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Postgres Open Q&A with Sudhakar Sannakkayala, General Manager, Azure OSS Databases

Posted By: PostgresOpen on Tuesday, September 11

Last week was PostgresOpen Silicon Valley. We'll be doing a follow-up post to highlight some of the details of the event soon. Throughout the event there was the opportunity to interact with our sponsors who are doing interesting things for advancing open source and Postgres, as well as over 1/3 of the PostgreSQL committers that were in attendance. During the conference we had the opportunity to sit down with Sudhakar Sannakkayala, the GM of Azure open source databases to learn a bit more on Microsoft's journey with open source and Postgres in particular.

Q: You launched Azure Database for PostgreSQL in public preview a little over a year ago and introduced general availability this year. What did you learn from your preview, and your other database services, that you applied to your GA offering?

SS: We worked very closely with our customers throughout the preview, through assessments and POCs. The feedback we received during preview heavily influenced the final GA product. The key things we heard from customers were:

Solid fundamentals - high availability, resiliency, fault tolerance, elastic scale, and performance – are the foundation of any offering. We ensured the fundamentals are built into our service and platform. Having had years of experience doing this with SQL Server in the cloud, we were able to bring these capabilities and expertise to PostgreSQL in Azure. For example, when customers choose Azure Database for PostgreSQL, it comes with built-in high availability at no extra cost, backed by an industry-leading SLA of 99.99%. Security and compliance came up in almost every customer discussion, from DBAs to CXOs. We ensured security was built-in through features like default SSL connectivity, and default encryption of data at rest and in motion with TLS1.2 standards. Going into general availability, we also ensured global and local certifications, such as ISO, SOC, PCI, HIPAA, and GDPR. Developers increasingly make technology choices around app requirements, often choosing database engines based on app stack. They also want to use data in meaningful ways. We ensured Azure Database for PostgreSQL integrates with other Azure services, such as Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure App Service, Power BI, Databricks, and Cognitive Services, to enable customers to create end-to-end solutions. We’ll continue to make it easier for customers to use PostgreSQL with other Microsoft services, products, and tools. Lastly, we learned that customers are making a choice not just about the database but also about the cloud platform where it’s hosted. They are looking for cloud vendors to partner with in their digital transformation journey. At Microsoft Azure, we have made investments in building a cloud platform that meets customers where they are with support for the stack of their choice, hybrid solutions and rich set of intelligent solutions. With more public cloud regions than any other cloud vendor and industry leading security and compliance offering, customers worldwide can choose Azure as their trusted partner.

It’s been a humbling and great learning experience, and we are thankful for the insight and support of our customers and the Postgres community.

Q: We’ve noticed many Azure engineers at Postgres conferences around the world. Can you share a bit about what it's been like to jump in as an active participant in the community?

SS: When we made the decision to bring PostgreSQL on Azure, we were conservative – expecting to cater to a limited set of customers asking for PostgreSQL as a service on Azure.

The journey started with listening to our customers and users who voted in large numbers for PostgreSQL. It was very exciting to see the high level of interest in our PostgreSQL service.

Since PostgreSQL was so new to us, our engineers immersed themselves in the Postgres community, working to understand the needs and wants of the community and endeavoring to build the best PostgreSQL experience in the cloud. We learned a lot and are thankful for all your support through the process!

Q: As you’ve gotten a better sense of the needs of the Postgres community and what developers want, what surprised you?

SS: During the early phases of preview, we saw firsthand that you’re not just bringing databases to the cloud. You’re looking for end-to-end solutions you can use to build applications and experiences that delight your customers.

It’s funny - we were so focused on delivering a great Postgres service that we were caught a bit off guard when we heard the interest in a comprehensive platform. Once we understood that, we worked hard to make it easy for developers to connect Azure Database for PostgreSQL to other services to build end to end solutions. For example, we integrated deployment of PostgreSQL database on Azure with App services, so developers can build and deploy web or mobile applications and get a PostgreSQL database as part of the same workflow. Similarly, we integrated PostgreSQL with Open Source Broker for Azure (OSBA) to make it seamless for developers to connect containerized apps, or cloud foundry apps to PostgreSQL. We also integrated with BI tools such as PowerBI to instantly get insights on data stored in Postgres or ability to develop intelligent apps using Cognitive APIs.

Q: What’s next for PostgreSQL on Azure?

SS: When it comes to innovating Azure, our overall guiding principle is to help our customers innovate. We focus on technologies that improve customers’ productivity, flexibility, intelligence, and security. You saw several examples of what we have already done - and our customers are asking for even more. We are looking to enable intelligent ML based capabilities to solve some of the key customer challenges around performance optimization and data security. We are also excited about what is coming up with PostgreSQL 11 and will be looking to add support for this major release in the service. In addition to this, we are also focusing on enabling customers migrate their mission critical workloads to Azure and also enable new SaaS/ISVs to build large scale distributed solutions on top of our PostgreSQL service.