The promise of open source is to make software tools free and open, yet some versions contain proprietary add-ons, licensing terms, or risks that must be vetted first.

This situation is commonly referred to as “open core,” and to address this issue, Instaclustr Pty. Ltd. has built its business around providing managed support to configure open-source technologies such as Apache Cassandra or PostgreSQL while avoiding the encumbrance of open core. Instaclustr has become a player in the estimated $21 billion open-source services market.

“We allow customers to successfully adopt open-source databases or database technologies without having to go down the open-core path,” said Ben Bromhead (pictured, right), co-founder and chief technology officer of Instaclustr. “We take those open-source projects and deliver that as a database as a service on our managed platform. We do it with the pure, upstream open-source version. That means you get full flexibility, full portability, and, more importantly, you’re not paying expensive license fees.”

Bromhead spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, in advance of the AWS Startup Showcase: Open Cloud Innovations event. He was joined by Pete Lilley (pictured, left), chief executive officer of Instaclustr, and they discussed industry factors that have propelled the company’s expansion, Instaclustr’s portfolio of open-source offerings, recent partnerships and future growth opportunities. (* Disclosure below.)

Support for major brands

Instaclustr sits at the intersection of several trends that are driving the open-source services business. In addition to a wave of enterprise interest in open-source technologies, the enterprise IT world is increasingly embracing managed services, cloud models and data-centric solutions to power the business. The firm’s customers include IBM, Blackberry and Clear Capital.

“Instaclustr is a super easy, super scalable, super reliable way to adopt open-source technologies at the data layer to build cutting-edge applications in the cloud,” Lilley said. “We are the business that sits behind some of the most successful brands that are building massively scalable cloud-based applications.”

Instaclustr’s model is built around ease of use and the practical reality of developers having more significant things to worry about than software licensing terms. A managed solution has appeal, especially for organizations that do not have internal talent or resources to self-direct or optimize database infrastructure.

“The reason why it’s taken off in a commercial or enterprise setting is velocity,” Bromhead explained. “The old way was to download a trial version and, oh no, some of the features are locked. All of a sudden, it’s way harder to solve the problem in front of you as an engineer. You really want developers working on your core business problems; you don’t want them having to fight database infrastructure.”

Driven by use case

There are plenty of open-source options in today’s world, and Instaclustr relies on providing a number of well-known tools, such as PostgreSQL, Apache Kafka, OpenSearch, and Apache Cassandra, along with support from a team of experts in open-source data technologies.

“It’s very use case driven,” Bromhead said. “We live in this world where engineers will reach for a database that solves a specific problem and solves it well. It comes down to listening to your customers, seeing what’s out there and what’s the right use case for a given technology, and then we look to adopt that.”

In May, the company announced it would acquire credativ LLC and its expertise for PostgreSQL, Kubernetes and Debian. More recently, Instaclustr said it would begin supporting a hosted version of Cadence, which was developed and open sourced by Uber Inc.

“Cadence is new to our platform,” Lilley said. “Not only does it provide workflow as code as an open-source experience, but as a glue technology to build a complex business logic for applications.”

Robust growth

The Australian startup has reached annual recurring revenue of $20 million, according to one recent report, and has grown to nearly 300 employees globally.

“Instaclustr is much more targeted in terms of how we want to take our business forward and the growth opportunity before us,” Lilley noted. “We’ve enjoyed growth rates that have been 70%, 80%, 100% year-on-year since we’ve started the business. That’s led to enormous scale and opportunities to invest further in the platform.”

The growth of companies in the open-source services market represents a natural evolution in the data-driven world of enterprise IT. Data itself has been the foundation upon which much of the tech industry has been built, and its importance has only increased with the passage of time.

“Data is an old industry when you think about it. As soon as you had computers, you had data,” Bromhead said. “But I feel like we’re only just getting started and it’s just heating up.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Startup Showcase: Open Cloud Innovations event. (* Disclosure: Instaclustr sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Instaclustr nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE