GridGain gets open source in-memory accelerator out of the blocks Analyst: Jason Stamper 24 Mar, 2015 GridGain is building a business around an open source in-memory data fabric, which it entered into the Apache Incubator program in October last year as Apache Ignite. Late last month, the firm announced that the first fruit of that initiative, Apache Ignite v1.0 Release Candidate, is now available. In the second quarter, it will launch the commercial version based on that open source core, v7.0. The 451 Take The move to contribute its core in-memory data-processing capabilities to the Apache Software Foundation as Apache Ignite has shown early signs of success. Downloads of GridGain's open source core are growing rapidly, and paying customer numbers are going in the right direction, too. The company is growing its roster of reference customers, and its price/performance claims compared with some rival approaches are certainly impressive. However, GridGain concedes it is still early days (it was only founded five years ago), and it's looking to raise another round of capital. Context Founded in 2010, GridGain is headquartered in Foster City, California. It employs about 30 staff, and has raised $12m in capital so far, predominantly from RTP Ventures and Almaz Capital Partners. It tells us it will seek an additional funding round soon. GridGain has dabbled with its open source approach since it was founded. It announced the launch of its core technology using the Apache License 2.0 in March 2014, returning to an open source Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 1
licensing strategy (back in July 2012, it had actually discontinued the open source community edition). Then, in October last year, it entered into the Apache Incubator program with Apache Ignite, hoping to reach a wider audience thanks to Apache's large, loyal community of open source developers. GridGain previously offered a range of in-memory data-processing capabilities through various editions GridGain In-Memory HPC Edition, GridGain In-Memory Database Edition, GridGain In-Memory Hadoop Accelerator and GridGain In-Memory Streaming Edition. Following the switch to the Apache license, the company combined them into a single open source version: Ignite. The commercial version, which is based on the open source core but has far more bells and whistles, is called the GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric, and v7.0 is scheduled for release in the second quarter. Downloads of the open source version of its in-memory data fabric are going through the roof: they increased from just over 15,000 in Q3 last year to almost 40,000 in Q4. Of course, not all of those get put into production or, indeed, turn into paying customers. But the firm says many clearly are being used when put into production, its software sends regular 'pings' back to GridGain, and the company says it received more than a million of those last month, giving it confidence that hundreds of companies are using its in-memory data fabric in production. Technology The GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric is designed to reside between the application and data platform layers and boost performance for compute and data processing. It essentially acts as a cache returning data to applications faster than the data store ordinarily could on its own. What's key to its flexibility, though, is that it offers developers a single API for Java,.NET and C++ applications, supports standard SQL queries, and offers full ACID-compliant transactions. It can be used to deliver streaming analytics or event stream processing, and it can accelerate Hadoop workloads by acting as an intelligent cache or an in-memory file-system alternative to the disk-based Hadoop Distributed File System. The open source version, Apache Ignite, was accepted into the Apache Incubator program in October. Before that, it had been available on GitHub since March 2014, but downloads have increased dramatically since GridGain moved it to Apache. Of course, GridGain itself remains the biggest contributor to the Ignite code base. The goal was to increase the potential audience of developers and, in turn, hopefully receive more contributions to improve the code, and the company says it is seeing signs of that working already. Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 2
Like the Enterprise Edition, the open source version offers the In-Memory DataGrid, In-MemoryStreaming, In-Memory HPC and the In-Memory Hadoop Accelerator. So what do you get if you pay for the Enterprise Edition? A local restartable store, a number of security features and security updates, network segmentation protection, rolling production updates (from version 7.0 onward this isn't available with the current version), additional management and monitoring tools, and datacenter replication for additional peace of mind. Naturally, GridGain offers 24/7 support if customers choose the Enterprise Edition. The Apache Ignite v1.0 Release Candidate has been available for download since the end of February. The GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric version 7.0 will be available from the GridGain website in the second quarter. The new features that have been added both to Ignite v1.0 and GridGain In-Memory Data Fabric v7.0 include Jcache (JSR 107) support, auto-loading of SQL data and dynamic cache creation. The firm likes to say that it does for fast data what Hadoop does for big data, and we wouldn't disagree. Its In-Memory Data Fabric has been shown to dramatically improve the performance of analytic applications, and can also be used for stream processing. Customers GridGain is building a good list of reference customers: customers that have started using GridGain in the past 60 days alone include Accenture, American Express, Apple, BNY Brokerage, Capgemini, Charles Schwab & Co, Chevron, Cisco and Daimler. Sberbank the largest bank in Russia and third-largest in Europe uses GridGain for real-time risk and leverage reporting on its global financial trading portfolio. GridGain apparently won the deal after a detailed evaluation and proof of concept, and GridGain says one of the areas it is particularly strong is in its ability to deliver value for money. Sberbank runs GridGain on 10 Dell R610 blades with a total of 1TB of memory, making the hardware cost about $25,000, yet it is able to handle one billion transactions per second. Competition As you might expect, GridGain most commonly comes up against rival grid/cache companies, and these include Hazelcast, Oracle Coherence and Software AG's Terracotta. In the open source space, another competitor includes Red Hat (with both JBoss Data Grid and the associated InfiniSpan project), as well as a number of closed source providers such as Oracle, TIBCO, IBM, Pivotal, GigaSpaces and ScaleOut Software. Depending on what customers are trying to do, there are other in-memory alternatives: companies Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 3
can choose a pure in-memory database such as VoltDB, MemSQL or SAP HANA, or they can go for an in-memory accelerator such as Oracle In-memory Option or IBM DB2 with Blu Acceleration. If they are focusing just on stream-processing capabilities, they might opt for an offering such as Software AG Apama or TIBCO StreamBase. SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses GridGain offers an in-memory data fabric that not only speeds up analytics and offers stream processing but also supports standard SQL and offers ACID compliance. Good price/performance figures look to be available, too, compared to some competing approaches, and it's building an open source ecosystem at Apache. Opportunities Threats As companies seek more rapid analysis of data that is being created faster than ever, technologies such as GridGain's In-Memory Data Fabric are becoming more valuable. Such technologies may well have a role to play in the emerging Internet of Things, too. Despite claimed ease of use and little rewriting of existing applications, there's no getting away from the fact that the data cache/grid approach from GridGain and its competitors adds another layer of complexity to the enterprise architecture. GridGain is still a young company and is reliant on venture capital to grow to the next level. Depending on what companies are trying to do, there are a large number of open source and commercial competitors (many of which have deeper pockets). Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 4
Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; 2015. This report was originally published within 451 Research's Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: www.451research.com Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 5