ----well, they’re gaining some posts compared with a couple months ago!

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“Hey guys, with MDB’s earnings tomorrow I was doing some research and cake across this article with a short position.”

Perhaps you were in Hawaii when posting, but MongoDB reports today June 5th.

I was in IT at a Fortune 50 aerospace firm when relational DBMS software was first introduced to the marketplace. IMO, Mongo is in a place pretty analogous to Oracle in the 80s.

Oracle had a lot of competitors, including the behemoth, IBM with their DB2 product. Oracle garnered mindshare. They also had the best tools that ran in the UNIX environment.

Mongo is far and away the mindshare leader for No-SQL DBMS. Atlas is the the best tool of its sort in the cloud environment.

If you’re going to place bets against Mongo, what are you going to place your bet on? The Amazon tool won’t run under Asure, and by most accounts it’s an inferior tool at that. Same goes for competitive products from the other cloud titans.

Mongo will never hold 100% of the No-SQL market share. They don’t need to. I’d happily settle for around 70%. Oracle is the most widely used RDBMS in the world. At one time it held about 80% market share if I recall correctly. I haven’t any idea if that number has changed. 50% market share would make me very happy with my investment in MDB. At about 17.5% of my portfolio, MDB is my largest allocation.

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I wrote the post before I went to bed last night, it was probably 1am my time in California.
And no I’m definitely not shorting Mongo, it’s my second largest position behind TTD.
Just thought the article had a couple of interesting points about AI and machine learning along with a lot of cash that any of the cloud giants could use to gain market share is something I am going to keep my eye on.
Like I said I don’t see this becoming a real problem for a while.

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"Oracle had a lot of competitors, including the behemoth, IBM with their DB2 product. Oracle garnered mindshare. They also had the best tools that ran in the UNIX environment.

Mongo is far and away the mindshare leader for No-SQL DBMS. Atlas is the the best tool of its sort in the cloud environment."

My question is how realistic is it for a behemoth like Oracle to co-opt the desirable features of NOSQL into the RDBMS model?

The reason I ask is I’ve also been around awhile and watched the rise of Oracle as they took out competitors like Informix, Ingres, Sybase, IBM. I also worked at an object database company years ago, which had their moment in the sun in the 90’s (GemStone, Forte,etc) but what looked like a new platform that would grow simply became embedded into the RDBMS technology in a “good enough” fashion and enterprises stuck with the vendors like Oracle even with object->relational mapping instead of the pure object database companies.

Now with NOSQL, I’m not technical enough to understand, will Oracle pull another Ace out of their sleeve and stunt this market with similar features in an already familiar database style or is it too difficult and unique to make that trick work again.

Wish I knew, maybe a database engineer would know how much of a threat that is.

Long Mongo, but never sure on technology.

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Now with NOSQL, I’m not technical enough to understand, will Oracle pull another Ace out of their sleeve and stunt this market with similar features in an already familiar database style or is it too difficult and unique to make that trick work again.

There are certain features that the “master software” can and does absorb, others are too different. By “master software” I mean anything like an OS, a database, or a spreadsheet. That’s how Novell disappeared after a great run when Windows incorporated networking.

Well, many of you who have been in High Tech for a while probably already know the result. Microsoft finally split with 3COM, developed Windows NT, essentially building Networking into the Operating System. This finally began to hurt Netware, and although it wasn’t an immediate rout, over time NT became the clear winner. The terminator of Redmond can be knocked down, but they almost never give up—they just go deeper into their pockets, and keep on coming.

https://www.pjmconsult.com/index.php/2011/05/rise-and-fall-o…

I think that the markets for SQL and NoSQL are sufficiently different that they will coexist. If not, I think it will be easier for NoSQL to absorb SQL than the other way around now that MongoDB is transaction safe (ACID).

Denny Schlesinger

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My question is how realistic is it for a behemoth like Oracle to co-opt the desirable features of NOSQL into the RDBMS model?

The closest thing are those relational DBs that support CLOB fields with a Javascript data type … which is great is you have a small bit of document stuff and a bunch of relational stuff, but is a long, long way from being a real competitor for a document database … enough so that one would basically have to develop a whole document database within the context of the relational database, which would undoubtedly make a mess of both.

OK - I’m going out on a limb. My focus for the last several years of my career was information management, but at a level pretty far above the technology layer. I was advocating for the management of information in much the same way a physical assets were managed (i.e., inventory, facilities, transportation, etc). What does the management structure of information look like? What are the RAAs (roles, authority & accountability).

I’m not and never have been a DBA. But, here’s what I think, with a fair degree of confidence that I’m correct. If you look back at an object DBMS and compare it to a relational DBMS it’s pretty much just a DBMS that has been optimized to run against a denormalized data model. I know, that’s an over-simplification, but it’s not that far off. Once you could stick a blob/clob into a relational column, a relational DBMS could pretty well handle it. The first iterations of Catia (very sophisticated CAD s/w from Dassault Systèmes) ran against a DB2 DBMS. I don’t know what’s the underlying data manager today, maybe it’s still DB2.

The No-SQL document paradigm is simply different. I don’t believe there’s anyway of building an effective and efficient No-SQL overlay on top of an RDBMS. Maybe someone who is deeper in the weeds with respect to the technology can correct my thinking, but that’s my perception. So if Oracle wants to compete in this arena (and they may not), they pretty much have to start from scratch, just like everyone else.

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that makes sense. Although not as efficient once they were able to map object to relational it was good enough and preserved all the skill sets in SQL and infrastructure that had already been invested in. If NoSQL isn’t as readily co-opted into a less than ideal but good enough SQL paradigm that’s great. You mentioned if Oracle even wants to compete, apparently they offer a NoSQL product, it just doesn’t seem to get any buzz:

https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/related/nosql.h…

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Great insight Bendubya. So if MDB were to capture 50% of the projected TAM, it would be a 41-bagger. At 70%, it becomes a 57-bagger. Even at 25% oh that TAM, it’s a 20-bagger. Fun to dream about this patient person’s thing called investing.
sjo

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Are box and similar data store repositories part of that $495 billion TAM? In other words file sharing considered a “database?”

Just seems like a far fetched number.

If it were true I’d have to buy more MDB.

I don’t believe there’s any way of building an effective and efficient No-SQL overlay on top of an RDBMS.

The Postgres team has actually succeeded in doing this. They added support for storing JSON documents some years ago, and you can now have both SQL and NoSQL features in a single database.

For more on this, see https://www.sisense.com/blog/postgres-vs-mongodb-for-storing…

That being said, MongoDB enjoys first-mover advantage in the NoSQL world, and developers who like purpose-built databases that allow you to store JSON documents natively, scale horizontally, and require no pre-defined schema will continue to use MongoDB.

The top 5 most popular DBs today are MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, Postgres and Mongo. However, Oracle will likely lose market share to Postgres and MySQL if they continue with their onerous licensing and audit policies.

Ron

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Postgres has multiple weaknesses, one major one is their relative ability to scale horizontally. Postgres works great for many use cases. Mongo works great for many use cases. There are many use cases where you might decide either or. But in the end Postgres does not out do Mongo where Mongo shines and Mongo does not out do Postgres where Postgres shines.

Tinker

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Yeah that $495 billion includes everything. Hybrid, public, private cloud, SQL and NoSQL, PaaS, IaaS, as well as DBaaS. But the short who wrote that article gave us that number without going into much detail. Weird. His argument is that because the market is so huge, the big players will be incentivised to crush all the little guys.

They will do this by subsidising their DBaaS and pinch MDB’s margins. Databases are as mission critical as you can get, so if you’re a multi-million/billion dollar company, you don’t settle for cheap databases. You pay for a good quality one and hire quality talented employees, who at this moment in time know MDB. The only way the MSFTs and Amazons can threaten MDB is if they create an amazing database that is cloud neutral. At the moment they are in no way incentivised to do that. So they focus on their own native databases and try to make them good enough for the majority of users. These are the low-paying, low-quality customers. But at least they will then use AWS, or Azure.

Look at the latest forrester or gartner reports. MDB Atlas is nestled very comfortably amongst all the giants.

As for the other things the short says:
Falling Margins and Lackluster Revenue Growth
Yeah, I don’t see it. GM slighly affected by MLabs acquisition, not by competition. Other than that, mongo is killing it.

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Wow, great thread with a lot of information!

I am a DBA. I am in consulting so get to see a lot of different things and work with a lot of companies. I specialize in SQL Server but have used many of the databases discussed here (MDB, Oracle, PostgresSQL, MySQL). Hopefully my experience can be of use here.

First for Oracle (I know nobody is touting it here but since it was brought up). rdutt is exactly correct. They have gouged and treated their customers very poorly for many years. The company I currently work for has a large contingent of Oracle DBAs. Every company we work with that has Oracle is either working on getting away from it or talking about it. They are only still in Oracle due to database stickiness. Most of them end up moving to PostgresSQL, which is kinda a slap in the face since Oracle bought MySQL. One of the most common reasons I hear for preferring to go to Postgres is they don’t trust Oracle’s management because they’ve been taken to the woodshed by them for a long long time. To put in perspective why they want to get away from it, I was tasked a few years ago to work with one of my Oracle colleagues and do an apples to apples comparison SQL Server & Oracle and what it would cost a client just from startup a few years ago. The cost is not even in the same ballpark. The difference was Oracle - $200K, SQL Server $28K. In addition to all this, Oracle business is drying up. Oracle professionals see the writing on the wall and are either bitter (saying things that were true 10-15 years ago but no longer are) or learning other database technologies (SQL Server and Postgres being the most common I’ve seen them working with).

On to NoSQL
To understand the advantages & disadvantages of NoSQL & traditional SQL databases, its important to understand what/how they store data. Brittlerock mentioned his thought that NoSQL was more a of a denormalized model. A denormailized model (often referred to as a Star Schema) is more of a data warehouse type thing and this leads into BI, Big Data & AI. A NoSQL database is kinda the opposite of denormalized/big data/BI stuff. I’ll explain how and why.

A traditional SQL database stores data in tables. For example, a table of Orders, a separate table with order details and join the two tables. Think of these tables like a spreadsheet. One spreadsheet would have a list of different orders. Perhaps order date, a tie to the order details, a tie to who ordered etc… There could be millions of records (rows) in this table.

A NoSQL database stores data in documents. So each order will have its own document but will have all the detail of the order. This works great for small transactions and writing lots of data. It is very fast, don’t have to worry about contention in the table and such. It also makes it easy to do what is in my opinion, the biggest advantage of a NoSQL Database; auto-sharding. This allows for horizontal scaling. This is ideal for a globally distributed application. Think things like mobile apps or even things like water pipe flows. There are a whole lot more great use cases for this.

Where NoSQL really struggles is when trying to analyze data more than a single row at a time. In a traditional SQL database, we can simply write a query. We can pull all orders in my above example that have occurred this month, summarize the sales etc… This is very very difficult in a NoSQL database. To perform these types of operations, the data needs to be moved to a data store more conducive to this kind of thing. I’ve been on several projects where we piped data from MongoDB into a SQL database for reporting and analysis purposes. This is why I said earlier that its kinda the opposite of a denormalized data set (operationally anyway).

Disclaimer here, I’m trying to give an overview of it. There are details I’m skipping over for simplicity’s sake.

In my opinion, there are two big advantages of NoSQL and especially MongoDB. One is the auto-sharding & ability to horizontally scale. It is cheaper to scale horizontally than vertically (if we need more processing power, add another server instead of the traditional SQL method of buying the latest and greatest hardware and moving the database there). The other advantage is developer fanaticism. For the first advantage, I see traditional SQL databases getting closer to being able to auto-shard. If they do get there, it could be a game changer for them and have a big negative impact on NoSQL. The second one, developer fanaticism will be interesting to watch. I don’t know if that is enough to drive a business forward. In any case, traditional SQL databases are not there yet and I don’t think they will get there anytime soon.

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Thanks for the overview, FinallyFoolin, it made a lot of things click for me. I’m a Java developer who’s worked with quite a few SQL databases (primarily SQL Server and Oracle), and I didn’t get the use cases for NoSQL until your post. It seems to me you still have to provide a structure if you ever want to get your data out again, you have to know in advance what those structures are…at least with Amazon’s NoSQL version if you don’t get it right, it’s a big deal that involves a lot of data migration after-the-fact, which could result in downtime.

In my opinion, there are two big advantages of NoSQL and especially MongoDB. One is the auto-sharding & ability to horizontally scale. It is cheaper to scale horizontally than vertically (if we need more processing power, add another server instead of the traditional SQL method of buying the latest and greatest hardware and moving the database there). The other advantage is developer fanaticism.

What concerns me (as far as investment goes) is the fanaticism of the user base. The horizontal scaling is indeed useful, but for smaller datasets I’m underwhelmed. I could be missing something, but we’ve implemented similar solutions to what NoSQL is supposed to provide (flexibility of document structure) just by using JSON in a CLOB field (or binary data in a BLOB field). But whether using SQL or NoSQL, you still have to provide primary/searchable keys to get the data back out, and that’s SQL’s strength.

So developer fanaticism is a double-edged sword, there will be a point (if history is any guide) where NoSQL is misapplied too often and it could result in a backlash. Or, as you pointed out, the horizontal scaling could be resolved by SQL vendors, though I also don’t see that happening soon.

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For more on this, see…

That article has some issues. For starters, it is from November 2017, so it does not reflect full capabilities on the Mongo side, notably ACID. More subtle is that it compares Postgres with a single field of JSON* datatype to a Mongo database, i.e., potentially lots and lots of different and interrelated documents. While it mentions some underlying differences in passing, like sharding, the date of the article means that, at the least it does not reflect the full difference of a true document database.

So, yeah, if you have single document type of a fairly uniform structure and have associated relational data, then you can manage just fine with Postres. But, if a more full featured set of documents and high performance are included in your criteria, then Mongo.

Forgive a recent post where I said Javascript instead of JSON … one of those brain farts.

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FinallyFoolin and JWeist,
What are your thoughts/ perspectives on the previous post from Bendubya re: TAM, and specifically how much of this TAM does your crystal ball suggest is s reasonable assumption for MDB to win?

“According to the Cloud Database – Global Market Outlook (2017-2026) report, the global cloud database market accounted for $6.12 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $495.26 billion by 2026.”

sjo