Pythian Acquires Blackbird.io_MySQL

Today, we officially announced the fact that Blackbird.io has been acquired by Pythian. I first met its founder, Paul Vallee, in 2007. Paul reached out to me about joining Pythian to found a San Francisco presence. At the time, I was one year into PalominoDB, and was having such a good time being my own boss and building a business that I politely declined. Since then, Paul and I have caught up at PerconaLive (O’Reilly’s MySQL conf for you old schoolers) regularly - using the time to catch up, share successes (and failures), and discuss the marketplace at large. We’ve also competed, healthily and as good sports.

Over those 6 years since that first contact, I’ve also fallen in love with the world of open-source data, both big and small. I’ve enjoyed working on the IOUG mysql conference, presenting at Percona Live, Kaleidoscope, Velocity and more. I’ve really enjoyed meeting and building great collegial relationships with people from Pythian, from Percona, from SkySQL/MariaDB, SeveralNines, Codership, Mozilla and from so many MySQL shops, big and small.

About 2 years ago, I realized the company had really gone to the level when we began working with the Obama for America campaign, followed immediately by one of the largest online games in the industry (which DriveDev brought in). It was that time that I had really begun to fully embrace the future of cloud computing, database as a service, and the culture of DevOps that could harness automation, orchestration, continuous delivery and so much more to drive unparalleled value to our clients; not to mention making our lives as DBAs so much easier.

The last 6 months as Blackbird.io has truly been a whirlwind. Having one’s team go from 25 to 55 pushed me as a leader and executive in ways I didn’t anticipate. I’ve had some truly magical moments, and some spectacular ball drops. Greatest of all, I’ve seen what I consider to be the future of IT service delivery converge with the world of databases, which is truly my passion.

So, after this year’s PerconaLive, when Paul and I sat down to discuss DevOps, the future of service organizations and the status of the ecosystem, that previous offer began to percolate. It was also around this time we began to realize that the opportunity ahead of us was huge, and the time to take market share was limited. Thus, I reached out to Paul. In two months, my co-founders, Aaron Lee and Vicki Vance, and the full executive team at Pythian pushed through a business transaction that has truly been massive. I can already see a great fit in culture, in drive, in passion and in work ethic. The excitement and pride I feel right now in what has come of the work of three companies, 4 founders and a team of over 300 is unparalleled.

Thank you Blackbird, every one of you! And thank you Pythian. Here’s to a very exciting road ahead.