When you get to scale like this, I wonder if the access patterns of the application and its data might be best served by a custom data retrieval and storage app

When you get to scale like this, I wonder if the access patterns of the application and its data might be best served by a custom data retrieval and storage application. I may be wrong but I just wonder if efficiency is lost to the generalized nature of any data storage system. The other question that comes to mind is, to what extent have the developers made a systematic effort to optimize how data is stored and retrieved? If you’re building a gigantic back end system and simply accepting that the system load is what it is then you might be missing a chance to dramatically impact the size of the task of managing that data.