DBaaS, a must have on-premises and in the cloud

Severalnines delivered an interesting presentation during The IT Press Tour last week in Athens, Greece.

The CEO, Vinay Joosery, outlines a practical and timely vision for Sovereign DBaaS, addressing growing concerns around cloud lock-in, cost control, regulatory compliance, and data sovereignty. Drawing on more than 20 years of experience in databases and open source, Severalnines positions itself as an enabler for organizations that want the benefits of Database-as-a-Service without surrendering control to hyperscalers or proprietary vendors.

The presentation opens by framing the current cloud market imbalance. Hyperscalers dominate infrastructure spending with investments measured in tens of billions of dollars annually, while European cloud service providers operate on dramatically smaller budgets. This structural gap, combined with increasing regulatory pressure around data residency and sovereignty, has created a crisis for organizations seeking long-term control over their data platforms. Traditional DBaaS offerings deliver convenience and speed, but at the cost of vendor lock-in, escalating expenses at scale, and limited deployment flexibility.

Severalnines describes the evolution of DBaaS in three phases. The first phase, led by hyperscalers, introduced managed databases optimized for rapid deployment but tightly coupled to a single cloud environment. The second phase saw database vendors offering their own managed services, reducing cloud lock-in but introducing database-level lock-in and still limiting on-premises or hybrid deployments. The third and emerging phase is Sovereign DBaaS, where organizations build and operate their own DBaaS platforms using open-source databases, retaining full control over infrastructure, configuration, security, and costs.

Sovereign DBaaS is defined as a vendor-neutral, self-implemented model that supports polyglot database environments across on-premises, private cloud, public cloud, or hybrid setups. It emphasizes portability, ownership, and freedom of choice, allowing enterprises to meet regulatory and governance requirements while avoiding forced migrations or proprietary constraints. This model aligns with the reality that most enterprises are now multi-cloud or hybrid, managing hundreds of database instances across diverse platforms and technologies.

At the core of Severalnines’ approach is ClusterControl, which delivers the operational experience of DBaaS without ceding control. The platform automates the full database lifecycle - deployment, scaling, monitoring, backup, recovery, security, upgrades, and performance optimization - while focusing on Day-2 operations. It supports a wide range of open-source databases including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and others, across heterogeneous infrastructure environments.

The presentation highlights key benefits: predictable cost management using open-source licensing, infrastructure and database ownership, compliance with data residency requirements, and consistent operations across environments. A customer case study from ABSA (formerly Barclays Africa Group) illustrates this approach at scale, with thousands of servers managed in a hybrid environment using open-source automation instead of proprietary DBaaS platforms.

In conclusion, Severalnines argues that Sovereign DBaaS represents the future of database platforms for enterprises seeking independence, resilience, and long-term sustainability. Rather than rejecting cloud technologies, it reclaims control by combining automation, open source, and flexible deployment - delivering DBaaS “your way,” without lock-in, hidden costs, or loss of sovereignty.

Interesting topics to follow in the coming quarters.