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Clustrix nets $16.5M to push its database outside the box

Barb Darrow — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:30:36 +0000

NewSQL database player Clustrix just netted $16.5 million in new Series C funding, bringing total investment in the 7-year-old company up to $46.5 million. Clustrix will use the cash to build out distribution on both public and private cloud environments, expanding beyond the on-premises beachhead it’s established with its Clustrix appliance.

The round includes contributions from Clustrix’ current backers Sequoia Capital, U.S. Venture Partners, and ATA Ventures.

“We have successful production environments running around the world with our appliance — so now the goal is to open up distribution to developers,” CEO Robin Purohit said in an interview. Towards that end, Clustrix recently made the new version 5.0 of its proprietary database available on Amazon Web Services. It’s already available on Rackspace, GoGrid, Equinix and BlueBoxGroup infrastructure.

Here’s how GigaOM’s Stacey Higginbotham wrote about the initial launch in 2010:

Clustrix [claims] that it’s built a transaction database with MySQL-like functionality and reliability that can scale to billions of entries. Clustrix plans to sell its appliance (which consists of more than a terabyte of memory and its proprietary software) to web firms that don’t want to take on the complicated task of sharding their data (replicating it across multiple databases), or moving to less robust database options like Cassandra or a key value store such as what’s provided by Twitter.

Jesse Proudman CEO of BlueBox, one of Clustrix’s hosting partners, characterized Clustrix as a “‘fire and forget’ solution that takes care of driving scale within MySQL. Its core premise is unlimited scalability without having to build that logic into your application … [it] takes care of MySQL sharding internally.”

Clustrix competes most directly with dbShards if a customer really cares about MySQL compatibility and with NuoDB if they don’t, according to Curt Monash, president of Monash Research.

So when it comes to big-scale, Clustrix has a story to tell, but the market is flooded with rivals. Still, it doesn’t help that the overall cloud database category will be under the microscope given that Xeround, a MySQL startup, is shutting down this week, as GigaOM first reported on May 1.

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Xeround pulls the plug on cloud database service

Barb Darrow — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:46:50 +0000

Updated: Xeround is shutting down its MySQL database service next week. An email went out May 1 alerting users of the free that they should move their database instance to another service before midnight eastern time May 8 to avoid downtime. Users of the paid plan have till May 15th to move.

According to the mail (and subsequent blog post):

“It is with genuine sadness that we inform you that Xeround’s service will be terminated in the course of the coming weeks, across all of our currently active data centers.”

Xeround’s free and paid service options run on Amazon Web Services; Rackspace, AppFog, Heroku and HP Cloud. The company could not be reached for comment but rivals are circling — ClearDB and Cloudant posted tweets to woo Xeround users.

This news has to be sobering given the number of cloud-based database services dotting the landscape. The company had raised more than $30 million in funding starting in 2005. Xeround investors include Benchmark Capital, Giza Venture Capital, Ignition Partners and Trilogy Partnership.

This story was updated at 4:38 a.m. PST to add the closing date of the paid service, a link to the Xeround blog post, and information on Xeround funding and investors.

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Cloud databases 101: Who builds ‘em and what they do

Derrick Harris — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:36:16 +0000

Remember when there were just two or three cloud computing platforms to choose from, and just about as many cloud databases? Well, as clouds have proliferated, so have the database services built on top of them. In fact, it’s getting hard to keep up with what’s actually available.

Here’s a primer highlighting the available services (note, we’re talking managed database services, not database instances that users still need to manage and administer) and where they’re running. It’s intended to be thorough, but that can be easier said than done, so please note any omissions in the comments.

SQL services

Amazon Relational Database Service: One of the first cloud database services, Amazon Web Services’ RDS is now one of the most complete, too. Like most AWS services, it’s tied into the AWS management interface and is compatible with a large majority of AWS’s countless other cloud computing services. Initially just an AWS-hosted and -managed MySQL service, RDS now lets users choose Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Database, as well.
Clustrix Database as a Service: Database vendor Clustrix just got into the cloud game on Wednesday, but it came to play. Its service, which runs on the Rackspace Cloud, gives users the high performance of solid-state drives, the peace of mind of single-tenant deployment, and the scalable MySQL capabilities of its flagship on-premise product. The company claims it’s suitable for both OLTP and OLAP applications, and that it monitors system health across more than 2,500 metrics.
EnterpriseDB Postgres Plus Cloud Database: EnterpriseDB is the primary company commercializing the PostgreSQL database, and this is the cloud-based version of its flagship Postgres Plus offering. Targeting enterprise developers more than weekend hackers, Postgres Plus Cloud includes features such as high-availability clusters, high connection counts and compatibility with Oracle environments.
FathomDB: Some GigaOM readers might remember FathomDB as the partner that was supposed to give Rackspace a chance to compete against AWS’s then-new RDS. Well, times have changed. FathomDB still exists, but it has open-sourced its original technology to help developers build anything as a service and currently isn’t offering a hosted database service. However, the company claims to be working on a next-generation database service, so stay tuned.
Google Cloud SQL: It’s not the most feature-rich database around, but Google Cloud SQL does have its benefits. For one, it’s integrated with the rest of Google’s cloud services for easy interaction. And, as is Google’s claim to fame in the cloud, Cloud SQL is geographically replicated for maximum availability. Currently, though, it only supports Java and Python applications, and instances are limited to 10GB in storage capacity.
Heroku Postgres: Heroku Postgres is the public-facing implementation of platform-as-a-service darling Heroku’s internal PostgreSQL database. It’s designed for reliability and data protection — Heroku claims 99.99 percent uptime and a design targeted to hit 99.999999999 percent data durability — and tries to bring the Heroku experience to developers that can’t use its PaaS offering. One of its more interesting features is called Data Clips, which lets users send the results of a SQL query to someone else via a URL.
HP Cloud Relational Database for MySQL: What is there to say about this service that the name doesn’t already? For starters, it’s presently in private beta, so there’s still a lot of work to be done and a lot of features to be added. It’s also built atop an OpenStack-based MySQL distribution, which, in theory, should make it easier to move one’s database business from cloud to cloud if need be.
IBM SmartCloud Application Services: Like HP, IBM’s cloud database is still very much a work in progress. Details on specific features are sparse right now, other than that the service is based on IBM’s DB2 Server technology and is part of the SmartCloud Application Services (read “PaaS”) offering that’s currently in a pilot phase.
Microsoft SQL Database: Formerly known as SQL Azure, SQL Database is a critical component of Microsoft’s new focus on hybrid cloud computing. Yes, it can operate as a standalone cloud database, but it also provides a shared user experience with Microsoft SQL Server and allows for data sharing with on-premise SQL Server databases. There’s also an option for syncing between other SQL Database deployments elsewhere within a company’s cloud infrastructure.
Oracle Database Cloud Service: It’s not for everyone, but existing Oracle database users that want a cloud-hosted option certainly should appreciate the Oracle Database Cloud Service. After all, it claims all the features and performance of Oracle Database 11g Release 2, of which there are a lot. Pricing isn’t made clear, but it’s a monthly rate based on the size of your database, although there are no long-term contracts.
Rackspace Cloud Databases: The latest addition to Rackspace’s line of cloud offerings, Cloud Databases is first built from its inception atop the OpenStack platform. Still in early access mode, users won’t get SLAs or a host of features (such as monitoring, backups or a GUI) that are slated for the GA edition, but they will get promises of high performance and reliability thanks to the service’s container-based virtualization and storage-area network-based architecture.
Xeround: Save for Amazon RDS, Xeround might be the most-popular cloud database around. It’s also the most flexible in terms of where it can be deployed — the MySQL service can run atop pretty much any public cloud, including AWS, Rackspace, Joyent, Heroku … you get the picture. Xeround claims auto-scaling as one of its primary strengths and is architecturally unique in that it’s essentially a MySQL frontend atop a foundation that theoretically could support a variety of database options.

NoSQL services

Amazon DynamoDB: DynamoDB is AWS’s managed NoSQL service based upon the original Dynamo kay-value data store the company developed years ago for its internal purposes. Designed for web or big data applications needing fast access to data and potentially having to scale in a hurry, DynamoDB is built atop an SSD architecture and scales automatically as data is added to the system.
Amazon ElastiCache: It’s not technically a NoSQL service, but ElastiCache does fulfill a similar need by giving developers managed Memcached to make sure their MySQL deployments are serving user data as fast as possible. Memcached is used by many web applications, including Facebook, that are built upon disk-based relational databases but want to keep certain data in an in-memory cache.
Cloudant: Although it’s based on the open source CouchDB database, Cloudant doesn’t call itself a NoSQL service per se, but rather a Data Layer. Built across a collection of cloud-provider resources spanning the globe, it does offer a predictable scalable NoSQL data store, but also a built-in MapReduce analytics engine. That’s one reason agribusiness giant Monsanto uses Cloudant to underpin its genomics infrastructure.
Database.com: Salesforce.com’s standalone database service, Database.com, isn’t exactly NoSQL, but it isn’t exactly a relational database, either. What it is for sure is the same multitenant database architecture that has been underneath Salesforce.com’s CRM service and Force.com platform for years. It stores a variety of data types, including of the unstructured variety, and is designed for (although not limited to) applications tying into existing Salesforce.com services.
Microsoft Windows Azure Table Storage: This is the NoSQL data store for Windows Azure, which is designed for easily querying terabytes of non-relational data. Because it’s part of the overall Windows Azure Storage family, though, total database size is limited to 100TB overall (Blob, Table and Queue storage) per account.
MongoHQ/MongoLab: MongoDB is by far the most-popular NoSQL database around, but it can be a bear to manage in the cloud. As a result, there are numerous hosted MongoDB services around, although MongoHQ and MongoLab are probably the most widely known. The pitch for both is simple: fast deployment, thorough monitoring and reliability you probably can’t achieve yourself. Both services try to appeal to a broad range of users with both shared and dedicated offerings.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Oleksly Mark.

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Cloud databases face challenges but opportunities beckon

Ryan Kim — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 18:28:33 +0000

Cloud databases present their own challenges but opportunities abound. That’s the word from a collection of cloud database executives who shared their views at the GigaOM Structure conference on the future of cloud databases.

As more and more providers build databases specifically designed for the cloud, there are issues that crop up. Razi Sharir, CEO, Xeround said despite the on-demand nature of cloud computing, the promise of tapping additional machines isn’t always there when dealing with other cloud providers. That’s the danger of relying on public clouds, said Barry Zane, CTO of ParAccel, who noted that the hardware can be a step down from what he uses. Another issue is the ability to scale smoothly and elastically, said Jim Starkey, CTO of NimbusDB.

But the promise of cloud databases is growing and with it bigger opportunities, they said. Mike Miller, founder and chief scientist at Cloudant said cloud databases open up the opportunity to bring databases closer to edge client applications, opening upa a lot of opportunities for the kinds of applications people can build and run. Starkey said the biggest opportunity lies in building scalable services for the web while Zane said the killer application will be analytics as more companies look to better leverage their data.

Watch live streaming video from gigaomstructure at livestream.com

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Xeround enters GA, tests the SQL-in-the-cloud water

Derrick Harris — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:00:28 +0000

Xeround’s cloud-based MySQL service enters general availability Monday, becoming the first cloud-based third-party MySQL distribution that actually requires customers to pay for the service. Other SQL services exist, but they’re generally offered directly from cloud providers (e.g., Amazon Web Services’ Relational Database Service or Microsoft’s SQL Azure), which puts Xeround in the guinea pig position of trying to convince cloud users they should pay an entirely new database vendor. If it’s successful, there are plenty of other cloud database startups waiting in the wings to ride the SQL-in-the-cloud wave.

Xeround offers an entirely cloud-based MySQL database service that presently runs atop AWS, Rackspace Cloud Servers and Heroku. However, the underlying technology is platform-agnostic, so the company promises support for more clouds soon. CEO Razi Sharir told me in an interview Xeround has more than 2,000 customers spread fairly equally between the United States and Europe.

Going forward, its challenge will be converting beta users to paying customers and bringing in fresh users. Sharir cites an industry-wide conversion rate of 5 to 10 percent in terms of getting beta users to pay, and he doesn’t see any reason his company can’t hit the high end of that range. He noted that a good number of beta users loaded live data into Xeround’s service despite its beta status, indicating their confidence in the service. Thus, getting live applications running in the production-ready version shouldn’t be too difficult. Sharir expects to have thousands of paying customers within the next couple of years.

Xeround charges 12 cents per gigabyte per hour for data storage and 46 cents per gigabyte for data transfer. With those prices, customers get a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee, e-mail/web/phone support, and automatic scaling and healing of resources. The way Sharir describes the latter capabilities, Xeround customers needn’t worry at all about adding resources or failing over because the technology is designed to automate everything.

As we’ll highlight in a Structure 2011 panel next week (of which Xeround will be a part), there are a whole ecosystem of cloud database options waiting to make their marks, including fellow SQL-supporting startups such as NimbusDB, GenieDB and Starcounter.

Image courtesy of Flickr user mandiberg.

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For Xeround, MySQL in the Cloud Knows No Bounds

Derrick Harris — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 17:02:15 +0000

Cloud database provider Xeround has made its MySQL database available as an add-on within Heroku’s PaaS offering, following on its availability for Amazon EC2 users in September, and likely preceding availability on a number of other cloud computing platforms. For Xeround, the bet on being the premiere database service for the cloud is a stark contrast to the company’s pre-2010 business strategy of selling data virtualization to telcos. However, it currently has the cloud database market largely to itself, as well as a technology that can easily adapt to its surroundings, wherever they might be.

Xeround has been around since 2005, and began its existence selling a data virtualization product to telcos that allowed them to view all of their siloed data in a single place so they could get a unified view of the entire business, not just on a department-by-department basis. However, when Razi Sharir took over as CEO, he spotted an opportunity to transform the business to serve the greater market for cloud computing users (although it still serves a few legacy telco customers, including T-Mobile). Xeround still uses the core IP, only it has been tweaked to include a MySQL front end on top of the Xeround back end, which, interestingly, runs in-memory and utilizes NoSQL concepts. According to Sharir, Xeround’s technology can now accommodate pretty much any front end, and MySQL might just be the beginning.

At the least, support for AWS and Heroku are just the beginning. Sharir said Xeround is planning to support a variety of new cloud platforms in the coming months, including those from some large telcos and, likely, Rackspace, Terremark and GoGrid. Xeround’s technology is platform-agnostic, Sharir explained, so it doesn’t need the “blessing” of any cloud providers to run atop their platforms. Xeround just needs to see a big enough demand to justify optimizing its software for that particular cloud. Presently, he thinks Xeround is the only true cloud database around; he called Marc Benioff’s new Database.com offering more data as a service than database as a service, and characterized AWS’s Relational Database Service as the closest thing to Xeround, but limited in portability and scalability because it’s really just a MySQL VM running in Amazon EC2. However, up-and-coming cloud database NimbusDB is currently in its alpha stage and could give Xeround a run for its money in the future.

There’s a lot of value to a third-party database service that can travel with users as they move from cloud to cloud, and that hide a a cloud-optimized back end under a familiar SQL front end. Whether it’s Xeround, NimbusDB or someone else altogether providing the capability, it’s an area that’s poised to take off as cloud servers and storage become widely accepted. Xeround is just ahead of the game for the time being.

Image courtesy of Xeround.

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Big Data, ARM and Legal Troubles Transformed Infrastructure in Q4

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 08:00:26 +0000

Some might call this past quarter in the infrastructure space transformative. The rise of ARM-based processing suggests the days of x86 dominance might be coming to an end, while the Amazon Web Services-WikiLeaks controversy cast new light on the legal aspects of cloud computing. Big data got bigger, meanwhile, as the Hadoop ecosystem expanded, and amid all these cutting-edge technologies, two archaic topics — Novell and Java — proved they aren’t going anywhere soon. Companies mentioned in this report include Intel, AMD, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Yahoo, Appistry, VMware, Joyent and Microsoft. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial.

Out of Stealth, Xeround Launches MySQL as a Service

Cloud Reporter — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:59:38 +0000

Xeround, a Bellevue, Wash.-based startup has come out of stealth and launched the beta version of MySQL in the cloud to offer a relational database as an on-demand service. The company is offering an elastic and linearly scalable database, and is going to be competing with the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) (s amzn) and Microsoft’s Azure for attention. Xeround is available either as Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) or as a virtual appliance.

The service is currently available on Xeround.com and Amazon’s EC2, and will soon be available on other cloud platforms as well. Xeround claims it has unique patented technology for data management in the cloud which can help it compete against the more fashionable NoSQL data stores that currently offer the scale that many web startups seek.

Razi Sharir, CEO of Xeround, said in a news release, “Xeround keeps running during scale and schema changes without a change in performance with no code or architecture changes required.” The company is backed by Benchmark Capital, Giza Venture Capital, Ignition Partners and Trilogy Partnership.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req’d): Report: NoSQL Databases – Providing Extreme Scale and Flexibility