The Software You Never Switched Is Now Easy to Switch
AI handles precisely specified work, and agents do not get tired of translation, so migration has become kind of trivial.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy · Everyone Is Still Undersizing the AI Market | Eric VishriaFor decades in software, there was one move you simply did not make. You did not switch databases.
A database is the underlying storage software that holds the information an app runs on. Developers wrote their apps to fit the specific rules of one database, from Oracle and SQL Server to a host of smaller players, and data piled up inside over time. Moving meant rewriting all of that custom work in a giant, painful project. That stickiness is why databases were such durable, high-margin businesses, says Benchmark partner Eric Vishria.
What changed is who does the moving, and what that worker is good at.
The rules for talking to a database are very precisely written down. AI excels at work where the instructions are exact. And unlike human programmers, AI agents do not get tired of the monotonous work of translating from one specification to another.
Put those together and the forbidden project becomes routine. Database migration, once the project teams avoided most, is now kind of trivial, Vishria says. Just put money against it and move it.
That does not mean databases go away. It means the test for a great database company has changed.
Because it is now much cheaper to start and experiment with new applications, many more apps will be born. The winners will need databases that can scale from almost zero usage to full scale if an app takes off, that can be spun up, torn down, and rebuilt over and over, and that keep costs low through all that iteration. In the end, Vishria argues, cost and that zero-to-full-scale flexibility become the arbiters of who wins.
Questions people ask
What is a database interface?
It is the documented rules an app uses to store, find, and change information in a database. Because the rules are exact, an AI agent can rewrite the code that connects an app to a different database.
Why would AI be especially good at this kind of migration work?
They are trained on huge amounts of existing code and text, so clear instructions with a right answer play to their strengths. Converting one well-documented format into another is easier for them than open-ended judgment calls.
If switching is easy, will companies still pay for databases?
Vishria's view is yes, because cheaper experimentation means many more apps get started. In his account, what customers pay for shifts from lock-in to the ability to start tiny, grow huge, tear things down quickly, and keep the bill low.