The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 45 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Borgman: Tabular acquisition gives Databricks marketing win, not open-source control
“I think probably the biggest thing that they get out of the acquisition is the ability to tell the market, That they can do iceberg two and not look like they had made a mistake with Dell with Delta. You know, that, that they can, they get sort of a marketing …”
Justin Borgman: Apache Iceberg won the open table format war in 2024
“I feel like the summer of twenty-twenty-four, the world said, okay, it is Iceberg. And that was like VHS, Betamax, You know, decision made.”
Borgman: Databricks will not control or kill Apache Iceberg
“Iceberg has, you know, is, is bigger than Databricks, honestly. And it will continue to be, I think, the ubiquitous format. You know, so if they had hopes of, like, killing it, I don't think that worked. If they had hopes of controlling it, I don't really thin…”
Justin Borgman: Open-source enterprise infrastructure beats proprietary alternatives over time
“I believe, gradually over time, enterprise software technology, at least infrastructure technology, wherever there are two things that are mostly the same, and one is open and one is not, the open is going to win over time.”
Borgman: Presto is mostly Facebook internal, while Trino is the mainstream branch
“They started as identical copies, but the code bases have diverged quite a bit. And today Presto is really just used by Facebook. So it's sort of like their own private branch in a way used by a small number of people. And Trino has become the mainstream commu…”
Justin Borgman: Data lakehouses are the future of data architecture
“That performance gap is de minimis at this point, and that really has changed the game, and I think now lake houses are the future.”
Justin Borgman: Teradata offers unique database capabilities no competitor can match
“It's an amazing database. I will still say that now, you know, seven years later, it's an amazing database. There are things that that, that system can do that, That really nobody else on the market can do. But, ah, it's proprietary and it's expensive.”
Borgman: AI emergence may trigger cloud repatriation to on-premises
“There's you know, an interesting case to be made that there may be some repatriation with the AI emergence.”
Borgman: On-prem vs. cloud dichotomy will persist indefinitely in enterprises
“I think this dichotomy is going to exist for as far as I can see.”
Dell treats Starburst's OEM product as a fully comped first-party product
“It is a Dell product, you know, for all their sellers. It's a first-party product. They're getting comped in full. You know, it is treated as a Dell product in every way.”
Borgman: Adopting popular database vendors with proprietary storage repeats vendor lock-in
“And I think that's a mistake that a lot of people are making today, is there's a very popular database company right now that I won't mention, that is very, very popular, has raised a lot of money, and once again, it is that that story of vendor lock-in all ov…”
Borgman: Apache Spark is not built to support high concurrency workloads
“Anyone who's trying to do high concurrency will usually realize that Spark is not built for high concurrency.”
Justin Borgman: Big data IT consulting will decline as software matures
“I think on the IT side, ah, I think there's a lot of opportunity for consulting right now because these technologies are so new and so complicated and so hard to use, but I think, ah, as time goes on, companies like HADAP, which are really trying to productize…”
Justin Borgman: MongoDB is built for web applications, not data analytics
“MongoDB, for example, is purely complementary to what we do. You wouldn't use Mongo for analytics, really, and you wouldn't use us for, You know, keeping your webpage running, for example.”
Borgman: Facebook ran all data warehousing analytics on Presto
“It was really how Facebook was running all of their data warehousing analytics.”
Borgman: Enterprises will never store all data in a single repository
“We do think data lakes are where you're going to want to store as much data as you can, just because the economics will drive that, but you'll never store everything”
Borgman: Databricks and Snowflake expand into adjacent markets to justify valuations
“You have a couple giant players in Databricks and Snowflake that are now looking for adjacent markets to continue to grow their TAM and justify their valuations and drive their revenue into the future. And, ah, and that's leading to more overlaps into boxes th…”
Borgman: Databricks and Snowflake operate strictly as cloud-only data platforms
“Databricks and Snowflake are cloud only, so if you happen to have data on-prem we're pretty much your only bet, and you know, it just so happens that that turns out to be most of the Fortune 500 almost the entirety of the financial Social services sector in pa…”
Borgman: Watching hyper-scale tech adopters predicts broader enterprise infrastructure trends
“You can watch those companies and kind of see where technology is probably going to go because they're the ones running at the most ridiculous scale. These technologies get really tested to the limit that way and can be a good indication of sort of where thing…”
Borgman: Open-source companies should monetize performance and security features
“Things around performance and security are very logical places to kind of draw some lines where you know that enterprise customers value that and you know, that's something that can be monetized.”
Starburst maintains the Apache license for Trino without adding restrictive licensing
“We don't, and that's something that at least philosophically my co-founders have been pretty, I guess, consistent on is a desire to continue to use the Apache license, which gives widespread flexibility and freedom to users of the technology, and so we haven't…”
Borgman: Dell is selling massive quantities of on-prem AI servers
“They're selling, selling a ton of servers right now, AI servers, which are basically, you know, have a lot of GPUs in them, a lot of NVIDIA products in there, and are seeing customers that are trying to get economies of scale by deploying that infrastructure o…”
Borgman: Data architectures are shifting from batch ETL to Kafka streaming
“And that's an architecture I would say that we're seeing a lot of out there is Kafka as opposed to more traditional batch-oriented ETL.”
Borgman: Data mesh's lasting legacy is the concept of data products
“I think the lasting legacy, ah, of that, though, is this concept of data products, creating these sort of curated data sets from data that can live in, in multiple places, and thinking about them from a product perspective, with a product mindset, which is to …”
Borgman: Starburst is hardcore enterprise software, not a PLG motion
“We're hardcore enterprise software. You know, we're not a PLG motion.”
Borgman: Early software startups should go deep with small boutique SIs
“Rather than going far and wide and signing up 100,000 of SIs, which we did that too along the way I would say go deep with one or two, Probably on the smaller end, just because you'll, you'll, you'll be able to get more attention span and try to make them as g…”
Borgman: Enterprise partnerships must be driven by product or sales
“I think of the partnerships organization, at least in this context, as the facilitators of the relationship, but the real Impetus. The real motivation has to, I think, come from product. It could come from sales.”
Borgman: AWS Athena runs on Presto under the covers
“Athena actually runs on Presto under the covers, so that is the technology behind Athena.”
Justin Borgman: Specialized data tools lead to silos and vendor lock-in
“Over time, that creates a lot of data silos, and in particular, as you create these data silos, you're confronted with vendor lock-in, particularly if you're using proprietary databases or storage as your underlying infrastructure for these different use cases…”
Borgman: Modern architecture requires separated storage, open formats, and abstraction
“The three keys in my view to a data architecture that can stand the test of time are first and foremost, embrace this new, ah, frontier of storage compute separation. I'll talk about that in a moment. Use open data formats wherever possible. That is really, re…”
Borgman: Facebook runs essentially all of its infrastructure using ORC
“Essentially Facebook runs all of their infrastructure using ORC file.”
Borgman: Netflix uses Parquet for essentially all of its infrastructure
“Ah, Parquet, Netflix uses that for all of their infrastructure essentially.”
Borgman: SQL abstraction layers insulate users from underlying data changes
“My view is creating a sequel abstraction layer at least in the context of sequel analytics is a big part of the answer and by doing that if you if you use something that allows you to separate storage from compute and allows you to query any data source you ca…”
Borgman: Starburst Data is entirely bootstrapped and profitable from day one
“We haven't raised any venture capital thus far. And in fact, we're actually profitable, and we've been running profitably from day one,”
Borgman: Database market will see convergence of relational tech and Hadoop
“This is where the market's going. There's going to be this convergence of, you know, sort of relational database technology and Hadoop, and this is the future, and”
Justin Borgman: Hadapt commands higher selling prices targeting IT with infrastructure
“We can charge higher prices. Our average selling price is probably a lot more but we're gonna sell, you know, fewer of them, and it's gonna be to, you know, more specialized audience”
Justin Borgman: Sears is making massive Hadoop investments to consolidate data
“Sears actually, there's been some interesting things written about Sears going in that direction. Which you think of, you know, major retail, you wouldn't think they would be, you know, compared to Facebook, but they are, and they're making huge investments in…”
Starburst scrapped and rebuilt its Galaxy SaaS platform before launch
“We actually built it twice. And, you know, customers never really saw the first version because at the last minute we said, you know what, we can't deliver the seamless, easy to use, consistent experience that we're going for.”
Starburst was bootstrapped and profitable for its first two years
“We were bootstrapped the first two years, and we were running a nice little profitable business.”
Borgman: Starburst's Dell OEM partnership took two years to launch
“Yeah, we're probably now starting year three, and I would say it was two years to get it really out the door as a skew that they could sell.”
Borgman: Facebook Runs the Largest MySQL Deployment
“Facebook happens to run the largest MySQL deployment as well.”
Borgman: Storage and compute separation provides cost flexibility through on-demand scaling
“You can leave all of your data in S three, which is essentially your lowest cost option, right? In the cloud. And you can spin up these EC two nodes as needed as demand increases for whatever workload you're doing. And as a result, you have all this cost flexi…”
Borgman: Major global ride-sharing platforms run Presto for data analytics
“Most of the world's ride-sharing companies around the world actually run Presto for their analytics because of that, so You know, that's Lyft here in the US that's GrabTaxi in Singapore, that's OlaCabs in India, that's Kareem in the Middle East.”