No database operates under perfect conditions in the real world. And today, ensuring systems can withstand outages is more challenging than ever. Over the past decade, distributed SQL has gained mainstream traction thanks to its ability to deliver IT resilience — even in the face of disaster scenarios. The infrastructure landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, pushing organizations to rethink how they future-proof their systems, especially now with the rapid emergence of GenAI. It's increasingly critical for enterprises to evaluate database performance not just in controlled environments, but under the harshest real-world scenarios. In this keynote, co-founder and CTO Peter Mattis will address the development of an evolved benchmarking framework designed for today’s demands — and why modern systems must do more than perform well in ideal conditions: they must stay resilient and deliver consistent performance when adversity strikes.

Peter Mattis
_{Co-Founder & CTO | Cockroach Labs}