Monday.com launched more More than a decade ago we sought to help companies create a highly flexible set of business tools like CRM, marketing, operations and HR, built in custom ways that simply couldn’t be found right away. He learned that companies not only liked that flexibility, but also pushed the boundaries to the point of exceeding the ability of the underlying database technology to continue handling all use cases.
Then the company began looking for a replacement. With countless database options available on the market, you might think that finding the right one would be just a matter of time and testing, but after reviewing several options and speaking to a few experts, Monday concluded that he needed something more than what was available. . in the market.
One of the main issues was flexibility; Monday.com had no idea how its customers would turn basic components into applications. That meant I needed a schema-free database to handle whatever customers decided to create. That’s when he decided to build his own, but with a twist: he wouldn’t build a single database to take care of all future capabilities. Instead, it would be layered on top of other databases to handle particular tasks. Called the new MondayDB solution.
The new database has been in place since July, but as the company transitions to the new database, the old one still exists as another layer in the complexity that is Monday.com’s architecture.
Startups need to realize that no matter how careful they may be with technology choices (and it is often impossible as they struggle to bring a product to market) there is no way to anticipate how products will grow and develop over time. That said, at some point, companies will have to pay off their technical debt by starting with an entirely new architecture, just like Monday.com had to do.
We sat down with Director of Product and technology, Daniel Lereya, to learn how the team decided to create this solution and the challenges they faced in finding a database technology that met these unique requirements.
Just another manic Monday
The process that led to the creation of a database has been underway for a couple of years. In fact, in January 2021, the company began exploring ideas for a new database with a completely open mind. Lereya says the reason customers value Monday.com is the flexibility it brings, and the company needed a solution that could handle an adaptable approach.
