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Why can't MongoDB can't compete with AWS? Aside from cloud vendor lock-in, and economies of scale that AWS has. Curious if anyone here has experience with hosti

by nwhatt 8y ago

Why can't MongoDB can't compete with AWS? Aside from cloud vendor lock-in, and economies of scale that AWS has. Curious if anyone here has experience with hosting using Mongo's enterprise offering. The article makes the point that Amazon is targeting a lower version of the API, can't the enterprise version compete on features?

hendzen 8y ago
MongoDB is competing with AWS. Atlas actually runs on top of AWS - Mongo is capturing the spread between their per-instance charge and the AWS charge (or GCE/Azure). What this article ignores is that Atlas is actually competing quite well and has significant adoption. The people who run MongoDB are not dumb, they will try to turn the hosting in to a commodity before Amazon can turn the DB in to a commodity.
gbear605 8y ago
I know nothing about MongoDB pricing, but it’s possible that Amazon is taking a loss on DocumentDB to keep companies using solely AWS products, while MongoDB Inc. obviously can’t do that since they have no other revenue stream. So the competition might be both convenience and price vs features. Features sounds likely to lose that battle.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  Very possible. They do it with retail too to conquer the market. Very successfully because they have laziness on their side. You can bet that they don't care about some millions for development. On the contrary, it will help saving taxes. Amazons behavior has been an amazing long-term, something many companies are thoroughly lacking.
duggan 8y ago
Other than multi-document transactions, many of the changes to MongoDB since 3.6 are to do with performance and scaling - this is AWS' bread and butter. Something to consider is how many applications depends on cutting edge database features. Developers often consider a database an object persistence mechanism whose details are to be tidied away. See, for example, the emphasis on database portability in ORMs. MongoDB's most effective enterprise offering is support, in my opinion. They know their database well, which can make a big difference if your company is heavily reliant on it. I suspect for many users though, AWS support will be good enough. Presumably, that's the danger to MongoDB.
- merlynn 8y ago
  In the spirit of complete transparency, I work at MongoDB. Depending on users' specific needs and the features of MongoDB they use, the differences could go quite a bit further than 'just' support. Some of the important differences to keep in mind include regional availability and approaches to resiliency (Atlas allows you to scale beyond a single node and offers multi-region clusters; DocumentDB limits you to a single primary), role-based access control (DocumentDB currently only supports user that has full access to all databases in a cluster; MongoDB allows fine-grained control), freedom from vendor lock-in (With MongoDB you can always choose to host your own clusters whereas DocumentDB does not afford you this option). These are only a few of the differences between the hosting platforms, on top of that, you would, of course, be limited to an incomplete set of features (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/documentdb/latest/developerguide/mongo-apis.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/documentdb/latest/developerguide...) compared to MongoDB 3.6 and you would be missing out on improvements available in MongoDB 4.0 and future versions.
jeffbax 8y ago
I would not underestimate those two advantages. Even Microsoft and Google are getting outpaced by them overall. It might only be that Amazon competes with so many companies anymore that they choose the second and third place solutions.
scarface74 8y ago
Why can't MongoDB can't compete with AWS? Aside from cloud vendor lock-in, and economies of scale that AWS has. That’s kind of the point. If you want a managed service, Mongo can’t compete at the scale of AWS. And by definition, if AWS is offering the same API, there is no “cloud vendor lock in”.
- merlynn 8y ago
  MongoDB certainly can compete at scale with AWS with MongoDB Atlas - Managed Database as a Service.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    By hosting on AWS, Azure, and GCP... And even then they don’t host your database in your own VPC which is a big deal to some companies.
    - merlynn 8y ago
      But with Atlas, you can VPC peer if you need that level of security and performance between your app and database. https://docs.atlas.mongodb.com/security-vpc-peering/ https://docs.atlas.mongodb.com/security-vpc-peering/
      - scarface74 8y ago
        I agree with you. But, some security folks still don’t think that’s good enough. These are usually old school on prem security guys who don’t really get cloud.
techslave 8y ago
> Why can't MongoDB can't compete with AWS? IMHO, it's the need for single pane of glass management, coupled with single throat to choke accountability. Buyers are often willing to give up on best-of-breed features/performance/cost in exchange for simplification of process and workflow.

by nwhatt 8y ago

hendzen 8y ago

MongoDB is competing with AWS. Atlas actually runs on top of AWS - Mongo is capturing the spread between their per-instance charge and the AWS charge (or GCE/Azure). What this article ignores is that Atlas is actually competing quite well and has significant adoption. The people who run MongoDB are not dumb, they will try to turn the hosting in to a commodity before Amazon can turn the DB in to a commodity.

gbear605 8y ago

I know nothing about MongoDB pricing, but it’s possible that Amazon is taking a loss on DocumentDB to keep companies using solely AWS products, while MongoDB Inc. obviously can’t do that since they have no other revenue stream. So the competition might be both convenience and price vs features. Features sounds likely to lose that battle.

raxxorrax 8y ago
Very possible. They do it with retail too to conquer the market. Very successfully because they have laziness on their side. You can bet that they don't care about some millions for development. On the contrary, it will help saving taxes. Amazons behavior has been an amazing long-term, something many companies are thoroughly lacking.

duggan 8y ago

Other than multi-document transactions, many of the changes to MongoDB since 3.6 are to do with performance and scaling - this is AWS' bread and butter. Something to consider is how many applications depends on cutting edge database features. Developers often consider a database an object persistence mechanism whose details are to be tidied away. See, for example, the emphasis on database portability in ORMs. MongoDB's most effective enterprise offering is support, in my opinion. They know their database well, which can make a big difference if your company is heavily reliant on it. I suspect for many users though, AWS support will be good enough. Presumably, that's the danger to MongoDB.

merlynn 8y ago
In the spirit of complete transparency, I work at MongoDB. Depending on users' specific needs and the features of MongoDB they use, the differences could go quite a bit further than 'just' support. Some of the important differences to keep in mind include regional availability and approaches to resiliency (Atlas allows you to scale beyond a single node and offers multi-region clusters; DocumentDB limits you to a single primary), role-based access control (DocumentDB currently only supports user that has full access to all databases in a cluster; MongoDB allows fine-grained control), freedom from vendor lock-in (With MongoDB you can always choose to host your own clusters whereas DocumentDB does not afford you this option). These are only a few of the differences between the hosting platforms, on top of that, you would, of course, be limited to an incomplete set of features (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/documentdb/latest/developerguide/mongo-apis.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/documentdb/latest/developerguide...) compared to MongoDB 3.6 and you would be missing out on improvements available in MongoDB 4.0 and future versions.

jeffbax 8y ago

I would not underestimate those two advantages. Even Microsoft and Google are getting outpaced by them overall. It might only be that Amazon competes with so many companies anymore that they choose the second and third place solutions.

scarface74 8y ago

Why can't MongoDB can't compete with AWS? Aside from cloud vendor lock-in, and economies of scale that AWS has. That’s kind of the point. If you want a managed service, Mongo can’t compete at the scale of AWS. And by definition, if AWS is offering the same API, there is no “cloud vendor lock in”.

merlynn 8y ago
MongoDB certainly can compete at scale with AWS with MongoDB Atlas - Managed Database as a Service.
- scarface74 8y ago
  By hosting on AWS, Azure, and GCP... And even then they don’t host your database in your own VPC which is a big deal to some companies.
  - merlynn 8y ago
    But with Atlas, you can VPC peer if you need that level of security and performance between your app and database. https://docs.atlas.mongodb.com/security-vpc-peering/ https://docs.atlas.mongodb.com/security-vpc-peering/
    - scarface74 8y ago
      I agree with you. But, some security folks still don’t think that’s good enough. These are usually old school on prem security guys who don’t really get cloud.

techslave 8y ago

> Why can't MongoDB can't compete with AWS? IMHO, it's the need for single pane of glass management, coupled with single throat to choke accountability. Buyers are often willing to give up on best-of-breed features/performance/cost in exchange for simplification of process and workflow.