DataStax Acquires Aurelius, the Experts Behind TitanDB

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Feb 3, 2015) -

• Will deliver massively scalable, always-on graph database technology for mission-critical Internet of Things (IOT), web and mobile applications
• Will be the only unified distributed database management platform to include graph, analytics, search and in-memory capabilities
• Will simplify the adoption of leading NoSQL technologies to support multi-model use case environments
• Companies like Comcast, Pearson and Riptide IO are all using graph for mission critical application development

DataStax, the company that delivers Apache Cassandra™ to the enterprise, today announced the acquisition of Aurelius LLC, the innovators behind the open source graph database, Titan. As the leading experts in graph database technology, the Aurelius team will join DataStax to build DataStax Enterprise (DSE) Graph, adding graph database capabilities into DSE alongside Apache Cassandra, DSE Search and Analytics. The addition of graph technology to DSE will empower enterprises with true 'multi-model' capabilities that deliver new levels of power and flexibility to transactional applications. With DataStax, customers have a single provider delivering these capabilities in a secure, always-on database platform that remains operationally simple when scaled in a single datacenter or across multiple datacenters and clouds.

Click to Tweet: #DataStax acquires @aureliusgraphs to build #DSEGraph, bringing graph database technology to #Cassandra bit.ly/1zyA3KP

PERSPECTIVES ON THE NEWS

"At DataStax, we understand that the nature of transactional applications has changed in today's radically connected and highly distributed world," said Billy Bosworth, CEO, DataStax. "Accordingly, we purpose built our unified database platform to offer businesses the capability to apply the right database technology to the appropriate use case. Graph capabilities on top of Cassandra's power and scale is an exciting step forward for our customers, and we are delighted to bring the brilliant graph minds at Aurelius to the DataStax team."

"We are seeing an increasing demand for a scalable graph database technology in many of the world's largest organizations," said Dr. Matthias Broecheler, Managing Partner, Aurelius. "Combining DataStax's engineering excellence in distributed database technology with Aurelius' graph expertise, we will have the ability to build a tightly integrated graph database that will easily scale both horizontally and vertically as business demands and use cases increase."

"Mapping relationships between people, machines and sensors is an important element for IOT related use cases such as our smart building control application," said David Leimbrock, CTO, Riptide IO. "In conjunction with DataStax Enterprise, we already incorporate functionality similar to that offered by graph databases, and are excited to see DataStax begin adding these capabilities to its platform."

GRAPH MARKET HELPS DATA-DRIVEN ORGANIZATIONS

As stated in the September 22, 2014 report, IT Market Clock for Database Management Systems, authored by Gartner analysts Donald Feinberg and Nick Heudecker: "Graph analysis is possibly the single most effective competitive differentiator for organizations pursuing data-driven operations and decisions after the design of data capture." The report also advises: "The core advantage of graph database management systems (DBMSs) is the relational data models they support. These data models allow users to describe dynamic and complex domains more naturally and efficiently than is possible in a relational database management system (RDBMS)."¹

GRAPH-SPECIFIC USE CASES

Graph databases are designed to help model and explore data relationships in a way not possible with traditional relational databases. This provides a distinct advantage when used in specific use cases, such as recommendations, identity and access management, financial fraud detection, network impact analysis, logistics, and network and device management.

As part of the acquisition, DataStax adds to its team the passionate experts behind TitanDB, including Dr. Marko Rodriguez, Dr. Matthias Broecheler and the entire Aurelius team, all of whom have hands-on experience with some of the most challenging graph database implementations in the world.

Additional details on the announcement, including how DataStax will support the TinkerPop open source graph computing community, can be found here.

Please visit the DataStax blog to read Robin Schumacher's blog titled "DataStax, Graph, and the Move to a Multi-Model Database Platform."

Availability
Development of DataStax Enterprise Graph will begin immediately with availability announcements coming later this year.

About DataStax
DataStax delivers Apache Cassandra™ in a database platform purpose built for the performance and availability demands of IOT, web, and mobile applications, giving enterprises a secure always-on database that remains operationally simple when scaled in a single datacenter or across multiple datacenters and clouds.

With more than 400 customers in over 50 countries, DataStax is the database technology of choice for the world's most innovative companies, such as Netflix, Adobe, Intuit, and eBay. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., DataStax is backed by industry-leading investors including Comcast Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Meritech Capital, Premji Invest and Scale Venture Partners. For more information, visit DataStax.com or follow us @DataStax.

About Apache Cassandra
Apache Cassandra™ is an open source distributed database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers, providing high availability with no single point of failure. Cassandra offers robust support for clusters spanning multiple data centers, with asynchronous masterless replication allowing low latency operations for all clients.

About Aurelius
Aurelius LLC is a team of software engineers and scientists committed to applying network science and graph theory to problems in various domains including marketing, retail, education, healthcare, telecommunications, and finance. Companies like Cisco, Pearson Education and Los Alamos National Laboratory rely on Aurelius' expertise in implementing large scale graph applications. As the primary developers of the open source Titan graph database and with substantial contributions to the TinkerPop open source graph stack, Aurelius is advancing the state of the art in graph technology.

¹ Gartner, IT Market Clock for Database Management Systems, September 2014
Analyst(s): Donald Feinberg and Nick Heudecker