Last night, cloud database company Xeround announced that they’re shutting down the version of their service hosted in public clouds such as Amazon, Rackspace, GreenQloud, and others. Users of the free service have until 8 May to move elsewhere, whilst paying customers have until 15 May. The company describes this as an attempt to “re-focus,” with the implication that other parts of the business remain viable. It’s never easy to admit mistakes and kill products, but the ability to do so is an essential part of running a business that’s viable for the long haul. Xeround’s announcement needn’t be interpreted as the end of the company, or the end of databases running in the public cloud. The challenge now is one of persuading staff, investors and customers to move past the short-term pain and uncertainty, and to get behind the new direction with conviction. Xeround was founded back in 2005, initially delivering scalable data management solutions into the data centres of telcos such as T-Mobile. The company’s work on scaling MySQL and offering it in the cloud brought it to wider attention, and they seemed to maintain momentum by adding additional cloud partners. Last year, the company rolled out a […]