Gerry Narvaja: the Winds Of Change

For very personal reasons that don’t belong in this article, I decided a few weeks ago that it’s time for me to move on. The year and a half that I worked for Pythian have been a wonderful experience, and this is article is my tribute to this great company.

The MySQL Team

Being able to work side by side with two MySQL experts like Sheeri Cabral and Augusto Bott has been a great experience. I have learned a lot, not only about MySQL, but also about what a great DBA should be like. Both of them are recognized MySQL Community members and regular speakers at the MySQL Users Conference and other events. Sheeri has been named MySQL Community Member of the Year twice in a row. Both are a guarantee of excellent service.

My Predictions For Pythian

I believe that the IT services industry will undergo a change that is continuation of the the transformation that the IT industry as a whole has been going through over the last few years: commoditization.

Very few will argue at this point that hardware and software are commodities, especially when they support a company’s infrastructure. This trend has put MySQL in the position it has today in the database arena. In this scenario, managing the IT infrastructure, whether it’s running in The Cloud, a hosting company or internally, no longer adds value to the core business. As in any economic downturn, companies reconsider their overhead and look for solutions that are more flexible and cost-effective that their in-house services. This is when they start looking into outsourcing alternatives.

This time, however, is different—they have a designated fixed budget and very specific needs. The traditional consulting model doesn’t fit this scenario since it doesn’t have the required flexibility. This is where companies like Pythian come in.

Pythian’s business model and practices allows the clients to control their budgets while keeping a healthy infrastructure, and concentrating on the tasks that add real value to their business. Under the direction of Andrew Waitman, CEO, and Paul Vallée, Pythian’s founder, the company is in a an excellent position to satisfy the new market needs.

What’s Next

I will continue participating as actively as I can in the MySQL Community and continue with the development of sar-mysql. My blogs will move to a new home, but will be a continuation of the of the articles I have been writing here (without Dave Edwards cleaning up my English though); and they will also be syndicated in Planet MySQL. I will do my best to keep an eye on the articles I posted in the Pythian blog to keep answering any new comments that may be posted there. If you have the patience to deal with my non-technical tweets, feel free to follow me through Twitter: @seattlegaucho.

I will see you around!

P.S. to the MySQL DBAs in the wild: This might be a good opportunity to polish your résumé and submit it to Pythian. Who knows, you may end up working for a company on the rise, side-by-side with some of the best MySQL DBAs in the market.