purchasing databases as a service.” And ParElastic is trying to build the technology that enables that transition.
Without getting into the nitty-gritty details, the two-year-old startup has software that sits between companies’ applications and the underlying (and existing) databases. The software enhances the capabilities of databases—making them more flexible and “elastic”—by harnessing multiple database servers and making them behave as one server from the application’s point of view.
The secret lies in how the software manages all the different loads and resources so that business customers get all they can out of their data systems, while minimizing any disruption to existing IT architectures.
ParElastic has raised just under $3 million from the likes of CommonAngels, General Catalyst Partners, Point Judith Capital, and LaunchCapital. The company is currently running beta trials with its customers.
It’s still very early, of course, but Rugg doesn’t dispute the notion that ParElastic could become something like the next Oracle if all goes well. He does emphasize, however, that his company is “not trying to build a faster database, we’re trying to build infrastructure” to help virtualize databases in the cloud.
So who wins in this sector? Both startups in question have patents that were granted quickly—NuoDB for its emergent database system, and ParElastic for its database management architecture. NuoDB sounds like it’s trying to do something radically different, which is higher-risk but potentially transformative, whereas ParElastic is using more traditional methods to extend the usefulness of existing data systems.
In the end, I doubt that this sector is winner-take-all. It’s more likely that these companies, and many others, will be part of an overall transformation of enterprise IT systems away from the IBMs and Oracles, and toward sleeker, nimbler architectures. But that could still take quite a while.
