In 2026, Percona turns 20. That milestone offers a good opportunity to pause and reflect, not just on where we have been, but on why our business model has worked for two decades in an industry that has seen constant change.
From the beginning, Percona has followed a model that is sometimes misunderstood, occasionally questioned, and rarely copied in its pure form. We are a tech-enabled services company, unapologetically open source, built around deep expertise in open source databases. This combination has been the foundation of our success, both commercially and within the open source community.
A tech-enabled services company, by design
Percona is not a product company that later added services. Services are not an afterthought or a support function for us. They are the core of the business.
Our customers come to us because operating open source databases at scale is hard. It requires experience, judgment, and insight gained from years of hands-on production work. Software alone does not solve that. What makes Percona valuable is the combination of people, expertise, and technology working together.
The technology enables the services, and the services continuously inform the technology. That feedback loop is intentional and central to how we operate.
Unapologetically open source
We have always believed that open source is not just a licensing model. It is a development model and a community model.
Percona builds enhanced versions of the open source databases we support. We do this to improve performance, reliability, scalability, and security based on what we see in real production environments every day. But those enhancements are not proprietary add-ons. They are fully open source and available to anyone who wants to use them.
Just as importantly, we work actively with the upstream communities behind these projects. Whenever possible, the fixes, improvements, and innovations we develop are contributed back upstream. This benefits everyone. The community gets stronger software. Users get better outcomes. Percona benefits from healthier, more capable ecosystems around the technologies we support.
This is a clear point of difference from open core models, where key functionality is held back as proprietary. At Percona, the open source version is the real version. There is no artificial line between “community” and “commercial” features. Our business does not depend on limiting access to software. It depends on helping people use it well.
Avoiding vendor lock-in by design
A direct consequence of this approach is that we actively avoid vendor lock-in.
Customers can choose to run Percona software or the upstream open source versions of the databases we support. They can also choose their provider for support and services. Percona does not rely on contractual or technical barriers to retain customers.
That freedom of choice is intentional. It keeps the power where it belongs, with the users.
It also creates healthy pressure on us. The only way Percona retains existing customers and earns new ones is by consistently delivering high-quality services and being trusted experts in open source databases. If we stop doing that, customers are free to move on.
We believe this makes us better. It forces us to invest in our people, deepen our expertise, and stay closely aligned with the communities and technologies we support.
Expertise as the business model
Our commercial success comes from expertise, not from restricting access to software.
Customers pay Percona because they want help designing, operating, optimizing, and troubleshooting complex database environments. They value the experience we have accumulated by working with thousands of real-world deployments across many industries and scales.
Open source is what makes that expertise transferable, auditable, and trustworthy. Customers can see exactly what we run, what we modify, and what we contribute. There are no black boxes.
Technology-agnostic, in practice
Percona is technology-agnostic in two important ways.
First, we support multiple database technologies, and we add new ones when we believe we can genuinely help users and contribute meaningfully to the ecosystem. We follow real needs, not short-term trends.
Second, we support customers regardless of whether they run Percona software or community-provided upstream versions. Our goal is not to force adoption of a specific distribution. It is to help customers succeed with the technology choices that make sense for them.
This approach builds trust. It also keeps us honest. If our software is useful, people will choose it. If not, our value still comes from helping them operate their systems effectively.
A model built for the long term
Looking back over 20 years, what stands out is not how much has changed, but how consistent this model has been.
Open source databases have grown more powerful and more widely adopted. The environments they run in have become more complex. The need for deep operational expertise has only increased. Through all of that, Percona’s role has stayed largely the same: help users succeed with open source databases, contribute back to the community, and build a sustainable business around expertise and trust.
As we look ahead, this still feels like the right approach. It aligns with how open source works, how communities thrive, and how real systems get run in the world. We are grateful to the communities that have made the last 20 years possible, and we are excited to keep building, contributing, and learning together in the years to come.
About the Author
Blair RamplingProduct Executive with 15+ years of experience leading high-impact SaaS and developer-facing products. Proven success building and scaling product teams from seed-stage to enterprise. Deep expertise in open source platforms, cloud-native technologies, and developer ecosystems.
