Database ecosystem will flourish in 2021

Related to COVID-19, I think the big stories will revolve around managing remote workforces, cost-cutting by the consolidation of empty buildings, and adapting to changes in consumer behavior.

Database ecosystem will flourish in 2021

Despite the fact that IT budgets have been tight in 2020, businesses have adapted to the changed consumer behaviors. As a result, I believe the database ecosystem is bound to flourish. This is especially true for cloud platforms. No one wants to walk in and maintain their own data centers or co-locations anymore. There is now an exodus of engineers from highly populated tech centers, and it just makes so much more sense to move to the cloud where things can be managed from a terminal.

What do you foresee on the tech IPO front?

COVID-19’s impact has created new industry favorites. Companies like DoorDash are going to make a killing on the tech IPO front. And following right in their footsteps are going to be the tech vendors that make technologies that are needed by these companies. They are going to be cloud-based and offer solutions for computing, storage, automation, databases…you name it.

What trends will emerge in 2021? Which areas will ascend? Which will fall out of favor?

For starters, the travel industry is definitely going to be subdued. SMB and mom/pop shops will struggle mightily to keep up with the change in their business models. The home improvement industry will flourish. The shift from brick-and-mortar stores to online will accelerate. Online stores, entertainment, and the gaming industry will see new competition since the size of their “pies” is growing larger. And, lastly, I think the housing industry will take a hit, but the software industry around it may bloom.

What is one prediction you have that others might find surprising?

A mostly ignored area is the field of home upgrades and repair, including the handymen and software companies that support them. People are staying home and spending millions of dollars on upgrades. Those software companies are bound to become unicorns next year.

What role can MariaDB’s technology play in 2021?

With consumers moving to mostly online shopping, the backend tech infrastructure needs faster and bigger systems to support high-speed transactions that can scale with the needs of the business. MariaDB Xpand is our multi-writer and distributed SQL transactional solution, that helps customers scale-out elastically to meet growing business demands. It’s also now available in the cloud with MariaDB SkySQL, our database-as-a-service (DBaaS), the simplest way to get started with distributed SQL for MariaDB.

Can you describe your philosophy/methodology for predicting market changes?

It's always a mix of so many things, and no one philosophy is the right one. I try to assimilate inputs from multiple sources and glean the key points, co-relate them, and then form a prediction. A list of these sources includes current and upcoming technologies; watching consumer behavior; Federal Reserve interest rates; global stock exchanges and prices for gold and oil; weather patterns, fires, and storms; and geopolitical changes.