Karthik Ranganathan is co-founder and co-CEO of Yugabyte, the corporate behind YugabyteDB, the open-source, high-performance distributed PostgreSQL database. Karthik is a seasoned data expert and former Facebook engineer who founded Yugabyte alongside two of his Facebook colleagues to revolutionize distributed databases.
What inspired you to co-found Yugabyte, and what gaps available in the market did you see that led you to create YugabyteDB?
My co-founders, Kannan Muthukkaruppan, Mikhail Bautin, and I, founded Yugabyte in 2016. As former engineers at Meta (then called Facebook), we helped construct popular databases including Apache Cassandra, HBase, and RocksDB – in addition to running a few of these databases as managed services for internal workloads.
We created YugabyteDB because we saw a spot available in the market for cloud-native transactional databases for business-critical applications. We built YugabyteDB to cater to the needs of organizations transitioning from on-premises to cloud-native operations and combined the strengths of non-relational databases with the scalability and resilience of cloud-native architectures. While constructing Cassandra and HBase at Facebook (which was instrumental in addressing Facebook’s significant scaling needs), we saw the rise of microservices, containerization, high availability, geographic distribution, and Application Programming Interfaces (API). We also recognized the impact that open-source technologies have in advancing the industry.
People often consider the transactional database market as crowded. While this has traditionally been true, today Postgres has change into the default API for cloud-native transactional databases. Increasingly, cloud-native databases are selecting to support the Postgres protocol, which has been ingrained into the material of YugabyteDB, making it probably the most Postgres-compatible database available on the market. YugabyteDB retains the facility and familiarity of PostgreSQL while evolving it to an enterprise-grade distributed database suitable for contemporary cloud-native applications. YugabyteDB allows enterprises to efficiently construct and scale systems using familiar SQL models.
How did your experiences at Facebook influence your vision for the corporate?
In 2007, I used to be considering whether to affix a small but growing company–Facebook. On the time, the positioning had about 30 to 40 million users. I believed it would double in size, but I could not have been more incorrect! During my over five years at Facebook, the user base grew to 2 billion. What attracted me to the corporate was its culture of innovation and boldness, encouraging people to “fail fast” to catalyze innovation.
Facebook grew so large that the technical and mental challenges I craved were now not present. For a few years I had aspired to begin my very own company and tackle problems facing the common user–this led me to co-create Yugabyte.
Our mission is to simplify cloud-native applications, specializing in three essential features crucial for contemporary development:
- First, applications should be constantly available, ensuring uptime no matter backups or failures, especially when running on commodity hardware within the cloud.
- Second, the flexibility to scale on demand is crucial, allowing developers to construct and release quickly without the delay of ordering hardware.
- Third, with quite a few data centers now easily accessible, replicating data across regions becomes vital for reliability and performance.
These three elements empower developers by providing the agility and freedom they should innovate, without being constrained by infrastructure limitations.
Could you share the journey from Yugabyte’s inception in 2016 to its current status as a pacesetter in distributed SQL databases? What were some key milestones?
At Facebook, I often talked with developers who needed specific features, like secondary indexes on SQL databases or occasional multi-node transactions. Unfortunately, the reply was normally “no,” because existing systems weren’t designed for those requirements.
Today, we’re experiencing a shift towards cloud-native transactional applications that need to handle scale and availability. Traditional databases simply cannot meet these needs. Modern businesses require relational databases that operate within the cloud and offer the three essential features: high availability, scalability, and geographic distribution, while still supporting SQL capabilities. These are the pillars on which we built YugabyteDB and the database challenges we’re focused on solving.
In February 2016, the founders began developing YugabyteDB, a global-scale distributed SQL database designed for cloud-native transactional applications. In July 2019, we made an unprecedented announcement and released our previously business features as open source. This reaffirmed our commitment to open-source principles and officially launched YugabyteDB as a completely open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) under an Apache 2.0 license.
The newest version of YugabyteDB (unveiled in September) features enhanced Postgres compatibility. It includes an Adaptive Cost-Based Optimizer (CBO) that optimizes query plans for large-scale, multi-region applications, and Smart Data Distribution that routinely determines whether to store tables together for lower latency, or to shard and distribute data for greater scalability. These enhancements allow developers to run their PostgreSQL applications on YugabyteDB efficiently and scale without the necessity for trade-offs or complex migrations.
YugabyteDB is thought for its compatibility with PostgreSQL and its Cassandra-inspired API. How does this multi-API approach profit developers and enterprises?
YugabyteDB’s multi-API approach advantages developers and enterprises by combining the strengths of a high-performance SQL database with the pliability needed for global, internet-scale applications.
It supports scale-out RDBMS and high-volume Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) workloads, while maintaining low query latency and exceptional resilience. Compatibility with PostgreSQL allows for seamless lift-and-shift modernization of existing Postgres applications, requiring minimal changes.
In the newest version of the distributed database platform, released in September 2024, features just like the Adaptive CBO and Smart Data Distribution enhance performance by optimizing query plans and routinely managing data placement. This enables developers to realize low latency and high scalability without compromise, making YugabyteDB ideal for rapidly growing, cloud-native applications that require reliable data management.
AI is increasingly being integrated into database systems. How is Yugabyte leveraging AI to boost the performance, scalability, and security of its SQL systems?
We’re leveraging AI to boost our distributed SQL database by addressing performance and migration challenges. Our upcoming Performance Copilot, an enhancement to our Performance Advisor, will simplify troubleshooting by analyzing query patterns, detecting anomalies, and providing real-time recommendations to troubleshoot database performance issues.
We’re also integrating AI into YugabyteDB Voyager, our database migration tool that simplifies migrations from PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, and other cloud databases to YugabyteDB. We aim to streamline transitions from legacy systems by automating schema conversion, SQL translation, and data transformation, with proactive compatibility checks. These innovations deal with making YugabyteDB smarter, more efficient, and easier for contemporary, distributed applications to make use of.
What are the important thing benefits of using an open-source SQL system like YugabyteDB in cloud-native applications in comparison with traditional proprietary databases?
Transparency, flexibility, and robust community support are key benefits when using an open-source SQL system like YugabyteDB in cloud-native applications. Once we launched YugabyteDB, we recognized the skepticism surrounding open-source models. We engaged with users, who expressed a robust preference for a completely open database to trust with their critical data.
We initially ran on an open-core model, but rapidly realized it needed to be a very open solution. Developers increasingly turn to PostgreSQL as a logical Oracle alternative, but PostgreSQL was not built for dynamic cloud platforms. YugabyteDB fills this gap by supporting PostgreSQL’s feature depth for contemporary cloud infrastructures. By being 100% open source, we remove roadblocks to adoption.
This makes us very attractive to developers constructing business-critical applications and to operations engineers running them on cloud-native platforms. Our focus is on making a database that is just not only open, but additionally easy to make use of and compatible with PostgreSQL, which stays a developer favorite as a consequence of its mature feature set and powerful extensions.
The demand for scalable and adaptable SQL solutions is growing. What trends are you observing within the enterprise database market, and the way is Yugabyte positioned to satisfy these demands?
Larger scale in enterprise databases often results in increased failure rates, especially as organizations cope with expanded footprints and better data volumes. Key trends shaping the database landscape include the adoption of DBaaS, and a shift back from public cloud to personal cloud environments. Moreover, the mixing of generative AI brings opportunities and challenges, requiring automation and performance optimization to administer the growing data load.
Organizations are increasingly turning to DBaaS to streamline operations, despite initial concerns about control and security. This approach improves efficiency across various infrastructures, while the deal with private cloud solutions helps businesses reduce costs and enhance scalability for his or her workloads.
YugabyteDB addresses these evolving demands by combining the strengths of relational databases with the scalability of cloud-native architectures. Features like Smart Data Distribution and an Adaptive CBO, enhance performance and support a lot of database objects. This makes it a competitive selection for running a wide selection of applications.
Moreover, YugabyteDB allows enterprises to migrate their PostgreSQL applications while maintaining similar performance levels, crucial for contemporary workloads. Our commitment to open-source development encourages community involvement and provides flexibility for purchasers who need to avoid vendor lock-in.
With the rise of edge computing and IoT, how does YugabyteDB address the challenges posed by these technologies, particularly regarding data distribution and latency?
YugabyteDB’s distributed SQL architecture is designed to satisfy the challenges posed by the rise of edge computing and IoT by providing a scalable and resilient data layer that may operate seamlessly in each cloud and edge contexts. Its ability to routinely shard and replicate data ensures efficient distribution, enabling quick access and real-time processing. This minimizes latency, allowing applications to reply swiftly to user interactions and data changes.
By offering the pliability to adapt configurations based on specific application requirements, YugabyteDB ensures that enterprises can effectively manage their data needs as they evolve in an increasingly decentralized landscape.
As Co-CEO, how do you balance the twin roles of leading technological innovation and managing company growth?
Our company goals to simplify cloud-native applications, compelling me to remain on top of technology trends, equivalent to generative AI and context switches. Following innovation demands curiosity, a desire to make an impact, and a commitment to continuous learning.
Balancing technological innovation and company growth is fundamentally about scaling–whether it’s scaling systems or scaling impact. In distributed databases, we deal with constructing technologies that scale performance, handle massive workloads, and ensure high availability across a worldwide infrastructure. Similarly, scaling Yugabyte means growing our customer base, enhancing community engagement, and expanding our ecosystem–while maintaining operational excellence.
All this requires a disciplined approach to performance and efficiency.
Technically, we optimize query execution, reduce latency, and improve system throughput; organizationally, we streamline processes, scale teams, and enhance cross-functional collaboration. In each cases, success comes from empowering teams with the suitable tools, insights, and processes to make smart, data-driven decisions.
How do you see the role of distributed SQL databases evolving in the following 5-10 years, particularly within the context of AI and machine learning?
In the following few years, distributed SQL databases will evolve to handle complex data evaluation, enabling users to make predictions and detect anomalies with minimal technical expertise. There may be an immense amount of database specialization within the context of AI and machine learning, but that is just not sustainable. Databases might want to evolve to satisfy the demands of AI. This is the reason we’re iterating and enhancing capabilities on top of pgvector, ensuring developers can use Yugabyte for his or her AI database needs.
Moreover, we are able to expect an ongoing commitment to open source in AI development. Five years ago, we made YugabyteDB fully open source under the Apache 2.0 license, reinforcing our dedication to an open-source framework and proactively constructing our open-source community.
