Companies are migrating their mission-critical applications from legacy architectures to modern microservices-based architectures running on public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructure. However, moving the stateful data layer at the same speed as the stateless application layer is a major challenge. Legacy SQL-based relational databases are unsuitable for dynamic cloud infrastructure, while NoSQL and NewSQL databases present significant operational challenges when run at scale in production. Distributed SQL databases, like YugabyteDB, offer a solution to these challenges by providing strong consistency, horizontal scalability, geographic distribution, SQL API, automatic data replication, distributed query execution, and support for distributed ACID transactions. These characteristics enable companies to deliver high-value applications and services more quickly, while lowering IT costs and reducing risk through compliance.