FoundationDB Announces Funding for Big Data, Cloud Storage

Is NoSQL old already? In a sign of the continuing rapid evolution of database technologies to meet the future challenges of the cloud and Big Data, FoundationDB has announced $17 million in new funding, which will support development of its platform for distributed storage that combines NoSQL with ACID transactions.

The company, which was founded in 2009, secured the funding through a Series A funding round led by Sutter Hill Ventures. It says it will invest the cash in sales and marketing, engineering and support for existing enterprise customers.

The funding promises to be a major boost for FoundationDB's aspiration of building "the ideal storage engine for modern distributed applications" by offering both the reliability of ACID database transactions and the scalability of NoSQL. It also pitches the ability of its solution to support "many different data models (SQL, graph, document, etc.) via a growing collection of open source layers."

FoundationDB began a beta rollout of its platform to 2,000 customers in 2012, and expanded to general availability in August 2013.

If FoundationDB succeeds in using the funding to build a larger customer base and continue the development of its software, the company could become a major force in the emerging world of next-generation database technologies that are robust enough to handle massive Big Data tasks but stable enough for enterprise production use. NoSQL, a more flexible type of database that is better suited to Big Data than traditional platforms such as MySQL, has appeared to be the next big thing in the storage world for some time now. But it comes with its own limitations, which FoundationDB wants to eliminate.

FoundationDB's suitability for a wide range of deployments, from single hosts to private server clusters to public clouds, adds to its potential to disrupt the database ecosystem. Stay tuned as it puts its cash infusion into use.