In the opening keynote at SAP Teched && dcode today in Las Vegas, Steve Lucas and I announced the next steps in SAP and MongoDB’s joint commitment to delivering comprehensive Big Data solutions.
First - I want to thank Steve for being such a fantastic host and giving me a few minutes on stage to share how SAP and MongoDB are collaborating to deliver innovative solutions to customers.
A few months ago, on my personal blog, I wrote about how SAP and MongoDB could complement each other. Some of those thoughts - on Visualization and ETL specifically - are now starting to take shape and I would like to expand on them here.
Let me start with one observation that I find fascinating. Gartner tells us that 90% of all data was created in the past two years. Of all the data ever created in the history of man, 90% was created in the past two years. Think about the tools and services you use today and how different they are from just a few years ago. The type of applications we use today, and the data they manage, has changed a lot from 40 years ago when the relational database was created and everything fit neatly into rows and columns.
MongoDB is a next-generation database that allows organizations to build applications never before possible. The technology currently has more than 8 million downloads, with adoption growing at a pace of more than 10,000 downloads per day. The database supports dozens of programming languages, and MongoDB, Inc.’s ecosystem of technology and services partners includes more than 700 companies.
Modern applications need to be flexible to keep up with the pace of global business. Static schemas and canned reports do not cut it anymore. Enterprises also need solutions that scale seamlessly as they grow; they need to efficiently address massive volumes of fast-moving, multi-structured data, and ask increasingly complex questions. MongoDB makes this possible.
MongoDB has quickly become an important database for many organizations, and yet it is not the only source of data that needs to be analyzed. Organizations still need a comprehenisve view of their business, across all applications, including legacy systems and MongoDB. SAP is the leader in Analytics and ETL. That we’re coming together to offer a joint solution makes a lot of sense and offers customer a myriad of new options.
We announced that SAP Lumira will provide agile visualization into MongoDB earlier this year at SAP Sapphire Now. Since then, our teams have been working together to deliver a MongoDB-specific user experience in Lumira.
This was no small feat since MongoDB does not store data in rows and columns like an RDBMS. Instead, data is stored in nested structures within a JSON document to enable a fully dynamic schema. Only a tailored experience will allow users to fully take advantage of the rich data stored in a document database.
Today, the bulk of the work in any Big Data project involves data integration and data quality, areas where SAP Data Services is already a leader. Later this year, Data Services will be adding native support for MongoDB as a source for ETL.
This tighter support for MongoDB will simplify integration, while preserving the fidelity of the JSON structure, rather than artificially flattening the schema. Both Developers and business owners alike want data models that are as accurate a representation as possible. This new integration will allow users to combine all the benefits of MongoDB’s schema flexibility with Data Services’ excellent transformation and data quality capabilities, giving organizations the power to easily extract, transform, and load MongoDB data as part of any Big Data solution. Bringing data together in a powerful, trusted environment allows organizations to identify insights and convert them into business value. The first release will allow users to use MongoDB as a source for big data applications; the second will make MongoDB a target for data services.
A technology alliance between SAP and MongoDB is something that we think will add a lot of value to our mutual customers.
Both companies are committed to working together closely to bring high value solutions We are now working with customers to validate these solutions. If you are a customer that would like to be part of this pilot - please email us at bd@mongodb.com.
As we learn more from these customer projects, we will continue enhancing our integration. Stay tuned for much more.