Open letter : call to software vendors for an enterprise-grade support of PostgreSQL Database

PARIS, december 6, 2017

We, at the PostgreSQL Cross-Enterprise Work Group, a non-profit organization advocating for the adoption and use of PostgreSQL, invite software vendors that don’t already do so to take steps to support PostgreSQL as a database management system (DBMS). The ambition of this initiative is to incite them to adapt quickly to the irresistible IT transformation in progress in public and private companies.

Founded in November 2016, PostgreSQL Cross-Enterprise Work Group is a dedicated task force inside the PostgreSQLFr non-profit association, gathering more than 20 participants from public organizations, CAC40 companies, start-ups, including Air France, Carrefour, CASDEN, CNES, EDF, GIE AGORA (MSA), ISOCEL (Leclerc), MAIF, Météo France, French Ministry of Education, PeopleDoc, SNCF, Société Générale and Tokheim Services Group.

Engaged in a common open-source transformation initiative, members of the Work Group have chosen to store all or part of their critical enterprise data in PostgreSQL databases.

The initiative aims at lowering the impact of vendor lock-in strategies in the enterprise database field. A long-standing near-monopolist position in this field has led to a situation in which customers are now facing important risks. They became so dependent on their traditional vendors that they could not move to another vendor without substantial switching costs. This created a context which favors the vendor at the expense of the customer.

With the rise of open source software solutions popularity, mainly due to their maturity, performance and stability, many firms looking for an alternative to proprietary DBMS did migrate or are considering the migration to the open source database PostgreSQL.

PostgreSQL offers qualities of robustness, performance, reliability and respect for open standards. It is a liberal open source license that allows companies to use it without restriction, without fear of audits, and lets the freedom to contribute to its development and ecosystem.

Members of the Work Group agreed to provide mutual assistance, share knowledge, contribute to the project and promote it to increase its public adoption, while strictly respecting procurement processes.

Increased cooperation with third party software vendors

As part of this initiative, and in order to answer the wide variety of business needs of its current and future members, the Work Group now calls to the cooperation of Independent Software Vendors.

"As IT transformation progresses, PostgreSQL becomes a de facto standard in our infrastructures. Part of our business applications rely on third party software we use and that come with proprietary database solutions which require us to override our corporate strategies and policies. To ensure we will continue to use software that do not support PostgreSQL yet, software providers are now urged to take the first steps leading to an adequate certification of PostgreSQL." explains Simon CLAVIER, Vice President of PostgreSQLfr association and spokesperson of the Work Group.

"This compliance is already required in our choice criteria for solutions and will be even more in a near future. In return, Software Vendors that certify their solution on PostgreSQL can count on a reliable support of PostgreSQL developers and users community, community in which they will be very welcomed."

Vendors that already support PostgreSQL are invited to come forward and to be added in our reference software list. Those that don't and are considering to become compliant are warmly invited to contact the Work Group on the following email address, indicating the expected date of support and sharing a reference URL : entreprises.contact@postgresql.fr

More about the PostgreSQL Cross-Enterprise Work Group : https://www.postgresql.fr/entreprises/english

Counting on your participation,

Freely,

The PostgreSQL Cross-Enterprise Work Group

NOTE : This page is a translation of the original page in French.