By MATT GALLAGHER, Red Herring journalist
When Amazon goes down, so does everyone else. Outages last October and June caused the disruption of Flipboard, Foursquare, Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram and others.
So why put all your cloud data in one basket?
With the release of version 3.0 of the TransLattice Elastic Database (TED), you no longer have to. TransLattice now provides the world’s first geographically distributed Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) to deploy on multiple public cloud provider networks at the same time, as well as on virtual machines (VMs), physical hardware or any combination thereof. No longer do you have to trust your database to a single cloud, but can instead have it span several clouds, distributed around the world, which makes surviving the next mega hurricane practically a breeze.
“TransLattice provides the world’s first and only cross-cloud database, and we control the data within all availability zones in those clouds,” TransLattice’s CEO Frank Huerta told Red Herring. “We can be in Amazon East, but not West, or not in Amazon Europe, or only in Amazon Europe. What’s unique about what we do now is we can tie multiple clouds together for redundancy, to avoid vendor lock in.”
The company’s latest version of TED also features upgraded monitoring capabilities to become a stronger, more robust product, Huerta said. Along with the release of the new version of TED, the company also announced a new partnership with Amazon to use its infrastructure.
TransLattice effectively geographically distributes the data through multiple clouds, but keeps it all under one unique database. Companies no longer need to federate systems or run isolated databases, which can be very costly and cumbersome.
“We can handle transactions from all over the globe, in and out of cloud, and globally resolve those, all in the right order, through one unique data base,” Huerta explained.
Most centralized databases in a geographically distributed world rely on a single backup source, which can be difficult to scale geographically and compliance is often an issue, as certain data can’t be sent to China, while data in German data centers can’t leave the country, for example. And the backup is often not reliable due to increasing complexity. TransLattice can provide multiple backup from multiple locations and can control the data, so that German data remains in Germany or guarantying sensitive data is never stored in China. “Nobody else can do that,” Huerta said.
Plus, TransLattice can distribute data locally so “the speed of light works in your favor,” Huerta said. The company can instantly move data closer to where it is being requested. If a travelling Palo Alto executive requests data in New York or Europe, for example, that data will be instantly transferred to data centers local to her location to ensure the greatest speed.
“We provide redundancy, but through one global database, not isolated databases as the industry operates today,” Huerta said.
TransLattice provides such elastic infrastructure at a fraction of the industry standard. Based on the company’s own internal estimates, it can save customers 50 to 70 percent of the cost of deploying a database. “We price by the node, not users, and our system is very easy to scale,” Huerta said.
“When you need more memory or storage, you can just add nodes as you need like Lego bricks.”
Further savings come from a simpler approach.
“We really started from scratch with the architecture, so it’s much simpler, more elegant and fundamentally much better,” said Louise Funke, VP of Marketing for TransLattice. “There are no expensive SANs to replicate data or synchronize data. Customers can combine it with existing infrastructure or existing clouds in other regions. It makes it very easy for enterprises to dip their toe in the water. We help accelerate moving to the cloud.”
TransLattice’s technology provides the financial services industry multi-site redundancy delivered with 24×7 availability with no single point of failure, as well as global visibility of data. Content development and mobile infrastructure entities can distribute data at the point closest to users to minimize latency. Military intelligence agencies can distribute computing infrastructure closer to the front, without individual node failure affecting availability. Cloud providers are guaranteed their cloud database will keep running even if major infrastructure goes down.
Naturally, there will be competition, and Huerta admits that he maintains a healthy sense of paranoia. Nevertheless, most competing vendors are deeply wedded to older models, which will make the transition difficult, according to Huerta. “We have important IP that won’t be easy to replicate,” Huerta said.
This technology is the future, one in which TransLattice hopes to lead, Huerta maintained.
“In the next three to five years, 30 to 40 percent of networks will run this way with distributed architecture,” Huerta predicted. “It’s an emerging trend that will keep growing. We’re not going to unseat every database today, but this type of technology is going to have a big seat at the table, and hopefully TransLattice will be at the forefront.”