Cloudant
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software, Cloud computing, Database |
| Predecessor | Cloudant (startup) |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Alan Hoffman, Adam Kocoloski, Michael Miller |
| Fate | Acquired by IBM |
| Successor | IBM Cloudant (as part of IBM) |
| Headquarters | United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Distributed non-relational database service based on CouchDB and BigCouch |
| Owner | IBM |
| Parent | IBM |
| Website | cloudant |
Cloudant is a software solution from IBM, primarily offered as a cloud-hosted service. It functions as a distributed, non-relational database system built upon the Apache-supported CouchDB and the open-source BigCouch initiatives.
Tailored for web applications, Cloudant delivers a unified platform for data management, search capabilities, and analytics. It extends the CouchDB architecture to enable scalable database deployments, providing hosting services, administrative tools, analytical features, and commercial support for both CouchDB and BigCouch. Its distributed architecture ensures data replication across multiple servers to enhance reliability.
IBM acquired Cloudant from the original start-up company, with the acquisition announced on February 24, 2014, and finalized by March 4, 2014.
By March 31, 2018, the Cloudant Shared Plan was discontinued and integrated into the IBM Cloud ecosystem.
History
Cloudant was established by Alan Hoffman, Adam Kocoloski, and Michael Miller, who connected at MIT while analyzing large datasets from projects like the Large Hadron Collider. Their innovative solution to the "big data challenge" secured an initial $20,000 seed investment from Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator in early 2008, followed by a $1 million seed funding round led by Avalon Ventures in August 2010.
Engineered for cloud computing, Cloudant automatically partitions data across multiple servers and scales databases dynamically to accommodate web application requirements. In August 2010, Cloudant released the open-source BigCouch under the Apache License (2.0), alongside offering professional services such as support, consulting, and training. The company introduced its inaugural product in the third quarter of 2010 and had amassed more than 2,500 hosted service clients by January 2011.
In November 2010, CRN recognized Cloudant as one of the ‘10 Cool Open-Source Startups,’ and it became a prominent figure within Boston’s technology sector as a leading database and cloud computing startup.
Following IBM’s acquisition in 2014, Cloudant was incorporated into IBM's Information and Analytics Group. In September 2016, IBM Cloudant contributed the BigCouch project to The Apache Software Foundation, which culminated in Apache CouchDB version 2.0. This update integrated enhancements from both Cloudant and BigCouch, including clustering capabilities, a declarative query language, and improved performance.
Differences with CouchDB
The hosted Cloudant database extends CouchDB functionality with features such as:
- Support for Chained MapReduce Views
- A Java Language View Server that allows Java-based map reduce analytics within CouchDB
- Programmatic database access through API keys
See also
- Apache Software Foundation
- BigCouch
- Big data
- CouchDB
- Cloud computing
- Cloud infrastructure
- Database-centric architecture
- Data structure
- NoSQL
- Real time database