The Linux Foundation Member Summit 2022

When PlanetScale launched in 2018, it offered a hosted version of Vitess, the indefinitely-scalable open source MySQL database developed by YouTube for its own use, which was only usable by hyperscalers like them. PlanetScale’s founders, who had developed Vitess at YouTube, soon realized that this was both too much and not enough, causing them to walk a tight line between their users’ needs and their own business progress that served neither well. The decision to relaunch PlanetScale in 2021 as a developer-experience-centric serverless database that leverages – but is clearly separate from – Vitess, drew a clear line between the project and the product and heightened innovation and adoption of both. In this talk, PlanetScale Engineer and Vitess Lead Maintainer Deepthi Sigireddi will discuss how PlanetScale built on, but also turned away from, its hyperscaler technology roots with an entirely new approach to the database, positioning itself to disrupt a mature industry while accelerating momentum for a graduated CNCF project.