As KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 approaches, one of the persistent pain points for platform engineering teams remains the gap between fully automated, Kubernetes-native applications and the databases that support them. Percona, a company unapologetically committed to open source, is heading to the show with a clear message: databases running on PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and MySQL should move as fast as the applications they power. Through Kubernetes operators, a newly open-sourced Database-as-a-Service stack called OpenEverest, and partnerships with Chainguard and SUSE, Percona is positioning itself as the go-to solution for DevOps, SRE, and platform teams that need enterprise-grade database capabilities without vendor lock-in or feature gates.
In this pre-show Q&A, Kate Obiidykhata from Percona’s Product Marketing team walks us through the company’s strategy for KubeCon EU 2026, covering everything from multi-cloud data portability and AI/ML workload support to security, compliance, and the resurgence of the MySQL community. Attendees can also look forward to a lightning talk at the Chainguard booth on Tuesday at 4pm, a speaking session from Percona founder Peter Zaitsev on AI-driven database optimization on March 23, and a community breakfast designed to spark conversations beyond the show floor. Read on for the full conversation.
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VMblog: What’s your elevator pitch for KubeCon EU 2026? If attendees only remember one thing about your company after visiting your booth, what should it be?
Kate Obiidykhata: Percona is focussed on developer platforms and open source databases At KubeCon EU 2026, we will discuss how to make databases move as fast as your applications. Today, applications run in Kubernetes with full automation, but databases are still slower, more manual, and often become a bottleneck. Percona brings PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and MySQL into the same Kubernetes-native operational model, so platform teams can standardize how databases are run and DevOps, SREs, and developers can move faster without being blocked by database complexity. The result is a more consistent platform, faster delivery, and higher productivity across teams without sacrificing flexibility or open source choice.
VMblog: You’ve chosen to sponsor KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026—what makes the European cloud-native community particularly strategic for your business objectives this year?
Kate: The European cloud-native community is particularly strategic because teams here are dealing with increasingly complex infrastructure spanning multiple clouds, regions, and hybrid environments and they need the flexibility to run their systems wherever it makes the most sense.
With Percona, we help organizations run PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and MySQL consistently across these environments using Kubernetes, so they can move workloads between clouds, operate across regions, and support complex architectures without being tied to a single infrastructure choice.
VMblog: Beyond the booth presence, what’s your broader community engagement strategy for KubeCon EU 2026? How are you contributing to the cloud-native ecosystem’s growth?
Kate: We are working on a lot of community elements – we maintain four open source Kubernetes operators for PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and two for MySQL – each of them recognized and widely adopted within their tech communities. With our k8s open-source projects, teams run databases reliably on Kubernetes across complex environments. We also recently made OpenEverest open source and donated that to the community – this is a full open source Database as a Service stack where you can run and automate those services. We are interested in where the community takes that project over time, expanding to more databases outside the ones that we at Percona support.
Alongside this, we are working on community activity around PostgreSQL and particularly MySQL. MySQL needs a strong and healthy community to support those that run this database, and we want that community to thrive after a few years where it has been less vocal. There are lots of options out there, and MySQL remains a great project for those that want to run an effective, easy to use relational database that is open source. We hope that the community will get more support, be more vocal, and continue to prove that it is a viable and vibrant alternative.
Our approach is that technology should be fully open source. You should be able to run the database that you want, with the enterprise features that you need, without being tied to a specific vendor. That philosophy is underneath everything that we do as a company – we are unapologetically open source, as our CEO Peter Farkas puts it.
In practice, this means you can run Percona distributions of PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, and Valkey on Kubernetes using our open source operators (except Valkey, for that we would use the Valkey operator), which provide a consistent, automated way to manage databases across your platform. These operators handle deployment, scaling, backup, and lifecycle operations, bringing databases into the same Kubernetes-native model as your applications. On top of that, we provide services and consulting to help you design, optimize, and operate these environments efficiently and we can also support other databases like MariaDB or Redis. Our goal is to deliver more value to your platform than you could achieve on your own, by standardizing and simplifying how all your databases run in Kubernetes.
VMblog: Are you hosting any booth talks, mini-sessions, or expert Q&A opportunities? What knowledge can attendees gain without attending a formal session?
Kate: Yes, we’ll be hosting a lightning talk on Tuesday at 4pm at the Chainguard booth (#350), where Michal Nosek, our Principal Field Technologist, will speak about running open source databases securely in Kubernetes environments. He’ll cover how teams can use hardened container images together with production-grade support to run PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and Valkey safely at scale, without adding operational complexity.
Outside of formal sessions, attendees can come by our booth to discuss real-world challenges around running databases on Kubernetes, from security and compliance to multi-cluster architectures and day-two operations, and get practical insights from engineers who work directly with these systems in production.
VMblog: Let’s get technical—what specific architectural challenges or operational bottlenecks does your solution address for cloud-native teams in 2026?
Kate: Cloud-native teams in 2026 are running into a consistent problem: their applications are fully Kubernetes-native, but their databases are not, which creates friction in scaling, automation, and multi-region architectures. We focus on removing that gap by bringing PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and MySQL into the Kubernetes control plane through operators, and addressing specific architectural bottlenecks.
For multi-region platforms, we enable multi-cluster replication managed through Kubernetes, so database topology is defined and operated the same way as application deployments. For storage, we solve the lack of elasticity by supporting dynamic PVC resizing, allowing database capacity to scale without rebuilding clusters. We also remove provisioning bottlenecks by making databases self-service Kubernetes resources, so they can be created and managed via APIs instead of tickets.
On the operational side, we address upgrade risk by enabling major version upgrades through controlled, operator-driven workflows, avoiding platform freezes. We standardize operations across PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and MySQL using consistent CRDs and lifecycle management, reducing tool and process fragmentation. For reliability, we provide Kubernetes-native backup and restore, including snapshots and point-in-time recovery, so recovery becomes declarative and significantly faster. Finally, we integrate encryption and compliance into the platform layer with features like TDE and Kubernetes-managed secrets, ensuring consistent security enforcement across clusters.
Together, these capabilities eliminate the main bottlenecks around stateful workloads in Kubernetes, allowing databases to follow the same automation, scaling, and deployment patterns as applications.
VMblog: The cloud-native landscape is maturing rapidly. How has your technology evolved to meet the sophisticated demands of enterprises running production Kubernetes at scale?
Kate: As Kubernetes adoption matures, enterprises are running increasingly complex and regulated environments, from air-gapped deployments to hybrid infrastructure, and our technology has evolved with those realities in mind. We’ve focused on making databases truly production-ready on Kubernetes, including certified support for platforms like OpenShift, built-in Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) for security and compliance, and the ability to operate reliably in restricted environments.
At the same time, we prioritize operational stability at scale with zero-downtime upgrade paths, Kubernetes-native backup and restore, and simplified day-two operations. The goal is to ensure databases fully align with enterprise Kubernetes requirements, without becoming a constraint on scalability, security, or platform flexibility.
VMblog: Where does your solution fit within the modern cloud-native stack? How do you integrate with and complement other CNCF projects and ecosystem tools?
Kate: We sit at the data layer of the cloud-native stack, bringing PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MySQL, and Valkey into Kubernetes through our operators so they can be managed and automated like any other workload.
With the OpenEverest project, we extend this into a fully open source Database-as-a-Service built on Kubernetes, integrating naturally with tools like Helm and Prometheus while staying aligned with CNCF standards and avoiding lock-in.
VMblog: Can you share a compelling customer story or use case that demonstrates tangible outcomes—whether that’s cost savings, performance improvements, or accelerated delivery cycles?
Kate: A strong example is Civo, a cloud-native provider building its platform entirely on Kubernetes, who wanted to launch a managed Database-as-a-Service offering for their customers. Instead of building their own operators, they adopted the Percona Operator for MySQL with XtraDB Cluster to reliably run multi-tenant, highly available database workloads inside Kubernetes.
Using Percona, Civo was able to quickly deploy and automate database provisioning, scaling, backup, and recovery as part of their platform, while supporting isolated tenant environments. This allowed them to launch their DBaaS offering faster, reduce engineering effort, and deliver a production-ready, Kubernetes-native database service to their customers.
VMblog: AI and machine learning workloads are becoming first-class citizens in Kubernetes environments. How does your solution address the unique infrastructure and operational demands of AI/ML pipelines?
Kate: AI and ML workloads bring highly dynamic and unpredictable data demands, especially around storage growth and data processing. With Percona Cloud Native, we address this by bringing elastic scalability to databases running on Kubernetes, so they don’t become a bottleneck for these pipelines.
For example, our operators support dynamic PVC resizing, allowing database storage to scale on demand as datasets grow, without downtime or manual intervention. Combined with Kubernetes-native automation and multi-cluster capabilities, this helps teams run AI/ML workloads with the flexibility and scalability they expect from modern platforms.
VMblog: Platform engineering continues reshaping how organizations approach cloud-native infrastructure. What’s your perspective on this shift, and how does your technology enable effective platform teams?
Kate: Platform engineering is about creating consistent, scalable foundations that let teams move fast without increasing complexity, and one of the biggest gaps today is how databases fit into that model. Percona Cloud Native solutions help platform and DevOps teams run PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and MySQL on Kubernetes, aligning databases with modern CI/CD and GitOps practices. This enables faster delivery, reduces operational risk, and ensures that stateful workloads no longer become a bottleneck as platforms scale.
VMblog: Multi-cloud and hybrid strategies are now table stakes. How does your solution help organizations navigate the complexity of distributed, heterogeneous environments?
Kate: Multi-cloud and hybrid strategies introduce complexity because teams need to run databases consistently across different environments, regions, and infrastructure choices.
The biggest bottleneck is data portability. Percona Cloud Native solutions provide a consistent way to deploy and manage databases across EKS, GKE, AKS, OpenShift, and on-prem environments. With capabilities like multi-cluster replication, Kubernetes-native backup and restore, and standardized operations, organizations can run and move their databases across clouds and regions without changing their operational model.
VMblog: Security, compliance, and governance remain top concerns. What’s your approach to helping organizations build secure, compliant cloud-native systems without sacrificing velocity?
Kate: With Percona Cloud Native operators, we provide built-in support for features like Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), ensuring data at rest is encrypted without requiring complex custom setups. Because this is configured declaratively through Kubernetes, teams can enforce security and compliance as part of their standard workflows, maintaining velocity while meeting strict requirements.
VMblog: As we enter 2026, what’s your unique value proposition? With dozens of vendors claiming similar capabilities, why should CTOs choose your solution?
Kate: Many vendors offer operators, but if you look closely, the difference is in what’s actually included and what happens over time. With Percona, all enterprise features are available in our open source distributions, there are no feature gates, no lock-in, and nothing that breaks if you choose to run the software independently.
That means your infrastructure decisions are never compromised. You can run PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and MySQL on Kubernetes with full capabilities from day one, and if you ever move away from our services, your platform continues to operate exactly the same. That level of openness, control, and long-term flexibility is why customers trust us and continue to come back.
VMblog: Are you launching any new products, unveiling significant features, or announcing partnerships at KubeCon EU 2026? What should attendees watch for? (If discussing futures is restricted, please share your most recent innovations that will be highlighted at the show.)
Kate: Yes, we’ll be highlighting a few important developments at KubeCon EU 2026. One is our partnership with Chainguard, where we’re combining hardened container images with production-grade database support to help organizations run PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and Valkey more securely in Kubernetes environments.
We’re also working closely with SUSE, where their infrastructure and Kubernetes platforms complement our database expertise, helping customers run complete, enterprise-ready stacks.
VMblog: Is your team presenting any sessions, participating in panels, or leading workshops? What knowledge will attendees gain from your speaking engagements?
Kate: Yes, our team is participating in co-located events at KubeCon EU 2026. Our founder, Peter Zaitsev, will be speaking at a session titled “Smarter Databases in Kubernetes: Applying AI for Query Optimization and Self-Tuning” on March 23 – 16:15, Location: Hall 7, Room C
In this session, attendees will learn how AI can be applied to database performance in Kubernetes environments, including query optimization, automated tuning, and how to make database operations more efficient and adaptive at scale.
VMblog: Give us your executive pitch—how do you articulate ROI and business value to C-suite leaders who need to justify cloud-native investments?
Kate: Instead of building and maintaining their own database automation, they used Percona Operators to deliver a production-ready service much faster, with built-in high availability, scaling, backup, and recovery.
The result – reduced engineering effort, faster time to market, and a reliable, scalable service they could offer to customers without increasing operational overhead. That’s the ROI we focus on, helping organizations deliver new capabilities faster, lower infrastructure and licensing costs, and scale their platforms without databases becoming a bottleneck.
VMblog: Are you organizing any exclusive customer events, partner meetings, or community gatherings during the conference? How can interested attendees connect with your team outside the booth?
Kate: Yes, we’re organizing a breakfast during KubeCon to connect with the community outside the booth. It’s a relaxed setting where attendees can meet our team and connect with other Kubernetes users.
There’s no formal agenda, just good conversations and networking. If you’d like to join, come find us at the booth or reach out to our team to get invited.
VMblog: What prize drawings, giveaways, or engagement activities have you planned?
Kate: We’ll be running a raffle with drawings across all three days, featuring a Game Boy Lego set as the main prize, attendees can get tickets by engaging with us at the booth.
We’ll also have swag, printed materials, and light interactive elements to keep the booth engaging and give people more ways to connect with us.
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