The Data Day, A few days: December 2-5 2013

Big data reconsidered, No NoSQL. And more

And that’s the data day, today.

The Data Day, A few days: August 23-30 2013

Couchbase raises $25m. 10gen becomes MongoDB. And more.

And that’s the data day, today.

The Data Day, Two days: November 2/5 2012

Neo raises $11m. Updated database landscape graphic. And more.

And that’s the Data Day, today.

The Role of NoSQL and Graphs in the Total Data Landscape

I’ll be flying over to San Francisco at the weekend to attend and present at GraphConnect, which takes place at the Hyatt Regency on November 5 and 6.

Specifically, I’ll be giving a presentation on the role of NoSQL and graphs in the total data landscape, subtitled Big Data, Total Data, NoSQL, Graph, at 11.40am on November 6.

Here’s the overview: The database market is changing rapidly with new approaches emerging that provide an alternative to the relational data model. This presentation examines the drivers behind the rise of NoSQL data stores and, in particular graph databases, focusing on their use-cases and adoption trends, and exploring where graph database fit in the world of NoSQL, NewSQL, and big data.

I’ll also be moderating a panel at 5.05pm on November 6 comprised of enterprise companies that use graph databases in production. This panel includes 3-4 technical leads from Accenture, Cisco and Telenor Norway that will discuss what it takes to put large scale graph databases into production.

GraphConnect looks like a great event for anyone with experience with, or just interest in, graph databases. Keynotes will be provided by Emil Eifrém, CEO, Neo Technology, and James Fowler, co-author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives.

The full agenda can be found here, and it’s not too late to register, here.

VC funding for Hadoop and NoSQL tops $350m

451 Research has today published a report looking at the funding being invested in Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL database-related vendors. The full report is available to clients, but below is a snapshot of the report, along with a graphic representation of the recent up-tick in funding.

According to our figures, between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2010 $95.8m had been invested in the various Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL-related vendors. That figure now stands at more than $350.8m, up 266%.

That statistic does not really do justice to the sudden uptick of interest, however. The figures indicate that funding for Apache Hadoop- and NoSQL-related firms has more than doubled since the end of August, at which point the total stood at $157.5m.

A substantial reason for that huge jump is the staggering $84m series A funding round raised by Apache Hadoop-based analytics service provider Opera Solutions.

The original commercial supporter of Apache Hadoop, Cloudera, has also contributed strongly with a recent $40m series D round. In addition, MapR Technologies raised $20m to invest in its Apache Hadoop distribution, while we know that Hortonworks also raised a substantial round (unconfirmed, but reportedly $20m) from Benchmark Capital and former parent Yahoo as it was spun off in June. Index Ventures also recently announced that it has become an investor in Hortonworks.

I am reliably informed that if you factor in Hortonworks’ two undisclosed rounds, the total funding for Hadoop and NoSQL vendors is actually closer to $400m.

The various NoSQL database providers have also played a part in the recent burst of investment, with 10gen raising a $20m series D round and Couchbase raising $15m. DataStax, which has interests in both Apache Cassandra and Apache Hadoop, raised an $11m series B round, while Neo Technology raised a $10.6m series A round. Basho Technologies raised $12.5m in series D funding in three chunks during 2011.

Additionally, there are a variety of associated players, including Hadoop-based analytics providers such as Datameer, Karmasphere and Zettaset, as well as hosted NoSQL firms such as MongoLab, MongoHQ and Cloudant.

One investor company name that crops up more than most in the list above is Accel Partners, which was an original investor in both Cloudera and Couchbase, and backed Opera Solutions via its Accel- KKR joint venture with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

It appears that those investments have merely whetted Accel’s appetite for big data, however, as the firm last week announced a $100m Big Data Fund to invest in new businesses targeting storage, data management and analytics, as well as data-centric applications and tools.

While Accel is the fist VC shop that we are aware of to create a fund specifically for big data investments, we are confident both that it won’t be the last and that other VCs have already informally earmarked funds for data-related investments.

451 clients can get more details on funding and M&A involving more traditional database vendors, as well as our perspective on potential M&A suitors for the Hadoop and NoSQL players.

The beginning of the end of NoSQL

CouchOne has become the first of the major NoSQL database vendors to publicly distance itself from the term NoSQL, something we have been expecting for some time.

While the term NoSQL enabled the likes of 10gen, Basho, CouchOne, Membase, Neo Technologies and Riptano to generate significant attention for their various database projects/products it was always something of a flag of convenience.

Somewhat less convenient is the fact that grouping the key-value, document, graph and column family data stores together under the NoSQL banner masked their differentiating features and potential use cases.

As Mikael notes in the post: “The term ‘NoSQL’ continues to lump all the companies together and drowns out the real differences in the problems we try to tackle and the challenges we face.”

It was inevitable, therefore, that as the products and vendors matured the focus would shift towards specific use cases and the NoSQL movement would fragment.

CouchOne is by no means the only vendor thinking about distancing itself from NoSQL, especially since some of them are working on SQL interfaces. Again, we would see this fragmentation as a sign of maturity, rather than crisis.

The ongoing differentiation is something we plan to cover in depth with a report looking at the specific use cases of the “database alternatives” early in 2011.

It is also interesting that CouchOne is distancing itself from NoSQL in part due to the conflation of the term with Big Data. We have observed this ourselves and would agree that it is a mistake.

While some of the use cases for some of the NoSQL databases do involve large distributed data sets not all of them do, and we had noted that the launch of the CouchOne Mobile development environment was designed to play to the specific strengths of Apache CouchDB: peer-based bidirectional replication, including disconnected mode, and a crash-only design.

Incidentally, Big Data is another term we expect to diminish in usage in 2011, since Bigdata is a trademark of a company called SYSTAP.

Witness the fact that the Data Analytics Summit, which I’ll be attending next week, was previously the Big Data Summit. We assume that is also the reason Big Data News has been upgraded to Massive Data News.

The focus on big data sets and solving big data problems will continue, of course, but expect much less use of Big Data as a brand.

Similarly, while we expect many of the “NoSQL” databases have a bright future, expect much less focus on the term NoSQL.