MongoDB Extends Bid For The Enterprise With New Database Release

NoSQL database developer MongoDB is about to ship a new release of its software with new data storage engines and data governance capabilities that the company said will extend the database's potential market for enterprise-class applications.

New connectors for business analytics software will also boost the database's utility for data analysis tasks, said Kelly Stirman, vice president of strategy and product development, in an interview with CRN.

"It's all part of expanding MongoDB's capabilities and making it the standard for modern enterprise applications," Stirman said.

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MongoDB 3.2 will be generally available in a few weeks.

MongoDB, along with other NoSQL databases such as Couchbase and DataStax, is positioned as an alternative to traditional relational database systems as better able to handle the huge volumes of data being generated by IT systems today. But NoSQL databases have been held back, to some degree, because they lack some of the management, security and data governance capabilities that mature relational databases have.

MongoDB 3.2 incorporates an encrypted storage engine that encrypts data both "in-flight" and "at rest" for security -- a capability that Stirman said is often a requirement in the financial services, health-care, retail and government vertical markets. "There's a lot of demand for MongoDB in these industries and in these use cases where you need to encrypt the data," he said.

The new release also offers an in-memory storage engine that can run entirely in memory for high-throughput, real-time applications such as fraud detection and online retail recommendation engines, according to Stirman.

MongoDB 3.2 includes a number of new features and tools geared toward database administrators. MongoDB Compass, for example, creates a graphical representation of the data stored in the database. And the product now supports application performance monitoring tools such as AppDynamics and New Relic, Stirman said.

Also new is the MongoDB Connector for BI, technology for integrating business analytics tools like Tableau and Qlik with the database, making it easier to tap into the stored data for analytical applications. MongoDB is more often used for operational applications, Stirman said, but users want to access that operational data for analytical tasks and the new connector will make that easier.

Those advances resonate with the executives at SilkRoute, a Troy, Mich.-based developer of Software-as-a-Service analytical applications for the manufacturing, retail and distribution industries. SilkRoute is a MongoDB OEM advanced partner and builds some of its applications on the MongoDB database.

Many SilkRoute customers use Tableau, and the new BI connector will especially appeal to those clients, said Devin Duden, chief technology officer of the company's OmniSky mobile and analytical applications division. SilkRoute has also been extending the capability of its applications to communicate with other IT systems, and features in the MongoDB 3.2 release will speed that effort.

"There's a lot of great benefits in the release," Duden said. SilkRoute currently runs on the 3.0 release, the open-source community edition of MongoDB, but Duden said his company is moving to the enterprise edition and will support the 3.2 release.

SilkRoute initially went with MongoDB after comparing it with other NoSQL databases, CEO Amjad Hussain said. The database did a much better job of ingesting huge volumes of data, he said, and it proved to be more flexible and scalable than competitors. "We just found MongoDB to be a very superior product," he said.

MongoDB is also adding capabilities to its Cloud Manager and Ops Manager software, a move the company said would simplify MongoDB deployments. Managers, for example, can use the visual tools to check the performance of queries and more easily add new indexes to a database. Also new are a set of data governance tools for defining and enforcing data quality rules throughout the database.

PUBLISHED NOV. 4, 2015