Ahead of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2026 (March 23–26, Amsterdam), VMblog sat down with Kyle Davis, General Manager of the Valkey ecosystem at Percona, for an in-depth conversation about how cloud-native teams can dramatically reduce infrastructure costs — and why open source is the key to doing it.

Kyle brings a unique perspective to this space. He’s been working in the Redis/Valkey ecosystem since 2012, was part of the founding team that launched the Valkey project (a community-driven open source fork of Redis following a controversial license change), and now leads Percona’s efforts to help enterprises adopt, optimize, and get the most out of Valkey.

In this interview, Kyle covers:

• What is Valkey? — The open source Redis fork, why it was created, and how it fits naturally into cloud-native architectures
• Saving money on memory — Why RAM prices aren’t dropping, how Valkey is actually getting more efficient with each release (bucking the usual trend), and what that means for your infrastructure spend
• Breaking free from licensed software — A real-world customer story about replacing an expensive enterprise database license with a custom open source LDAP extension built for Valkey — and released upstream for the entire community
• Percona’s differentiator — Why their model isn’t “open core with a big bill later,” but rather expert-driven support, custom development, and a genuine commitment to keeping customers off vendor lock-in
• AI, platform engineering & the road map — How Valkey’s vector search capabilities and fundamentally efficient byte storage position it as a foundational layer for AI workloads and modern architectures
• Data sovereignty & compliance — Why European KubeCon attendees in particular are thinking hard about where their data lives, and how open source gives them real choices

Going to KubeCon EU 2026? Stop by the Percona booth to speak directly with database experts who want to help you optimize your architecture — not upsell you. Kyle will be on the floor talking Valkey roadmap, upgrade paths, and cost optimization strategies.

Learn more:

🌐 Percona: percona.com
🌐 Valkey: valkey.io

VMblog’s KubeCon EU 2026 coverage is ongoing. Subscribe for more interviews with the companies and technologists shaping the modern data center and cloud-native landscape.

Back to: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026