A Database-Oriented Operating System Wants to Shake Up Cloud Security

DBOS, a startup founded by researchers and engineers from PostgreSQL, Databricks, MIT, Stanford, and UC Berkeley, proposes a data-centric operating system that replaces Linux containers in serverless architectures by tracking state in database tables, running OS utilities as stored procedures, and co-locating applications with the DBMS. The company claims large performance and scalability gains, simplified security and auditing due to fewer moving parts and native logging, but faces adoption hurdles because the OS is closed-source and serverless benefits may be opaque to end users.