Next-Gen Database Developer Couchbase Teams With AWS To Launch DBaaS Offering

Move comes just weeks after the company raised $105 million in financing as the company positions itself for an IPO.

Couchbase is now offering its next-generation NoSQL database as a fully managed Database-as-a-Service running on the Amazon Web Services platform, the company said Tuesday.

Couchbase Cloud has been in beta testing since February and the database service is expected to also be available on Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform by the end of the year.

The general availability announcement comes a little more than a month after Couchbase raised an impressive $105 million in a Series G round of financing led by GPI Capital. That funding is seen as possibly the last round the company will need before an initial public offering (IPO).

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Couchbase, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has achieved annual recurring revenue of about $100 million and has enjoyed 50 percent year-over-year new business growth, said Matt McDonough, senior vice president of business development and strategy, in a recent interview with CRN.

Couchbase joins a number of vendors offering their database software as fully managed cloud services, including rival MongoDB with its MongoDB Atlas cloud-hosted database service, AWS’s own Amazon DynamoDB managed NoSQL database, and MariaDB’s SkySQL cloud database.

A key driver behind Couchbase Cloud is the need for IT managers to get costs under control during these recessionary times, said Jeff Morris, Couchbase vice president of product and solutions marketing, in an interview with CRN.

“Driving costs down is a trend that Couchbase Cloud fits into very nicely,” he said, adding that ongoing digital transformation efforts are also spurring demand for the cloud database service.

Morris observed that while many companies are retaining their core, transactional “data of record” in on-premises databases, many are also replicating data to the cloud for business analytics and other applications.

The executive sees Couchbase Cloud appealing particularly to businesses and organizations that want to develop cloud applications – especially on NoSQL databases – as well as existing Couchbase users looking to expand their use of the platform to the cloud.

Couchbase launched its inaugural partner program in early 2018, which today includes global and regional systems integrators, solution providers, ISVs and technology partners. In the company’s last fiscal year partners sourced or otherwise influenced about 37 percent of the vendor’s business – a number that reached more than 60 percent in the last quarter, McDonough said.

Systems integrators can “dramatically expand their practices” with new cloud data management applications and services built around Couchbase Cloud, Morris said, while ISV partners will benefit from the new offering because it “makes building multi-tenant types of applications significantly easier.”

Couchbase Cloud is based on the Couchbase Server, a multi-purpose NoSQL database that combines a high-performance, memory-first, globally replicating cluster architecture with key-value stores, a SQL-compatible query language and a schema-flexible JSON format.

Couchbase Cloud uses in-virtual private cloud (VPC) deployment on AWS, which Couchbase said allows customers to “dramatically lower the operational costs” of traditional cloud deployments without giving up control of data and security.

In-VPC deployment on AWS uses the Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) to deploy and manage the Couchbase software directly within customers’ cloud accounts. Couchbase said that creates tighter performance links between the database and the underlying infrastructure, providing the same measure of control as running the database within their own data center, but at lower cost.

DevOps administrators can manage Couchbase Cloud deployments through a single control plane that provides oversight of database scaling, availability, monitoring, alerts and upgrades across all database clusters and clouds, according to the company. Cross-datacenter replication (XDCR) capabilities are used to replicate cluster contents and manage data migration, backup and disaster recovery to and from hybrid clouds and intra-regionally.

Couchbase Cloud also will be capable of replicating data to Azure and Google Cloud Platform once those systems are supported, according to Couchbase.