NoSQL, RDBMS, and The Innovator’s Dilemma

I was reading ☞ this post by Mark Suster explaining the innovator’s dilemma, incumbent and new comers behavior in the market. And then I realized that it applies very well to the NoSQL databases market too:

Professor Clayton M.Christensen’s, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, definition:

An innovation that is disruptive allows a whole new population of consumers access to a product or service that was historically only accessible to consumers with a lot of money or a lot of skill.

Mark Suster’s comment:

So the startups tend to focus on totally new customers. They try to capture people that didn’t buy the expensive stuff in the first place because they couldn’t afford it. Often the startups are actually serving a slightly different kind of customer or a slightly different market need. The thing about “disruptive” technology as I interpret it is NOT that it is a major breakthrough in performance or functionality as most people conceive it. It is often LESS performant. What is “disruptive” is that is also dramatically less expensive. And the providers take a much lower margin – they have nothing to lose, nothing to protect.

Except that NoSQL databases must help you protect your data. Otherwise pretty sound.

Original title and link: NoSQL, RDBMS, and The Innovator’s Dilemma (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)