On the business model side of things, I think the most important thing to think about is the threat of the cloud providers. In the same way that MSFT were able

On the business model side of things, I think the most important thing to think about is the threat of the cloud providers. In the same way that MSFT were able to take most of the profits from the 90s/00s PC business, and Apple were able to take most of the profits from the appstore, and Amazon takes most of the profits from the Amazon market place, in the same way the cloud providers are realistically going to take the vast majority of the profits from running your DB in the cloud. Elasticsearch has exactly this problem. If they're lucky, Amazon will buy them. If they're unlucky Amazon will just steal their tech and take the profits (some would argue this already happened). They're by and large living in someone elses ecosystem.