GridGain Newsletter - December 2014

February 18, 2015

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2015: The Year of Fast Data

It seems like 'Big Data' was the technology buzz phrase of 2014. By now, corporate leaders from the server room to the board room generally recognize the vast potential in the mountains of data coming online every day. This rapid expansion has given rise to new challenges — and perhaps the next big wave of innovation in 2015: 'Fast Data'.

Just as the volume and complexity of data flooding into data centers, on-premises and in the cloud, are increasing at exponential rates, the demand for immediate processing, analysis and reporting on this data is on the rise as well, creating serious bottlenecks for systems that rely on disk-based storage. Giant repositories of data that can’t be processed in a reasonable amount of time can be more of a liability than an asset. Big data is only as good as fast data allows it to be.

With today's first release of Apache Ignite, a new and exciting Apache Incubator project, Fast Data meets open source, making it possible for companies to explore the power of fast transactional, analytical and hybrid data processing solutions with no barriers to entry. Meanwhile, the GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric Enterprise Edition provides the high availability, security and manageability features that make it ready for deployment in mission-critical, production environments.

Read on to learn how you can get ahead of the Fast Data curve this year.

Your editor,

Dane Christensen
Digital Marketing Manager

Introducing Apache Ignite 1.0: Fast Data meets Open Source

Last November, we announced that the GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric had been accepted into the Apache Incubator program under the name "Apache Ignite", with the goal of ensuring this robust and battle-tested software becomes the standard upon which in-memory computing's promise will be realized.

Today, we are proud to announce the first code drop of Apache Ignite, Apache Ignite v1.0 RC (Release Candidate), available for download on the Apache Ignite homepage.

Apache Ignite v1.0 RC provides a high-performance, integrated and distributed in-memory data fabric solution for computing and transacting on large-scale data sets in real-time, orders of magnitude faster than possible with traditional disk-based technologies. It carries forward the capabilities formerly available as the open source edition of the GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric, and it also adds new ease-of-use and automation features, including:

JCache (JSR-107) support
Auto-Loading of SQL data
Dynamic Cache Creation

These enhancements help simplify the deployment of the software and speed up the migration from less-performing, or closed source legacy in-memory data grids.

GridGain is as committed to open source as its many open source users from large and small organizations, and we understand that some cases of early evaluation, proof of concept and even small deployments require that extra peace of mind that comes from commercial-grade open source support services.

Support for Apache Ignite is available from GridGain. And for a limited time, GridGain is offering 30 days of FREE Basic Support for Apache Ignite. This offer is available for anybody signing up by March 31, 2015.

GridGain's Basic Support service includes electronic support through GridGain's support ticketing system Monday thru Friday from 9am-5pm PST/PDT. Support requests will receive responses on the same or next business day. The service is limited to 10 incidents and applies to implementations with no more than five GridGain servers.

If you are ready to give Apache Ignite a serious look, make sure to register for FREE Basic Support.

More Information about Apache Ignite

GridGain has published a new technical whitepaper titled 'Introducing Apache Ignite 1.0 (incubating)'. This paper, written by GridGain founder and CTO, Nikita Ivanov, sums up the architecture and key capabilities of this open source project. Download the white paper here.

You can also watch a recently recorded interview of GridGain co-founder and EVP of Engineering, Dmitriy Setrakyan, as he explains the history behind Apache Ignite, his personal involvement in the project as well as some of the cool, new features available in Ignite 1.0 RC. Watch part I and II of the interview here.

In-Memory Data Fabric Enterprise Edition Version 7.0

Today, GridGain also announced that Version 7.0 of the GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric Enterprise Edition — built on Apache Ignite — will be available for download early in Q2 of 2015.

The GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric is a complete, enterprise-grade software solution for enabling high-volume transactions, real-time analytics and hybrid transactional-analytical processing in a single, highly scalable data access and processing layer. Through its unified APIs it offers speed and scale to all types of new and existing applications (including Java, .NET, C++) and allows queries across diverse data stores containing structured, semi-structured and unstructured data (SQL, NoSQL, Hadoop).

Some of the key features of the Enterprise Edition include Data Center Replication, Rolling Production Updates and enterprise-grade security features.

Version 7.0 of the In-Memory Data Fabric Enterprise Edition is a major step forward in making these powerful capabilities more automatic and easier to use. Specifically, it will benefit from the same new ease-of-use features built into Apache Ignite 1.0, including JCache Support, Auto-loading of SQL Data and Dynamic Cache Creation.

New Case Studies

If you are still curious to better understand how the GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric can be the right solution for your project, take a look at three new case studies now available on the GridGain website for additional points of reference. These three companies are currently using GridGain to power incredible advances in an interesting range of applications:

ChronoTrack supports 80% of the world's races, including 25 of the 30 largest races in the U.S., ranking and scoring tens of thousands of participants in hundreds of races every week, through RFID chips embedded in participants' racing bibs. They use GridGain to process a stream of results in nearly real-time, while maintaining a high degree of accuracy.

Experticity focuses on connecting over 650 lifestyle and consumer brands with key brand advocates to help them improve sales in their retail channels, working with clients such as GoPro, New Balance and The North Face. GridGain enables them to analyze the data quickly enough to send users to the next logical step in the personalized process, and deliver analytics information accurately and in real-time.

Cyber Dust, a competitor to Snapchat funded by Mark Cuban, provides the ability to send highly private chats by expiring them only seconds after they are sent and never storing them on any server. Cyber Dust uses GridGain, in part, to ensure that no message data is ever stored to a permanent drive, but rather running the entire back-end system entirely in-memory.

These case studies, along with others on the GridGain website, illustrate the flexibility and power of the GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric.

The Evaluator Group: Converged, Real-Time Analytics

A new white paper written by John Webster of the respected analyst firm The Evaluator Group titled "Converged, Real-time Analytics: Enabling Faster Decision Making and New Business Opportunities" is now available for download on the GridGain website. In the paper John discusses the drivers behind the rapid expansion of in-memory technologies, as well as the obstacles to be overcome. He singles out GridGain's In-Memory Data Fabric as a key solution to the challenges involved in deploying such technology.

This paper is also the basis for a webinar featuring John Webster and GridGain CTO, Nikita Ivanov. That webinar can be viewed on-demand on the GridGain website.