Versant corporation

Versant Corporation

Company type	Public (until acquisition)
Industry	Software, Database management
Predecessor	Object Sciences Corporation
Founded	August 1988 (1988-08) in Menlo Park, California, United States
Founder	Dr. Kee Ong
Defunct	2012 (2012)
Fate	Acquired by Actian Corporation
Headquarters	Redwood City, California , United States
Key people	Michael Seashols (CEO, founding), Dr. Kee Ong (CTO, founding), David Banks (CEO 1993), Nick Ordon (CEO 1998), Jochen Witte (CEO 2005)
Products	Versant Object Database (now Actian NoSQL Database), Versant JPA, Versant FastObjects, db4o (acquired)

Versant Corporation was a U.S.-based software firm specializing in NoSQL database management solutions. Established in 1988 in Menlo Park, California, its main office was located in Redwood City, California.

By 2005, Versant held a relatively minor share of the object-oriented database market compared to industry leaders like IBM and Oracle. Nonetheless, in 2003, Versant ODBMS was recognized alongside IBM UniData as a prominent example of object-oriented database technology.

History

The company originated in August 1988 under the name "Object Sciences Corporation," founded by Dr. Kee Ong. It utilized research from the University of Wisconsin to create a commercial database system designed to complement object-oriented programming languages. The founding executive team featured CEO Michael Seashols and CTO Dr. Kee Ong.

In 1990, the firm rebranded as “Versant Object Technology,” and David Banks assumed the CEO role in 1993. On July 18, 1996, Versant went public on NASDAQ under the ticker VSNT, raising $14.9 million. The headquarters moved from Menlo Park to Fremont, California in 1997. Nick Ordon replaced Banks as CEO in January 1998, and the company adopted the name Versant Corporation in July of that year.

Throughout the 1990s, most research and development efforts were dedicated to supporting product releases across various platforms. Outsourcing maintenance tasks to India played a crucial role in sustaining operations during this time.

In March 2004, Versant expanded its presence in the European Windows market by acquiring Poet Software GmbH. Jochen Witte, formerly president of Poet, became Versant’s CEO in 2005. That same year included a 1-for-10 reverse stock split. On December 1, 2008, Versant purchased the database assets of Servo Software (previously db4objects), recognized for its open source embedded database technology db4o.

Initially, Versant supported C, C++, and Smalltalk. Java support was introduced in 1995, followed by C# and the .NET platform in 2009. In 2012, Versant launched Versant JPA—a Java Persistence API 2.0-compliant interface—and presented a technical preview of an analytics product incorporating Apache Hadoop compatibility.

Towards the end of 2012, after declining an acquisition proposal from UNICOM Systems Inc., Versant agreed to be acquired by Actian Corporation, known for its work on Ingres and Vectorwise. This acquisition highlighted big data capabilities and was finalized in December for around $37 million.

Products

The Versant Object Database was rebranded as Actian NoSQL Database and functions as the metadata repository for Avalanche—Actian’s cloud data warehouse built on VectorH, a massively parallel processing (MPP) variant of Vector (previously Vectorwise).

In addition to the core Versant Object Database, the company offered two other commercial object-oriented database management systems: Versant JPA and Versant FastObjects, alongside the open-source database db4o.

• Versant JPA (currently NoSQL JPA) is a JPA 2.0-compliant interface designed for its object database and includes a technical preview of an analytics platform with Hadoop integration. It is available as both a server and SDK for Windows and Linux.
• Versant FastObjects (now NoSQL FastObjects) provides an object-oriented alternative to relational databases aimed at .NET persistence.
• db4o was an embeddable open-source object database supporting Java and .NET environments; it was discontinued by Actian in 2014.

Features comparison

	NoSQL Database	NoSQL JPA	NoSQL Fast Objects
C/C++	Yes	No	Yes
Java	No	Yes	Yes
.NET	No	No	Yes
Enterprise scalability	Yes	Yes	No
Embeddable	No	No	Yes
Minimal administration – no specialized DBA required	Yes	Yes	Yes
Dual client/server caching architecture – improve performance by balancing resources	Yes	Yes	Yes
Multicore scalability – maximize hardware utilization	Yes	Yes	No
No mapping code required – focus on business logic	Yes	Yes	Yes
Online schema evolution – update without downtime	Yes	Yes	Yes

Versant also created "enJin," an infrastructure platform designed to accelerate transactions by decoupling J2EE applications from data stores through middleware object caching. IBM endorsed Versant enJin as a solution to enhance performance for IBM WebSphere applications.