Good question! The answer is that the "If..." evaluates to false: ops (and by that I hope you mean something more than facilities staff) has a far simpler set of problems with which to deal when the software is designed, implemented, and tested in accordance with physical constraints. I, too, would like a gold-plated, unicorn pony that can fly faster than light, but in the mean time, I'm writing and using software that produces fewer operational and business headaches. Some of that includes eventually consistent databases.

I totally concede that most consistent databases at scale are crap on the ops people.

I would echo Mike's argument and claim that a nice ops story and true consistency are not totally orthogonal. There are a lot of practical reasons why the big database vendors have boiled their frogs and ended up where they are today.

VoltDB certainly isn't the realization of that dream, so I'll put my money where my mouth is and spend the next few years helping it get there.