6 ms·

So that brings the total to $331M? That's a metric ton of cash, what do they do with it?

mathattack 12y ago
Hire, Hire and Hire. I suspect their infrastructure costs are very high too. One challenge that companies find as they try to scale is they have to add a lot of Sales and Marketing costs well before they receive any revenue, so there's a cost bump despite low growth in engineering. This is compounded if there's a professional services component.
- rational-future 12y ago
  What do you mean by infrastructure costs?
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    I'm assuming just their test farm dwarfs most regular deployments.
    - ranman 12y ago
      They have a huge test matrix. Sharding tests, performance tests, and large data tests probably take a long time. You can see their test matrix here: https://mci.10gen.com/ https://mci.10gen.com/ and the driver tests here: https://jenkins.mongodb.com/ https://jenkins.mongodb.com/ Also they run https://mms.mongodb.com/ https://mms.mongodb.com/ which does backup and monitoring
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      Even $1M buys a lot of test equipment.
  - kalimoxto 12y ago
    They have MongoMMS which has 2 datacenters and provides backup and monitoring services for Mongo clients
- c-rack 12y ago
  They should instead fire some of their technical decision makers and use the $100M as compensation for pain and suffering for early adopters. Choosing MongoDB for a project was one of the biggest failures in my career.
rational-future 12y ago
Some part of it certainly goes into MongoDB development. It still sucks, but every new version has a ton of major improvements. I may give it another try once 2.8 is released.
- tracker1 12y ago
  Been using MongoDB for searches on ClassicCars.com for about 3 years with minimal issues. Although the next generation is moving to ElasticSearch, we haven't had issues with our use of MongoDB (which is a very good use case for it).
gfodor 12y ago
It's going to take a lot of marketing people to convince people to pay for something they can now get for free via PostgreSQL.
- apetresc 12y ago
  If that were true, there would be an order of magnitude fewer commercial database systems on the market.
  - x1024 12y ago
    It's true, and soon there won't be.
    - hnriot 12y ago
      an opinion that has been touted since the 90's. still just as wrong.
    - hobs 12y ago
      Well, I might be downvoted to hell like the other poster, but from where I sit thats a possibility far out into the future. I think you are thinking there will be an objective reckoning of features/performance/reliability and somehow since OSS wins all of those they will choose it, and as far as I am concerned, thats not actually why they choose their database in the first place. A million b2b apps are developed on sql server because visual studio/microsoft makes that easy for their .net stack, and oracle sells to executives or other manager types and gets shoehorned into projects or set as a requirement before smart people get involved ALL THE TIME. A lot of it still comes down to enterprise pricing, support, integration, and name recognition.
      - davidgerard 12y ago
        This is true. Also, vendorware that's written to Oracle. However, I am thankful my own bosses can count, and went "WHAT" at the last Oracle bill. So we're actively seeking to move our own stuff from 'Orrible to PG, and to get rid of the vendorware depending on Oracle. We just got AppDynamics in (ridiculously versatile and useful monitoring). Speaking to the AD sales engineer, he said a lot of their Oracle-using customers are eyeing up PG similarly.
jamesblonde 12y ago
Take some database courses, learn about transactions and isolation models, maybe some do some distributed systems courses, learn about agreement protocols, failure models, recovery models....
- fiatmoney 12y ago
  Some may think the OP is joking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzjIP6O4kEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzjIP6O4kEo
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    scoff all you want, that's a better explanation of threading and the dangers entailed than I got in a whole semester of my undergrad. there's an art in explaining something complex simply.
    - hamburglar 12y ago
      I'm sorry, but that talk is depressing. It starts with a grand statement that there's no such thing as threadsafe ruby code, and as a demonstration of that, it shows multithreaded code written by someone who had apparently never heard of synchronization primitives. It then goes on to explain how to use synchronization primitives to make your code threadsafe. It's like watching someone discover error handling for the first time.
      - throwawayaway 12y ago
        > who had apparently never heard of synchronization primitives. i think that's the nub of our difference of opinion. i saw that as a ruse, i don't genuinely believe that the presenter never heard of them.
  - revelation 12y ago
gasping 12y ago
They'll probably spend it on marketing MongoDB as a replacement to relational databases. Brainwashing isn't cheap.
- angrybits 12y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted, that seems to be their MO.
mbesto 12y ago
Sales & Marketing - or as Zed Shaw likes to put it "steaks and strippers"[0] [0] - http://vimeo.com/2723800 http://vimeo.com/2723800

Hire, Hire and Hire. I suspect their infrastructure costs are very high too. One challenge that companies find as they try to scale is they have to add a lot of Sales and Marketing costs well before they receive any revenue, so there's a cost bump despite low growth in engineering. This is compounded if there's a professional services component.

rational-future 12y ago
What do you mean by infrastructure costs?
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I'm assuming just their test farm dwarfs most regular deployments.
  - ranman 12y ago
    They have a huge test matrix. Sharding tests, performance tests, and large data tests probably take a long time. You can see their test matrix here: https://mci.10gen.com/ https://mci.10gen.com/ and the driver tests here: https://jenkins.mongodb.com/ https://jenkins.mongodb.com/ Also they run https://mms.mongodb.com/ https://mms.mongodb.com/ which does backup and monitoring
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Even $1M buys a lot of test equipment.
- kalimoxto 12y ago
  They have MongoMMS which has 2 datacenters and provides backup and monitoring services for Mongo clients
c-rack 12y ago
They should instead fire some of their technical decision makers and use the $100M as compensation for pain and suffering for early adopters. Choosing MongoDB for a project was one of the biggest failures in my career.

rational-future 12y ago

Some part of it certainly goes into MongoDB development. It still sucks, but every new version has a ton of major improvements. I may give it another try once 2.8 is released.

tracker1 12y ago
Been using MongoDB for searches on ClassicCars.com for about 3 years with minimal issues. Although the next generation is moving to ElasticSearch, we haven't had issues with our use of MongoDB (which is a very good use case for it).

gfodor 12y ago

It's going to take a lot of marketing people to convince people to pay for something they can now get for free via PostgreSQL.

apetresc 12y ago
If that were true, there would be an order of magnitude fewer commercial database systems on the market.
- x1024 12y ago
  It's true, and soon there won't be.
  - hnriot 12y ago
    an opinion that has been touted since the 90's. still just as wrong.
  - hobs 12y ago
    Well, I might be downvoted to hell like the other poster, but from where I sit thats a possibility far out into the future. I think you are thinking there will be an objective reckoning of features/performance/reliability and somehow since OSS wins all of those they will choose it, and as far as I am concerned, thats not actually why they choose their database in the first place. A million b2b apps are developed on sql server because visual studio/microsoft makes that easy for their .net stack, and oracle sells to executives or other manager types and gets shoehorned into projects or set as a requirement before smart people get involved ALL THE TIME. A lot of it still comes down to enterprise pricing, support, integration, and name recognition.
    - davidgerard 12y ago
      This is true. Also, vendorware that's written to Oracle. However, I am thankful my own bosses can count, and went "WHAT" at the last Oracle bill. So we're actively seeking to move our own stuff from 'Orrible to PG, and to get rid of the vendorware depending on Oracle. We just got AppDynamics in (ridiculously versatile and useful monitoring). Speaking to the AD sales engineer, he said a lot of their Oracle-using customers are eyeing up PG similarly.

jamesblonde 12y ago

Take some database courses, learn about transactions and isolation models, maybe some do some distributed systems courses, learn about agreement protocols, failure models, recovery models....

fiatmoney 12y ago
Some may think the OP is joking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzjIP6O4kEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzjIP6O4kEo
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  scoff all you want, that's a better explanation of threading and the dangers entailed than I got in a whole semester of my undergrad. there's an art in explaining something complex simply.
  - hamburglar 12y ago
    I'm sorry, but that talk is depressing. It starts with a grand statement that there's no such thing as threadsafe ruby code, and as a demonstration of that, it shows multithreaded code written by someone who had apparently never heard of synchronization primitives. It then goes on to explain how to use synchronization primitives to make your code threadsafe. It's like watching someone discover error handling for the first time.
    - throwawayaway 12y ago
      > who had apparently never heard of synchronization primitives. i think that's the nub of our difference of opinion. i saw that as a ruse, i don't genuinely believe that the presenter never heard of them.
- revelation 12y ago

gasping 12y ago

They'll probably spend it on marketing MongoDB as a replacement to relational databases. Brainwashing isn't cheap.

angrybits 12y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted, that seems to be their MO.

mbesto 12y ago

Sales & Marketing - or as Zed Shaw likes to put it "steaks and strippers"[0] [0] - http://vimeo.com/2723800 http://vimeo.com/2723800