So I'm happy MongoDB is acquiring additional expertise in hosting...
... but I wish this announcement was a bit different. It says (numbers mine):
1. You will be given plenty of time to migrate, and nothing will be required of you for at least 4 months. We expect to have all customers migrated to Atlas within the next 12 months.
2. Once migrated, your Atlas database will be hosted on similar hardware and cost the same or less than your original plan on mLab.
3. We will provide tools that allow you to migrate with either minimal downtime or no downtime to your application.
I'm fine with the second point. I wish the first and third points instead read:
1. We will publish detailed migration documents by the end of 2018. No action will be required of any customer until a minimum of 9 months after that documentation has been published. We can guarantee all customers following current mLab best practices will be able to migrate with zero downtime should they so choose. As with many migrations, it may be much easier to migrate with a very small amount of downtime, rather than none. To those customers we will offer account credits for their trouble.
I think Mongo is well suited to pure PaaS. Worrying about whether the hardware or software is similar is about the same as worrying about the details of hardware or software. If the needs are very specific, hosting it on a pure PaaS shouldn't be used, but more of an IaaS type of solution.
I think most mLab users rely heavily on mLab's expertise, so if they trust them now it makes sense to trust them after being acquired by a company that's demonstrated interest the type of product they're providing.
... but I wish this announcement was a bit different. It says (numbers mine):
1. You will be given plenty of time to migrate, and nothing will be required of you for at least 4 months. We expect to have all customers migrated to Atlas within the next 12 months.
2. Once migrated, your Atlas database will be hosted on similar hardware and cost the same or less than your original plan on mLab.
3. We will provide tools that allow you to migrate with either minimal downtime or no downtime to your application.
I'm fine with the second point. I wish the first and third points instead read:
1. We will publish detailed migration documents by the end of 2018. No action will be required of any customer until a minimum of 9 months after that documentation has been published. We can guarantee all customers following current mLab best practices will be able to migrate with zero downtime should they so choose. As with many migrations, it may be much easier to migrate with a very small amount of downtime, rather than none. To those customers we will offer account credits for their trouble.