Rackspace-Cloudant Collaboration Forms Cloud Database As A Service
Rackspace-Cloudant Collaboration Forms Cloud Database As A Service by UCStrategies Staff
A new database as a service for developers of Web and mobile applications is being offered by the cloud infrastructure provider Rackspace. This is being provided through its Cloud Tools program.
Cloudant is providing the NoSQL database as a service through its Data Layer; this is an amalgamation of database clusters which Rackspace hosts through its global data centers.
A CouchDB-compatible, RESTful JSON API; a MapReduce engine and inbuilt full text search, based on Apache Lucene, which is a Java-based, open-source information retrieval library is offered by Cloudant's Data Layer.
The cloud market development manager at Rackspace, Stephen Salas, stated that the company, which already provides a database service and Cloud Databases, will be complemented by Cloudant's database as a service: “We are a leader in the cloud, and we are continually looking for technology partners to fill gaps.”
Web and mobile apps developers are provided with a globally distributed “data layer as a service” for storing, analyzing and distributing application data though Cloudant. According to the Cloudant CEO, Derek Schoettle, it will also work successfully with Rackspace's cloud infrastructure service.
Schoettle stated: “Cloudant customers deploy highly distributed, data-intensive, real-time applications, which is an ideal fit with Rackspace open cloud's global reach and tremendous performance.”
MySQL is an open-source version of the traditional relational database management system, and is currently utilized by Rackspace Cloud Databases. NoSQL databases, however, are non-relational, scalable, distributed and open-source; therefore it is more probable that they will work better with Web and mobile applications.
The announcement of the collaboration followed news that Amazon Web Services was making important cloud data warehousing and management statements at its partner conference in November.
The CTO of Amazon, Werner Vogels, revealed a new AWS Data Pipeline as a means of managing and organizing the dataflow of collection systems; for example, Amazon Storage System, DynamicDB, Elastic MapReduce and Amazon's new Redshift data warehouse. (CY) Link