

Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people - aurelianito
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2012-10/msg00003.php

======
cs702
With Oracle slowly transforming MySQL into a 'free-open-core, closed-outer-
shell' RDBMS[1], PostgreSQL is quickly becoming the main go-to alternative for
anyone who wants to avoid database vendor lock-in.

Hopefully SalesForce will contribute its improvements back to the PostgreSQL
community.

\--

[1] For example, see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797>

~~~
tlogan
And then Oracle will buy Salesforce... Larry did say something like that but
he said that the price is too high.

Here is my predictions: Salesforce is will start investing into new
technologies and building cool stuff. However, that will not look good on
stock price because R&D costs will skyrocket - and our "efficient" stock
market does not like long term visions. The stock price will collapse. The
board will panic and Larry will "save the day".

~~~
mason55
Larry and the Oracle execs truly hate SFDC. They really build up the rivalry
internally to Oracle employees and paint Salesforce as the big rival that
everyone needs to band together to beat. Combined with the duplication of
products that would occur if Oracle acquired Salesforce I would be beyond
shocked if it ever happened. At that point Salesforce would be so irrelevant
that it wouldn't matter.

~~~
tlogan
In my experience, things you described are probably true, but they have
nothing to do with acquisition. Actually it is very much desired (Larry was
hating PeopleSoft a few years ago... and see what happen).

And duplication of products was never a problem for Larry: he just kills the
one with less customers. For example, in case of BEA and Oracle Application
Server: BEA WebLogic replaced Oracle Application Server. In this case, in case
of acquisition, Oracle cloud offering will be replaced with Salesforce.

------
spidaman
Salesforce spends a huge amount of money on licensing their horizontally
scaled Oracle databases. I'd venture to guess this signals Benioff exploring a
strategic bet to tell Ellison to fuck off once and for all.

~~~
kami8845
Actually hiring 50 people sounds more like a decisive plan than "exploring a
strategic bet".

~~~
spidaman
The posting says they're hiring only 5 now, 40-50 next year;I inferred they're
still in an exploratory phase because if they were all in, they'd be hiring
more than 5 now. The posting doesn't say they're doing a migration but having
worked on Oracle -> PostgreSQL migrations and sharded database
infrastructures, it makes sense.

~~~
kami8845
Of course nothing is ever final, but publicly announcing something like this
is already sort of a "fuck you" to Oracle, so I'd be surprised if they weren't
a 100% sure of their plans to switch.

~~~
cpeterso
Though the plan might be to negotiate cheaper Oracle licenses..

~~~
michael37
Oracle won't negotiate with Salesforce -- there are too many personal traits
between the CEOs.

------
sargun
I wonder if they're finally switching from Oracle to Postgres. I know that
their Oracle clusters are a significant portion of their bottom line.
Alternatively, I wonder if this is a replacement for their new Hbase cluster
for feeds.

There seem to be lots of projects at SFDC that could be supported by
Postgresql. It's going to be great though, considering the community might get
some great tools from this.

~~~
jcdavis
When I was still at SFDC (January), postgres was being cautiously looked into
as an Oracle alternative (along with HBase for certain parts, which has
definitely been happening). Glad to see they are going for it.

~~~
bwood
May I ask why you left Salesforce?

------
rabidsnail
Reminder: Salesforce owns Heroku

~~~
pjscott
They do say, though, that the job is to "Design and implement major pieces of
the salesforce.com core database infrastructure". That doesn't sound like
they're talking about Heroku, at least not as the main reason for their hiring
spree.

~~~
klint
Be that as it may a Salesforce.com representative told me that the hiring is
related to the Heroku Postgres service, not a migration from Oracle to
Postgres [1].

Perhaps the person writing the job ad was embellishing by calling it a major
piece of the core database infrastructure.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/salesforce-
orac...](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/salesforce-oracle/)

~~~
Evbn
Or Salesforce is moving to dogfood heroku internally.

------
spidaman
I use MySQL plenty and there's a lot of things I like about it. But I honestly
don't understand any of the MySQL related comments on this post. Even if
Oracle didn't own MySQL, a migration from Oracle to MySQL is significantly
more difficult than one from Oracle to PostgreSQL. The poor join performance
of MySQL make it doubtful that it could have ever been a serious discussion at
Salesforce (to say nothing of the merits of mvcc and PostgreSQL's license).

~~~
rimantas

      > to say nothing of the merits of mvcc
    

I want to know more about the merits ov mvcc and why don't they apply to
MySQL.

~~~
lucian1900
Because it doesn't do MVCC, it locks instead.

~~~
seunosewa
False. InnoDB does MVCC by default.

------
mmaunder
This is why. Every time I launch MySQL client:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection
id is 1024604 Server version: 5.1.63-0ubuntu0.10.04.1-log (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

~~~
olalonde
I don't get it...

~~~
pbiggar
I think he's saying that Oracle's aggressive branding of MySQL (and other Sun
products) has alienated some people.

~~~
fletchowns
Why does that matter, when Oracle already powers Salesforce?

~~~
pbiggar
Right. I don't agree with the OP, I just think that's what he was saying.
Salesforce doesn't seem like someone to be put off by aggressive anything.

------
055static
Please clarify: Is [a-zA-Z]*SQL a query language or is it software (i.e. an
implementation of an interpreter for a language)?

~~~
lobster_johnson
PostgreSQL is an RDBMS.

~~~
andyzweb
ORDBMS

------
systems
the lists of pgsql contributors and committersdoesnt look that big
<http://www.postgresql.org/community/contributors/>
<http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Committers>

Are they gonna hire them all :))) I bet most of their hires will be ppl who
never touched pgsql

------
mark_l_watson
Not surprising after reading what the CEOs of Oracle and Salesforce have been
saying in the news lately.

I don't use Oracle (my customers tend to be budget conscious). Even without
Oracle experience it makes some real sense to whenever possible use free
software if the total costs of software development, deployment, and
maintenance are less - assuming equivalent functionality, scalability, etc.

------
sheff
From what I've read about the Salesforce Oracle backend in the past, they are
big users of Oracle RAC .

Hopefully if Salesforce switch they will develop some form of Postgres
clustering solution which would be great for the Postgres community, as an
active-active clustering solution with the characteristics of RAC would make
Postgres even more competitive in the enterprise.

------
jeremyjh
This sounds like they could be building something awesome.

------
nnq
...now if I'd ever use Oracle products and wanted to negotiate a cheaper
license, this the type of "news piece" I'd publish! (and it wouldn't even have
to be "a lie" people experiment with OS all day since they're hiring "just" "5
engineers" it can be seen as a "small scale" (for Salesforce bien sur...) too)

------
Tawheed
This is obviously Step 2 of many to wean off of Oracle's hardware,
infrastructure and software which Salesforce undoubtedly has been running on
since Day 1 but now can no longer afford to do so for strategic reasons.

------
goronbjorn
I wonder if this has anything to do with Heroku or eventually will; Postgres
is very much one of Heroku's core offerings.

