Welcome to the party, DynamoDB : Tim Moreton

Welcome to the party, DynamoDB

20 Jan 2012
Category: Business Insights

Amazon's recent announcement of DynamoDB was noted with positive interest by a number of observers, and rightly so, in my view. It's a technically interesting achievement, for one. But more importantly, it's another step towards mainstream maturity for the Big Data database market, and another sign that the problems that we're trying to solve are important.

What effect might DynamoDB have on the Big Data / NoSQL space?

At Acunu our customers fall into two broad groups. The first are traditional enterprises that have a system deployed on relational technology, often Oracle, backed by shared storage, that hits a cost pain-point when it comes to scalability. The second group consists of start-ups who see Big Data as an opportunity, rather than a challenge: they are building their core business around an infrastructure for collecting, analysing and serving data.

In the enterprise

Enterprises considering NoSQL have found that their legacy relational systems cannot deliver the necessary combination of performance and capacity at a price point that justifies the use-case of the data. It's at this point that they may look to alternative solutions. An increasing number are finding that NoSQL databases fit their need -- at Acunu, we're experiencing first-hand a real wave-front of adoption of Big Data technology in enterprises that you may not have considered as early adopters.

So what will DynamoDB mean for enterprise folk? I expect not much in the short term, until some key issues are solved. First, the sources and consumers of data are still on-site. These guys are tackling a specific technical limitation, not necessarily looking to re-architect their wider systems, which are often complex and inter-dependent. Second, security and regulatory concerns may need addressing. Third, the TCO needs to stack up. A quick and dirty back of the envelope calculation suggests that although it's free to get started with DynamoDB, for the sort of deployment sizes we're seeing, DynamoDB works out considerably more expensive than alternatives like Acunu deployed on hardware (even after accounting for typical full costing for outsourced data centers).

In time, these issues may be addressed. This great Information Week report on database technology (registration required) surveyed 'technology professionals' and found that the starting point is low: 2% are "using the cloud for a fully managed database service," a description that matches what Amazon is providing with DynamoDB.

In start-ups

Big Data start-ups are more likely to be interested in a cloud NoSQL offering, because small (initial) scale and a lack of legacy infrastructure makes the transition to the cloud much cheaper. Here, the pain around using MySQL or Oracle is more anticipated than real: without a "legacy" data-set, start-ups have the opportunity to pick their tools and design for scale from the outset.

Acunu aims to help these organisations focus on building their services, and reduces the effort to maintain the platform in production. This is clearly Werner Vogels' motivation with DynamoDB -- and one market where I think it's likely to get traction quickly.

To be successful here, DynamoDB will still need to prove it can offer benefits over and above technologies like Cassandra which are advancing rapidly. Packaged solutions including Acunu already let you deploy on EC2 and other cloud providers, so avoiding CapEx and operations effort but without risking cloud lock-in. And other Platforms-as-a-Service are doubtless not far behind.

Conclusion

Even though DynamoDB is still in beta, Amazon's effort confirms that Big Data distributed databases are the way forward. So, welcome to the party DynamoDB!

Acunu

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