How the things we build impact the world

Systems don’t succeed based on technical merit alone. No matter their elegance or power, if software is too hard to use, people won’t adopt it.

Distributed systems shape the foundation of modern software. The real impact?

It’s about productization, usability, and adoption.

At the 2024 Systems Distributed Conference, Snow Leopard founder and CEO Deepti Srivastava shared her best lessons from working on Oracle RAC and leading product for Google Spanner.

Here’s what she shared:

[4:16] Ease of use is what drives adoption
Systems don’t succeed based on technical merit alone. No matter their elegance or power, if software is too hard to use, people won’t adopt it. Case in point: the biggest technology shifts (GUI, cloud, chat, interfaces) were all usability breakthroughs.

[13:12] Migration, not competition, is the real blocker
Better data systems often lose not because of missing features but because data migration is too hard. Even within Google, it took dedicated teams to support the switch to Spanner. Outside of Google, the friction was even higher—early customers walked away simply because switching costs were too high. Paths that minimize switching effort, supporting side-by-side adoption, are key.

[20:49] Building for customers is different than building internally
An internal tool with 100% uptime, tight dependencies, and shared assumptions doesn’t survive with external customers. Defaults break. Error modes compound. And support burdens increase exponentially.

[31:35] Pricing is downstream of system design
Efficient architecture is necessary for competitive pricing. At Spanner, internal architecture needed an overhaul for competitive pricing. That takes years of engineering work focused on utilization and cost reduction.

[36:24] The systems that matter are the ones people can build on
Impact comes from enablement. The best systems are ones that empower others to solve problems. That principle underpins Snow Leopard’s current trajectory: designing platforms that remove friction, reduce glue code, and let developers focus on what matters.

Check out what we’re building at Snow Leopard, and sign up for early access.