NuoDB is a cloud-native distributed SQL database company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 2008 and incorporated in 2010, NuoDB technology has been used by Dassault Systèmes, as well as FinTech and financial industry entities including UAE Exchange, Temenos, and Santander Bank.
History In 2008, the firm was founded by Barry S. Morris and Jim Starkey, with Morris CEO until 2015. Originally called NimbusDB, the company name was changed to NuoDB in 2011. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts,Darrow, Bow. "Database superstar Jim Starkey touts NuoDB's new patent." Gigaom. August 8, 2012Alspach, Kyle. "NuoDB: We've invented the database of the future." Boston Business Journal. July 30, 2012 NuoDB patented its "elastically scalable database", filing in March 2011 and receiving approval only 15 months later (July 2012).United States Patent 8,224,860 approved July 17, 2012. In 2012, the firm raised $12 million in venture capital funds.Alspach, Kyle. "Database startup NuoDB names backers in $10M roundup." Boston Business Journal. July 9, 2012
In 2013, Gartner listed NuoDB as a niche player in its Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems.Feinberg, Donald. Adrian, Merv. Heudecker, Nick. Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems. Gartner. October 21, 2013 Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech named NuoDB as one of their 2014 Innovation All Stars."BBJ and MHT name 2014's Innovation All-Stars." Boston Business Journal. Oct. 17, 2014 In February 2014, NuoDB announced an extension to its Series B funding round led by Dassault Systèmes. The round added $14.2 million to the company's funding. Morgenthaler Ventures, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Longworth Venture Partners participated in the round.McMillan, Liz. "NuoDB Announces New Round of Investment." February 27, 2014
In 2015, Gartner again listed NuoDB, this time as a Visionary in its Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems.Feinberg, Donald. Adrian, Merv. Heudecker, Nick. Ronthal, Adam M. Palanca, Terilyn Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems 2015. Gartner. October 12, 2015 Morris, the company's founding CEO, became executive chairman in July 2015. Bob Walmsley, previously executive vice president of sales and services, was promoted to CEO. NuoDB raised a $17 million financing round in 2016 from existing investors including Dassault Systèmes, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Longworth Venture Partners and Morgenthaler Ventures. At that time, the company had raised a total of $59.7 million in funding. In 2017, CauseSquare announced its partnership with NuoDB, selecting NuoDB as the official database for the mobile social engagement platform designed for the non-profit sector.
In 2018, NuoDB became available on the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. One year later, NuoDB added Kubernetes availability in pursuit of a cloud-native, cloud-agnostic, multi-cloud strategy. In 2019, Temenos AG partnered with NuoDB, promoting scalability and IT service continuity.
NuoDB was acquired by Dassault Systèmes in December 2020.
Technology SQL compliant, NuoDB's database technology is classified as "NewSQL". It has a distributed object architecture that works in the cloud,Alspach, Kyle. "Big data updates: Terascala, NuoDB." Boston Business Journal. September 4, 2012 which means that when a new server is added in order to scale-out the database, the database runs faster.Network World. February 7, 2013Proctor, Seth. "Exploring the Architecture of the NuoDB Database, Part 1." InfoQ. July 12, 2013 The database scales out without sharding. The database distributes tasks amongst several processors to avoid bottlenecks of data.Darrow, Bob. Gigaom. July 9, 2012 It uses peer-to-peer messaging to route tasks to nodes,Darrow, Bob. Gigaom. March 2, 2012 and it is ACID compliant.Kusnetzky, Dan. "NuoDB developer profile." ZDnet. July 30, 2012
The database uses a "tiered approach — comprising multiple, redundant tiers of transaction engines (TE) and storage managers (SM)." This approach helps scale the data predictably in the cloud. NuoDB domains consist of several redundant TEs and SMs that can run on the same platform. Adding database capacity can be done by adding more TEs or SMs."The Multi-Version Concurrent Database is Born." Dr. Dobb's World of Software. October 22, 2013 The NuoDB 2.6 release added support for active-active database deployments across multiple Amazon Web Services (AWS) availability zones. Unlike other database systems, NuoDB makes it possible to expand its databases by adding more servers rather than simply replacing hardware.
The system was designed to align with – and expand upon – IBM computer scientist Edgar F. Codd's 12 rules for relational databases.Darrow, Barb. Gigaom. January 15, 2013 It adds the ability to run anywhere; elastic scalability; nonstop availability; a single, logical database; and distributed security.Kanaracus, Chris. "NuoDB launches cloud-friendly database." ComputerWorld. January 15, 2013 It is available in a free developer version ("Community Edition") and an enterprise version.Walton, Zach. "NuoDB Officially Launches Its Cloud-Based Database." WebProNews. January 29, 2013Bell, Peter. "NuoDB Launches Scalable, Cloud Based, Relational Database." InfoQ. March 12, 2013 The Community Edition was expanded on January 31, 2017 to enable scale-out across multiple hosts.
With the release of version 3.0 (2017), NuoDB expanded its ecosystem beyond Amazon Web Services, adding Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Red Hat environments and expanded multi-availability zone deployment for hybrid or multi-cloud environments. NuoDB Operator achieved Red Hat OpenShift Operator Certification in 2019. Support for Kubernetes Operators, public clouds (Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure), and cloud-native and cloud-agnostic capabilities was introduced in version 4.0 (2019), along with a new feature for assessing database health and performance.
Release history Date Release Notes April 2012 beta 8 database allowed platform support for Solaris. November 2012 Candidate 1 Eden, Whitney."New Product News - Nov. 15, 2012" Information Management. November 15, 2012 January 2013 1.0 May 2013 1.1 included migration assistant to move databases from Windows SQL Server onto NuoDB August 2013 1.2 Pinal, Dave. "SQL-NuoDB Releases 1.2 has Several SQL Enhancements." SQL Authority. August 8, 2013 October 2013 2.0, Blackbirds extended geographical support November 2014 2.1, Swifts including low-latency HTAP capabilitiesFrancis, Ryan. "New products of the week." Network World. Nov. 10, 2014. Slide 20 December 2015 2.4, Cranes September 2016 2.5 added SQL enhancements January 2017 2.6 added table partitions, storage groups, and active-active support for Amazon Web Services Inc. functionality September 2017 3.0 active-active across a hybrid or multi-cloud April 2018 3.1 added graphical dashboard of database and system metrics October 2018 3.3 added container-native features and availability for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform July 2019 4.0 added expanded cloud-native and cloud-agnostic capabilities with support for Kubernetes Operators and public clouds (Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure)
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