Is in-memory the new black? It is increasingly becoming the must-have technology.
As in-memory reaches a tipping point within enterprise data environments with many recent announcements for leading enterprise vendors including it in their latest offerings, there is speculation that it may help companies finally attain the holy grail, making the real-time enterprise a reality.
While in-memory technologies have been available for well over a decade, they have often been niche solutions, used within high-speed transaction servers within financial services, or as part of embedded solutions. But now enterprise systems vendors are offering in-memory as a quick-to-deploy solution to organizations of all sizes, including those that may have not had the budgets for in-memory-capable processors.
What do companies see as the advantages of in-memory? For one thing there is the ability to run applications faster. By loading data in memory, data can move 1,000 times faster than the traditional CPU-to-disk round trip. In addition, in-memory database systems necessitate only a single movement of data, adding to the speed advantage.
In-memory technology may also help reduce the time required to manage data sites, since it removes the complexity associated with traditional databases that are optimizing disk space. This can free up data professionals for higher value work.
But the most promising aspect of the new availability of in memory may be the ability to finally deliver on the promise of the real-time enterprise - providing actionable information to business decision makers when they need it and opening up access to insights to more users than ever before.
Here are the winners of the 2014 DBTA Readers' Choice Awards for Best In-Memory Database:
Winner: SAP HANA
Finalists:
Couchbase Server
MemSQL