Database vendors are very natural customers, because they're distributed systems for whom correctness and uptime are paramount. But they're far from our only customers! We have tons of people who are doing exactly what you describe -- running a client-server architecture or a collection of microservices that need to be fault-tolerant.

One of our theses is that the vast majority of real world "distributed systems developers" would never describe themselves that way and don't read the same blogs that all the database people do. Nonetheless, these people are writing distributed systems, and share the pain that we've all experienced. One of the most important tasks ahead of us is precisely to reach this vast "distributed systems dark matter" and explain to them how it is that we can help their day-to-day jobs.