Directus, a software company democratizing the future of data management, is generating a lot of buzz right now in the developer community. And in the last couple of months, they’ve launched two new offerings: Directus 9, the company’s Open Data Platform; and a cloud version called Directus Cloud, a tiered offering built on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
To find out more about the company and their offerings, VMblog spoke to Ben Haynes, their CEO and Co-Founder.
VMblog: To start with, can you tell us about Directus?
Ben Haynes: Directus is an open-source platform that layers atop any new or existing SQL database, instantly providing a powerful toolkit of features for managing, visualizing, and connecting data.
Engineers get a self-documenting REST+GraphQL API, event hooks for logic, granular access-control, data workflows, and much more, all out of the box. Our modern and fully-customizable TypeScript codebase is completely open-source and built to be extended, so there is no feature-ceiling to outgrow.
To fully democratize this data access, all the power of our robust developer tooling is also available via an intuitive no-code application, enabling self-service for even the most non-technical of business users. The Directus front-end includes flexible database content management, drag-and-drop dashboards and charts, digital asset management, and end-to-end internationalization (supporting 50+ languages) for global teams.
Most importantly, all of this happens without any database migration or vendor lock-in. Directus introspects the database schema at runtime, delivering a dynamic API and App based on your project’s existing architecture, with database abstraction allowing migration fluidity and feature parity across all major SQL vendors. You maintain total control over your database and the ability to write pure SQL queries, allowing Directus to be incrementally adopted based on business requirements.
Leveraging the flexibility and potential of the database itself, common use cases include everything from headless CMS, business intelligence, IoT data, back-office tools, and building no-code internal apps. And with nearly two decades of real-world product development, 18+ million docker downloads, and an enormous developer community across startups and Fortune 100 companies alike, Directus is a proven data solution at any scale.
VMblog: Why did you found Directus?
Haynes: Back in 2004, our NYC agency was building extremely innovative digital experiences for industry-leading companies. However, with no viable off-the-shelf options for administration backends we could hand-off to the client, we found ourselves building (and maintaining) bespoke solutions. This is inefficient and untenable.
What we found is that our engineers were getting 80% of what they needed from Database Administration Tools, such as MySQL Workbench, phpMyAdmin, and the like. However this software is highly technical, and is not an option for non-technical users who don’t understand foreign keys, shouldn’t be changing the schema, or might be curious about what that “truncate” button does.
So we set out to build a platform that took the core concept of these technical admin tools (present and manage the actual database directly), but through a simple, safe, and intuitive platform. The difficulty here is to equally empower both the highly technical engineers as well as the underserved non-technical business users. The former require an opinionated platform that works with their tech-stack, their SQL database vendor, their existing data model, and their budget. While the latter require a full-featured no-code app they can use to instantly access raw data without training or any support tickets to IT.
Put simply, we needed to create a platform that would allow my parents to manage a custom SQL database, without completely nerfing things for developers… and that’s what we’ve built.
VMblog: What is data democratization, why is it important, and who should be concerned about it?
Haynes: Data democratization means enabling data access for all business users, regardless of their skillset. Engineers and other IT staff already have tools available for this, but everyone else is beholden to those select few for providing access on a case-by-case basis. Typically this involves a formal interdepartmental process of requesting, aligning, building, and maintaining ad-hoc solutions.
Engineers are rare and costly, making their time quite valuable within a company. Data democratization helps offset the shortage of those technically skilled engineers by enabling self-service amongst the rest of business users.
It also removes the need for inefficient communication across disparate teams. As you might imagine, a lot is lost when Marketing, for example, tries to explain their specific project needs to developers. Not to mention you lose the benefits of an iterative development process by requiring IT tickets for every little tweak along the way. An annoying and inefficient burden for both parties.
Today, data is the backbone of every single company on the planet. Yet it is figuratively, and literally, locked behind the doors of IT, with only 14% of enterprises making data broadly available to employees. All companies should be actively democratizing their data to increase efficiency, reduce data silos, improve time-to-market, and stay relevant.
VMblog: What problems does Directus Cloud solve for your customers?
Haynes: The open-source Directus Core is a powerful and flexible engine for your data. With Directus Cloud, we’re expanding that offering to deliver the entire vehicle – an end-to-end data solution in 90 seconds.
While we’ve made installing Directus yourself quite easy, there is still a non-trivial amount of time to get up-and-running locally to see our value, and a vast number of considerations to be made before moving into production. Directus Cloud removes all these hurdles, allowing users to spin up a demo, hobby project, or production instance with the click of a button.
Our team has spent years obsessing over the entire infrastructure so you don’t have to. Our Cloud includes a serverless database, configurable auto-scaling nodes, asset storage, smart caching, a global CDN, and of course Directus itself. You’re online quickly, and then our managed solution automatically handles all software updates, backups, and monitoring, so you stay online.
We’re proud that no matter how you use Directus, there are no sneaky paywalls, artificial feature limitations, or usage quotas. You get complete feature parity and unlimited usage across all self-hosted and Cloud instances. We do not bill based on user seats, collection or item count, or API requests. Instead, our Cloud service has three simple pricing tiers.
Our Community Cloud is completely free (no credit card required) for any demos, proof-of-concepts, or hobby projects. Not ideal for production use-cases, they run minimal hardware and pause after a few days of inactivity.
Our Standard Cloud has hourly pay-as-you-go infrastructure pricing starting at $0.0342 per hour ($25 per month). This pass-through model allows you to configure server nodes and auto-scaling rules to fit your project’s needs, providing blazingly fast production service for small or medium-sized projects.
Our Enterprise Cloud is a single-tenant system for the largest and most demanding of projects. This tier unlocks our SLAs, premium support, custom ENV files for SSO and advanced rate-limiting, 15+ data-center regions, and more. Our sales team works with you to understand your exact project needs, quickly getting you tailored proposals to review.
We’re truly excited to bring the true spirit of open-source to the Cloud through these self-service tiers.
VMblog: How do you see Directus as different – both from a company and product standpoint?
Haynes: We did not take the easy road. Building an open data platform that instantly democratizes any project’s database is difficult – doing that while giving everything away free and open-source is near impossible. But we’ve done it, and we’ve done it well.
It took longer, and was more work, but the results speak for themselves. When we talk with new developers or provide demos to new leads, the most common thing we hear is “I’ve been looking for this exact platform for X years!“, followed by a string of a-ha moments where they continue to realize more and more use-cases where they can find value. That is what motivates us to keep pushing forward and staying true to our vision.
Other vendors might use open-source as a marketing tool, with dual-licenses and hidden paywalls behind-the-scenes. They might limit flexibility or take on technical debt to build their solution faster so they can capitalize on a market trend. They prioritize profits, not progress. Other companies are building products that are evolutionary at best.
We’re playing the long game, staying focused on stable and informed growth. We’re striving to build something revolutionary.
VMblog: What do you see as the major opportunities and challenges that enterprise cloud customers need to be aware of at present?
Haynes: Enterprise Cloud customers need to learn to see data as their own asset, and data is the most valuable asset a company owns. Creating a proper foundational data layer across the entire company is a big undertaking, and something that requires a good amount of due diligence. Therefore, choosing a platform that does not require migration in, does not have vendor lock-in, and is incrementally adoptable is key.
Many companies are at a nexus, moving from legacy systems to something more modern. This is the time to shift to a solution that will support and power any and all of their projects for the next decade. Companies already know the value of shifting to the Cloud, now they just need to choose the right vendor.
The biggest legacy mindset to overcome is the idea that you need a matrix of hyper-specialized services for each department, use-case, and project. This relies on tenuously strung together integrations that could take down your data layer at any moment.
Breaking apart monolithic data systems while keeping it de-siloed is a challenge. But the data mesh provided by distributed Directus instances can give your company the benefits of both sides, while giving you the flexibility to quickly adapt to whatever might come next.
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