Re: @AC ... The software is quite good
You're kind of making the point. This was MapR's sales pitch time and time again. They'd tell customers you don't want HDFS, you want MapRFS, because it's "technically superior". They'd tell customers you don't want HBase, you want MapRDB, because it's "technically superior". They'd tell you you don't really need those Kafka features anyway, but here's yet-another-also-ran vendor to use if you think you do.
Meanwhile you can go to AWS or Amazon or Google (or Snowflake or Databricks or Cloudera) and have a complete replacement stack spun up in about fifteen minutes, exactly to spec, charged by the minute.
No one, and definitely not customers, cared about technical superiority. That's why MapR lost to HDP and CDH on premises and why all three are finally losing to the cloud vendors. Customers care about time to value, ease of use and security/visibility in approximately that order. If you're still sitting there tossing yourself off over how "technically superior" your product is, you're going to be left in the dust, and like MapR you're going to go bust.
This is particularly the case when the bit about technical superiority is just a lie the company has fooled itself with. Recognising your own inferiorities is the first step to success.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
