Couchbase CEO flags database-as-a-service opportunity

The shift by customers towards the cloud and to database-as-a-service offerings should provide opportunities for the channel to target a customer base in transition.

The database managed system (DBMS) space is being shaken up by the cloud and the emergence in the channel of vendors that are offering more flexible options for partners.

Among those is Couchbase and the firm’s president and, CEO Matt Cain, is a firm believer that partners need to be looking at DBMS. 

“We believe fundamentally that legacy technology, like relational databases, needs a total rethink to meet the demands of digital transformation and modern applications,” said Cain, adding that this presented the channel with an opportunity.

“We continue to push the needle on innovation, taking more and more of the operational burden of managing a database into our service offerings, so that developers and other application teams can really focus on adding value to their businesses and their customer base,” he said.

Cain said Couchbase was not alone in banging the drum around the database-as-a-service market and most major analysts were doing the same.

In a recent report, Gartner put some numbers around the growth. “Since its brief pause in 2015, the DBMS market has reeled off six consecutive years of growth, with the last five years all growing in the teens,” said the analyst firm. “Since 2017’s $38.6bn year, the DBMS market has added $40bn – doubling in five years.

“The biggest DBMS market story continues to be the enormous impact of revenue shifting to the cloud. In 2021, revenue for managed cloud services [dbPaaS] rose to $39.2bn – it now represents over 49% of all DBMS revenue. The growth has been stunning.”

Cain said Couchbase had been recruiting partners and was looking to work with the channel to tap into that ongoing opportunity.

“I think you would be hard pressed to find a more attractive, total addressable market that is yet to go through what I believe will be a generational market transition,” he said. “I believe so fundamentally in the channel, and partners, particularly as you are serving enterprise. The large cloud partners are really important to us. They’ve got a lot of reach for services that run inside their clouds.

“Systems integrators, regional and global, that have digital practices – these particular verticals are constantly looking for next-generation technologies that allow them to add more value to their customers. That’s a big channel for us.”

Cain added that because of the cloud nature of the DBMS offering, it was also a natural fit for managed service providers (MSPs) and it had been growing its channel base on that front, too.

“I think MSPs are relevant everywhere,” he said. “Enterprises are relying on outside expertise to be more agile and more productive with their digital transformation initiatives.

“We think there is tremendous disruption to be had. And as an innovator in cloud databases, we have uncapped potential in terms of what we can go after and help customers meet unmet, underserved needs.”