Cloudant: All content tagged as Cloudant in NoSQL databases and polyglot persistence
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
The Business of Database as a Service
From a PR announcement about Cloudant’s business results in 2012 :
Cloudant says that during 2012, a year that saw its staff grow to 45 employees, the company’s customer base grew to more than 12,000 multi-tenant customers, counting both free customers, as well as the 50 that pay for its dedicated clusters.
I wholeheartedly hope these results are not indicative for the Database-as-a-Service market. I also wish Cloudant an even better 2013.
I haven’t seen any numbers from major platforms like Amazon Web Services, Heroku, or Rackspace, so if you have any please do share them.
Original title and link: The Business of Database as a Service (©myNoSQL)
Thursday, 19 January 2012
CouchDB: A Season Finale
There was a story earlier this year that I, as someone that has spent an enormous amount of time contributing to open source projects, thought it was no story. Considering how much was published about it, chances were you already read something about Damien Katz’s The future of CouchDB.
At the time of that post, my draft looked like this:
And now I, and the Couchbase team, are mostly moving on. It’s not that we think CouchDB isn’t awesome. It’s that we are creating the successor to it: Couchbase Server. A product and project with similar capabilities and goals, but more faster, more scalable, more customer and developer focused. And definitely not part of Apache.
Elvis has left the building. Please welcome The Beatles!
I always thought that some sort of a message from the its creator was needed to completely clear the waters about CouchDB. Damien’s post together with the earlier post from Couchbase announcing the discontinuation of the Couchbase Single Server (Couchbase’s CouchDB distribution) were bringing closure to the CouchDB saga. And that was good.
I knew that the Apache CouchDB project and community are doing fine. Noah Slater’s email just confirmed that:
As some of you may have already read, Damien Katz, Apache CouchDB’s original developer, has publicly announced that he intends to focus his time exclusively on developing other products for his company. Damien has had very little involvement in the CouchDB project for a year or more now, so, for many people, this is confirmation of what they already knew. […]
Our biggest strength has always been the breadth and depth of our community of developers and users. In the very near future, we’ll be voting in a new committer, appointing a new PMC member, sprucing up the website, and making a major new release
Late last year, I also suggested that Cloudant would become the go to company for CouchDB. Adam Kocoloski’s post confirmed this too:
We, along with a host of other companies, strongly support the open source community in building CouchDB and we do not plan on stopping. We have been fortunate in our ability to attract outstanding engineers, investors, and customers. We intend to continue devoting resources to Apache CouchDB and offer our help in any way the community desires.
While I could understand some of the criticisms[1], my conclusion was pretty close to what Bradley Holt wrote:
Going forward, you’ll have two choices, either Apache CouchDB or Couchbase Server. The road map for Apache CouchDB will continue to be determined by community consensus. The road map for Couchbase Server will be determined by Couchbase, the company.
But I was left with a nagging feeling that I missed something. I kept on circling around a small part of the original post:
What’s the future of CouchDB? It’s Couchbase.
How could a product that is removing defining features (e.g. the HTTP RESTful API or the peer-to-peer replication), that is already different (Volker Mische’s post provides details), and that offers no clear migration path be the future of CouchDB?
The answer is actually simpler than I thought:
Couchbase is the future of CouchDB as CouchDB was the future of Lotus Notes. A new product that takes inspiration from the experience and lessons learned while building the previous one.
And that was a CouchDB season finale. I’m already looking forward to the next season’s plots.
-
Some examples: till’s blog: The future of CouchDB, 2600hz blog. ↩
Original title and link: CouchDB: A Season Finale (©myNoSQL)
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
Will Cloudant Become the CouchDB Go to Company?
I read that:
- Cloudant might have raised $2.1 million (via Mass High Tech)
- Cloudant has a new CEO in Derek Schoettle (previously VP Sales at Vertica Systems, Inc.) (via PR announcement)
After Membase and CouchOne merger, I think it was the general expectation that the new formed Couchbase will carry on CouchOne promise of being the commercial supporters and service company for CouchDB. This made sense considering Couchbase has been offering a CouchDB product: Couchbase Single Server.
On the other hand this situation created a lot of confusion in the CouchDB world and Couchbase offering. It was only one week ago that Couchbase finally came out to clear the waters: they are not and won’t be a support company for CouchDB , nor will they continue offering a CouchDB-only product.
So there’s an unfilled spot in the NoSQL world: a go to company when CouchDB services and support are needed. Truth is I don’t have enough data to decide if there’s also a need in the market for it though.
But I’m wondering if Cloudant will pursue this positioning. At least that’s how I read Cloudant ex-CEO Alan Hoffman words. Or will the change of CEO also mark a change of direction?
Original title and link: Will Cloudant Become the CouchDB Go to Company? (©myNoSQL)
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
CouchDB Saga: Cloudant and Couchbase
The CouchDB saga continues. Klint Finley, reporting now for ServicesAngle, tells the different perspectives that Couchbase (the company resulted from the merger of Membase and CouchOne) and Cloudant (makers of scalable BigCouch based on CouchDB) have about CouchDB.
Couchbase:
“We’re not the CouchDB company, we will never be the CouchDB company,” James Phillips, senior vice president of products at Couchbase, told me in an interview. Phillips explained that Couchbase is integrating replication and mobile technology from CouchDB into Membase Server (now known as Couchbase Server) but the company has no business interest in CouchDB (though some of its employees are still committed to the project).
Cloudant:
Cloudant CEO Alan Hoffman who told me that Cloudant is still committed to the Apache CouchDB project. “If you look at the commits, I think you’ll see that our employees are doing a lot of the heavy lifting,” […] Hoffman said that he believes the project is in good shape. “The passion is through the roof. We’re firmly behind the community,” he said.
One thing I can tell from where I stand: both are wrong.
Original title and link: CouchDB Saga: Cloudant and Couchbase (©myNoSQL)
via: http://servicesangle.com/blog/2011/11/25/cloudant-ceo-were-still-committed-to-apache-couchdb/
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Iris Couch: Your New Source for CouchDB Hosting
Today, we are proud to introduce Iris Couch, a Couchbase spin-off and your new one-stop shop for hosted CouchDB. We are transferring the Couchbase hosting business to Iris Couch – a company founded and operated by the former Couchbase hosting team – and Iris Couch will focus solely on providing the rock-solid hosting service you deserve.
Why?
We know you’re wondering “What does this mean for me and my couches?” Relax. The name is changing, but the platform is not. Same platform. Same service. Same team. You don’t even need to touch your existing couches…the transition to Iris Couch will be seamless for you.
What is the value proposition or differentiator of Iris Couch (let’s say compared to Cloudant)?
Original title and link: Iris Couch: Your New Source for CouchDB Hosting (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)
Saturday, 2 April 2011
BigCouch Case Study: Research of Radition in Seattle
Cloudant’s BigCouch database let the team keep up with a steady flow of data so it could process and analyze it, then share it with the various stakeholders in near-real-time. The team was changing the data about 20 times per day and writing complex workflows to process it, two tasks that fall into BigCouch’s wheelhouse. The database has a built-in MapReduce engine to enable writing and processing the workflows, and it allows for secondary indices, which users can populate with new data from their MapReduce jobs and query very quickly.
This is the first case study I’m reading about BigCouch. But keep in mind that the project initiator is also the founder of Cloudant the company that created and open sourced BigCouch
Original title and link: BigCouch Case Study: Research of Radition in Seattle (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)
via: http://gigaom.com/cloud/how-nosql-is-helping-allay-seattles-radiation-fears/
Friday, 18 February 2011
Cloudant about Couchbase Announcement
Alan Hoffman of Cloudant, the CouchDB hosting providers and creators of the BigCouch scalable CouchDB solution:
I do want to take issue with one thing said in the press release for Couchbase. They say: “Couchbase becomes the only document database capable of safely storing your data whether stored on a single server, or spread across hundreds.”
Some of our customers have billions of documents stored safely on dozens of nodes in datacenters around the world. It’s too soon to say what Couchbase will become, but if you need a safe, scalable, and easy-to-use document storage platform, our technology already provides that today
I think I’ve heard something similar before.
As a side note, I don’t know if it’s only me, but I always think that PR announcements (nb: I’m referring to Couchbase’s PR formulation) make more bad than good. I don’t have an issue with a company stating they want to create the best product that features X and Y and Z. As a possible client, I couldn’t care less if the product is the first, the last, or the only. I only care about those features that really make it useful to my problems.
Original title and link: Cloudant about Couchbase Announcement (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)
via: http://blog.cloudant.com/some-thoughts-on-the-couchbase-announcement/
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
BigCouch: Java Map-Reduce with CouchDB
Feels like a conspiracy to have the 3rd Java related post today, but the one from Cloudant is quite big:
Today we are releasing the Java Language Map-Reduce View Interface for Cloudant’s Hosted CouchDB service. This interface defines the protocol for writing Map-Reduce views in Java that can be run on our hosted CouchDB platform. […] The Java view server works differently than a standard CouchDB view server. The design document does not contain code. Instead, the design document specifies which class should be called for the Map and Reduce steps. The code (a jar) is attached to the design document in the form of a binary attachment. This jar contains both user defined classes and external libraries that are needed. This paradigm (libraries as binary attachments) is a non-standard extension of the CouchDB view server API.
Bringing the most popular VM and all the languages supported on it to CouchDB is definitely a very smart move.
Original title and link for this post: BigCouch: Java Map-Reduce with CouchDB (published on the NoSQL blog: myNoSQL)
via: http://blog.cloudant.com/java-language-map-reduce-views
Monday, 30 August 2010
CouchDB BigCouch: Cloudant Open Sourcing their CouchDB Scaling Project
I’ve covered the Cloudant solution for CouchDB horizontal scalability and mentioned that’s probably the most interesting one for scaling CouchDB. Now Cloudant has open sourced it under the name BigCouch and the code is available on ☞ GitHub.
What does it do? Think of BigCouch as a set of Erlang/OTP applications that allow you to create a cluster of CouchDBs that is distributed across many nodes/servers. Instead of one big honking CouchDB, the result is an elastic data store which is fully CouchDB API-compliant.
[…]
The clustering layer is most closely modeled after Amazon’s Dynamo, with consistent hashing, replication, and quorum for read/write operations. CouchDB view indexing occurs in parallel on each partition, and can achieve impressive speedups as compared to standalone serial indexing.
Let’s see if BigCouch is better than CouchDB with a Riak backend.
Original title and link for this post: CouchDB BigCouch: Cloudant Open Sourcing their CouchDB Scaling Project (published on the NoSQL blog: myNoSQL)
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
CouchDB: Horizontal Scalability from Cloudant
Even if CouchDB benefits of probably one of the most sophisticated and cool replication mechanisms that doesn’t make it horizontally scalable. I’ve already covered the different solutions for scaling CouchDB, but what Cloudant promises seems to be the missing part:
All of these features — distributed, horizontally scalable, durable, consistent — happen with little or no change required in applications that have been written for CouchDB. A cluster looks just like a stand-alone CouchDB, and API compliance has been our goal from the beginning. Granted, there are a few extra options like overriding quorum constant defaults and there are a few vagaries, like views always performing rereduce due to the views being distributed. But on the whole, the extras in Cloudant are transparent to the application.
Now I’m wondering how Cloudant CouchDB scaling compares with running CouchDB with a Riak backend, Riak offering also a Dynamo-like distributed system.
CouchDB: Horizontal Scalability from Cloudant originally posted on the NoSQL blog: myNoSQL
