NuoDB
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software, Database management |
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Barry S. Morris, Jim Starkey |
| Headquarters | Cambridge , United States |
Area served | Global |
Key people | Barry S. Morris (Founder, former CEO), Bob Walmsley (CEO from 2015) |
| Products | Distributed SQL database software (Community Edition and Enterprise Edition) |
| Parent | Dassault Systèmes |
| Website | www |
NuoDB is a cloud-native distributed SQL database provider based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 2008 and officially incorporated in 2010, NuoDB delivers technology solutions to a variety of sectors, including clients such as Dassault Systèmes and financial institutions like UAE Exchange, Temenos, and Santander Bank. The company specializes in scalable and elastic database platforms tailored for cloud infrastructures, facilitating digital transformation efforts within industries such as FinTech and enterprise software.
History
The company was founded in 2008 by Barry S. Morris and Jim Starkey, with Morris serving as CEO until 2015. Initially named NimbusDB, the firm rebranded to NuoDB in 2011. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, NuoDB secured a patent for its "elastically scalable database" technology in 2012, following a patent application filed the previous year. That same year, it attracted $12 million through venture capital investments.
In 2013, Gartner classified NuoDB as a niche contender in its Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems. The company earned the Innovation All Star distinction from Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech in 2014. In February of that year, NuoDB expanded its Series B financing by raising $14.2 million led by Dassault Systèmes, with participation from Morgenthaler Ventures, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and Longworth Venture Partners.
By 2015, Gartner elevated NuoDB’s position to Visionary within its Magic Quadrant. At this time, Morris shifted to the role of executive chairman while Bob Walmsley assumed the CEO position. The following year, the company secured an additional $17 million from existing investors, bringing total funding to nearly $60 million. In 2017, NuoDB formed a partnership with CauseSquare, becoming the designated database provider for its mobile social engagement platform aimed at nonprofit organizations.
NuoDB advanced its cloud offerings by launching on the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform in 2018 and incorporated Kubernetes support in 2019 to facilitate a cloud-native multi-cloud strategy. That year also saw collaboration with Temenos AG to boost scalability and ensure IT service resilience.
In December 2020, NuoDB was acquired by Dassault Systèmes.
Technology
NuoDB’s SQL-compliant database solution is categorized as NewSQL and utilizes a distributed object architecture optimized specifically for cloud deployment. This architecture allows horizontal scaling through the addition of servers, enhancing performance without depending on sharding techniques. The system distributes processing loads across multiple processors to prevent bottlenecks and employs peer-to-peer messaging for efficient task routing while maintaining ACID transaction guarantees.
Its architecture is tiered with several redundant transaction engines (TE) and storage managers (SM), enabling consistent scalability within cloud environments. Capacity can be increased by adding more TEs or SMs as needed. Version 2.6 introduced active-active configurations spanning multiple AWS availability zones, allowing expansion through server addition rather than hardware upgrades.
Rooted in the relational database concepts developed by IBM scientist Edgar F. Codd, NuoDB extends these foundations with features such as elastic scalability, continuous availability, a unified logical database model, and distributed security mechanisms. The company offers both a free Community Edition and an enterprise-grade version; the Community Edition received enhancements in 2017 to support scale-out across multiple hosts.
With the release of version 3.0 (2017), NuoDB expanded compatibility beyond AWS to include Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Red Hat platforms, improving multi-availability zone deployment capabilities suitable for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The NuoDB Operator achieved Red Hat OpenShift Operator Certification in 2019. Version 4.0 (2019) introduced Kubernetes Operator support, broadened public cloud integration, and added tools designed to monitor database health and optimize performance.
Release history
| Date | Version | Details |
|---|---|---|
| April 2012 | beta 8 database | added support for the Solaris platform. |
| November 2012 | Candidate 1 | |
| January 2013 | 1.0 | first official stable version. |
| May 2013 | 1.1 | introduced a migration tool to facilitate database transfers from Windows SQL Server to NuoDB. |
| August 2013 | 1.2 | incorporated multiple improvements to SQL functionality. |
| October 2013 | 2.0, Blackbirds | broadened geographic deployment capabilities. |
| November 2014 | 2.1, Swifts | rolled out low-latency HTAP features. |
| December 2015 | 2.4, Cranes | |
| September 2016 | 2.5 | delivered additional SQL feature enhancements. |
| January 2017 | 2.6 | added support for table partitioning, storage groups, and active-active functionality on Amazon Web Services. |
| September 2017 | 3.0 | enabled active-active deployment across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures. |
| April 2018 | 3.1 | released a visual dashboard for monitoring database and system metrics. |
| October 2018 | 3.3 | introduced container-native capabilities with availability on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. |
| July 2019 | 4.0 | strengthened cloud-native and cloud-agnostic features, supporting Kubernetes Operators and major public clouds (Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure). |