Dublin is at the nexus of major trends in software.
Database software leader MongoDB is to double its staff from 75 people to more than 150, CEO Dev Ittycheria told Siliconrepublic.com.
Formerly known as 10gen, MongoDB is one of the internet’s foremost database architectures and is key to the emerging internet of things (IoT) world.
‘In today’s technology world, there is a war for talent. We go where the talent is and Dublin is a hotbed of great talent’
– DEV ITTYCHERIA
Engineering giant Bosch has built its entire IoT architecture using MongoDB technology. Aer Lingus uses it to handle ticketing and internal apps while broadcaster Sky uses it to manage its streaming.
MongoDB technology is used by 90pc of the world’s retail banks and half of the Fortune 100 companies.
The company came to Dublin in 2013 to establish its EMEA headquarters in the city as part of an aggressive growth plan, beginning with customer and technical support.
“We have since expanded our operations to include finance, legal, sales, engineering and more. It is truly a cross-functional office, not a sales outpost,” Ittycheria said.
“With our new Ballsbridge offices, we have basically tripled our capacity compared to where we were and now, the opportunity is to grow.
“We have around 75 people and we expect to more than double that in a pretty quick time frame.”
The future of software
Inside the MongoDB offices in Ballsbridge, Dublin. Image: Shane O’Neill
Ittycheria explained that the Dublin operation is at the nexus of major trends driving MongoDB’s future.
“Software either enables, creates or defines a company’s value proposition and the underlying foundation of the application is the database, and this is what is driving demand for MongoDB,” Ittycheria said.
He said trends such as big data and cloud are also driving demand for the software.
“90pc of the world’s information was created in the last few years. This requires a platform that can scale and grow as fast as your data grows, in an elastic and graceful way.
“In terms of the cloud, MongoDB was designed from day one to run in the cloud, and we support horizontal scaling and geographic distribution of data to match new privacy and financial regulations.
“New regulations put a premium on people having the infrastructure to be very intelligent about how they store and manage data,” Ittycheria said.
He said that MongoDB is battling traditional database giants Microsoft and Oracle in the marketplace and argues that their technology is based on legacy software and systems that are 30 or 40 years old.
“Those technologies are built around an old constraint where people were cheap but technology expensive. Today, the inverse is true: computers are cheap and people are expensive. The real constraint today is developer productivity.
“The reason people buy MongoDB is because developers can be incredibly fast and agile to develop and launch new apps. The other reason is cost; our technology doesn’t require expensive hardware whereas with the legacy technologies, they require bigger and better machines just to scale.”
Ittycheria said that growth in the future will take in opportunities in the IoT world, specifically with the industrial internet of things (IIoT).
“Basically, IIoT is all about sensors and being able to capture lots of real-time data in your data platform for use immediately or analysis later. This requires very data-intensive applications and all the data cannot be structured the same way across different devices in components.
“It speaks to the need to have a database management platform that can deal with a variety of formats and still be able to collect, synthesise and ultimately analyse all of that data.”
Dublin is where technology, business and culture combine
MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria. Image: Shane O’Neill
Ittycheria said that Dublin is at an exciting stage in the evolving history of software.
“In today’s technology world, there is a war for talent. We go where the talent is and Dublin is a hotbed of great talent.
“Not only technical talent, but also talent that understands and knows how to do business today and provide to different cultures and languages.
“We are able to hire people who have the technical skills, the business skills and the language skills to enable us to sell in a pan-European way, especially as we build our inside sales team.
“To collate the technical, business and cultural skills is very hard to find in one location, but Dublin has this in abundance.
“Plus, Dublin is only a five-hour flight from New York City, which makes it manageable and just like flying to the west coast time-wise. We are very excited to be here.”
