Nuodb

Market position

NuoDB competes in the distributed SQL / NewSQL operational database market. Gartner listed the company as a Niche Player in its Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems in 2013 and as a Visionary in 2015. Third-party listings place it alongside vendors such as SingleStore, MemSQL, GridGain and Couchbase. Following the 2020 acquisition, the technology is positioned as part of Dassault Systèmes' 3DEXPERIENCE platform cloud and data science strategy and to serve large SaaS deployments.

NuoDB combines SQL compatibility and full ACID guarantees with the ability to scale out and back in dynamically across nodes and clouds without sharding, and to survive node, host or data center failures without loss of database access. Its separation of Transaction Engines from Storage Managers lets customers tune compute and storage capacity independently, and deployment is cloud-agnostic to avoid vendor lock-in. Adding servers increases performance rather than requiring hardware replacement, and the company holds a patent on its elastically scalable database granted in July 2012, 15 months after filing.

Technology

The database is SQL-compliant and classified as NewSQL, with a distributed object architecture built for cloud deployment. Transaction Engines and Storage Managers operate as redundant, tiered processes that together maintain ACID compliance across nodes; adding servers increases throughput without sharding. Peer-to-peer messaging routes tasks to nodes and work is distributed across processors to avoid data bottlenecks. Later releases added table partitions and storage groups, active-active deployment across AWS availability zones and later across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, a graphical dashboard of database and system metrics, container-native features for Red Hat OpenShift, and Kubernetes Operator support (the NuoDB Operator achieved Red Hat OpenShift Operator Certification in 2019). Management is via the NuoDB Admin tier, the nuocmd CLI, a REST API accessible over HTTP/HTTPS, and the pynuoadmin Python REST client.

Go-to-market

The company sells enterprise licenses directly and distributes a limited-use/community edition to developers, supported by product documentation, quick start guides, a knowledge base and a technical blog. Strategic technology partnerships and OEM-style embedding have been central: a relationship with Dassault Systèmes beginning in 2013, strategic technology partnership with Temenos from 2018 for its cloud and SaaS banking offering, a 2017 agreement with CauseSquare, and a 2019 partnership with Rancher Labs announced at KubeCon North America. Availability through the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and public cloud marketplaces broadened distribution.

Enterprises running mission-critical SQL applications that require strict consistency, continuous availability and elastic scale, including organizations migrating existing SQL applications to cloud, hybrid or multi-cloud architectures. Adoption has been concentrated in fintech and financial services — cited users include Dassault Systèmes, UAE Exchange, Temenos, Santander Bank and WeLab — as well as teams adopting Kubernetes, OpenShift and container-based deployment models.

Geography

Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, with staff reported across North America, Europe and Asia. The software is deployed on premises and in public, private, hybrid and multi-cloud environments including AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Red Hat OpenShift. Since the acquisition the company operates under Dassault Systèmes, which is headquartered in Vélizy-Villacoublay, France.

History

The company was founded in 2008 by Barry S. Morris and Jim Starkey as NimbusDB and incorporated in 2010; the name was changed to NuoDB in 2011. It filed its elastic-scalability patent in March 2011 and received approval in July 2012, the same year it raised $12 million in venture capital. Version 1.0 shipped in January 2013, followed by 2.0 'Blackbirds' (2013), 2.1 'Swifts' (2014), 2.4 'Cranes' (2015), 2.5 (2016), 2.6 (2017), 3.0 (2017), 3.1 and 3.3 (2018) and 4.0 (2019). A February 2014 Series B extension led by Dassault Systèmes added $14.2 million, and a $17 million round from existing investors followed in 2016, bringing total funding to $59.7 million at that time. Barry Morris served as CEO until July 2015, when he became executive chairman and Bob Walmsley was promoted to CEO. Dassault Systèmes announced the acquisition of the remaining NuoDB equity in November 2020, closing in December 2020.

Risks & controversies

The company depends heavily on a small number of large strategic relationships, notably Dassault Systèmes — which was both an investor and a customer before acquiring the company — and Temenos, whose banking cloud and SaaS offering embeds the database. Reported 2019 revenue of about $6 million was modest relative to roughly $59.7 million of disclosed funding by 2016, and the company competes against larger distributed database vendors.