​​Over coffee, an acquaintance of mine who is the CEO of an emerging storage company put it simply: “There’s no point in investing in database companies—prospects are limited; after all there aren’t really any unicorns in that space!” Fair point. Despite its humongous size of over $40 billion, the database market hasn’t seen any serious disrupters.

​The few unicorns on its fringes, such as Cloudera, are more about augmenting the market than taking actual market share away from the incumbents. My acquaintance was also quick to offer his explanation: “It’s simply too hard.” And while he’s not wrong, there’s much more to it than that. Continue reading.