CurrentAnalysis in Memory Tech

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In-Memory Technology BringsPerformance and Scale to Modern Apps

Advisory Report

June 30, 2011

Issue

Enterprises have ound themselves in the midst o a data explosion ater building modern applications thatare client-based and thereore prone to enormous peak workload pressures. Teir only recourse is to keepthrowing money at the problem in the orm o database investments, but this is not money well spentwhen it comes to solving long-term scalability and perormance issues as trends such as mobile computingcontinue to exacerbate the situation. Companies want to expand their business opportunities by ofering

customers new Web services, but are eeling crushed under inrastructures built or a diferent era.Fortunately, signicant declines in hardware costs and advancements in memory technology have prompt-ed a surge o interest in in-memory computing, which is used or both high-volume transaction applica-tions and large-scale compute resource hogs such as BI. Application platorm vendors are realizing thatthe high-perormance technology currently represents one o the biggest opportunities or evolving theirinrastructure technology and providing new points o diferentiation. As a result, the industry has seen aurry o activities around in-memory technology-related acquisitions and new product announcementsby application platorm providers, a trend which will continue in the oreseeable uture. Te end result omuch o this activity will be the eventual release o ull data services platorm oferings to provide custom-ers with more integrated options or insuring high availability, perormance scalability, and real-timeanalytics through distributed in-memory systems. Such objectives are still a ways away or most vendors,however, which are keeping details o such plans under wraps.

Tis report will provide inormation on the current state o the in-memory computing market, a recap ovendor oferings, and analysis on how vendors are doing on their strategy to ofer in-memory to broadermarkets.

Current Perspective

In-memory technology has recently become a critical component o the enterprise architecture and animportant way or application platorm providers to diferentiate themselves in a highly competitive land-scape. Speed and scale are the new buzz words in the enterprise application development world, becauseas one in-memory computing engineer puts it, Enterprises have sized their inrastructures or Web-basedworkloads, and not or the mobile era. Companies have the inrastructure in place to support the 9amworkload peak when most workers get online to check e-mail; however, those architectural requirements

pale in comparison to the new mobile era, in which more devices are accessing more Web applicationshaving to support varying levels o passwords and authentication to take advantage o the increasinglysophisticated Web services being ofered. In-memory computing now holds the promise o taking whathas been pegged as expensive, niche distributed caching (data grid) technology and bringing it to a broadercustomer base, beyond industries such as nance which need transaction-intense applications. wo keythings have happened to spark this shit: the cost o RAM (random access memory) has dramatically

Charlotte DunlapCurrentAnalysis

Senior Analyst,

Application Platforms


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Advisory Report

dropped, and advances in memory technology, particularly in the way o data compression, havebecome more sophisticated.

High perormance remains the best reason or adopting in-memory technology in order to supportthe creation o next-generation elastic applications which require scalability. In-memory comput-ing provides the ability to store data in the RAM o special servers, a stark contrast to conventional

and slower methods o disk-based operations within relational database systems. As applicationrequirements have progressed, in-memory computing lets users eliminate relatively slow disk I/Oconstraints and replace that with distributed data access. Latency is reduced by moving data closer tothe application. Memory that is leveraged through caches provides a major perormance boost overstandard disks, reportedly 10,000 times aster or more. Tis in turn reduces the cost o operations bybeing able to o oad pricey transactional-based backend systems.

Application Platform Providers Rally Around In-Memory

A market once dominated by in-memory pioneers Oracle (Coherence) and GigaSpaces is now beingexploited by numerous application platorm providers. Since high-perormance and scalability can-not be ater-thoughts in application development, it makes sense that application platorm providersare making signicant investments in order to align distributed in-memory caching technology moreclosely with their core inrastructure platorms. New techniques or accessing data are especially

important as middleware vendors add advanced analytics such as complex event processing (CEP)to their portolios, because these technologies require high-volume transaction processing. Te newadd-on technology also provides vendors with an important up-sell opportunity. Additionally, thetechnology provides a point o diferentiation among application platorm providers, which are jock-eying to highlight their in-memory computing techniques as they go ater new markets includingutility, retail, and telecommunications. Investing in the advanced technology also reinorces vendorscommitment to the application inrastructure market, proving their ability to meet customers needor scalability, reliability, and availability.

A number o in-memory activities and announcements have been made in recent months by appli-cation platorm providers, as new data services become an integral part o an application inrastruc-ture portolio. Recent activities include Sotware AGs acquisition o in-memory leader erracotta,strengthening its cloud strategy and enhancing its application platorm product (webMethods); and

SAP released its in-memory application acceleration appliance, called HANA, which will initially bepositioned as a data warehouse enhancement tool or accelerating large-scale analytics.

In-Memorys Growing Importance

Data caching and data grid oferings provide a nice option in solving the data explosion, becausethey are considered to be airly unobtrusive solutions, which can be inserted as part o an enterprisearchitecture without necessarily having to rewrite database schemas or applications. Tere will likelybe a transition in caching technology, going rom ad hoc caching located in key parts o the applica-tion platorm and ultimately moving into a shared distributed data service. Eventually, most vendorsare looking to evolve their enterprise in-memory data grid tools into ull data services platorms,which will likely include support or security, caching, perormance availability, analytics, and poten-tially schema isolation with the ability to move across diferent data sources. Tis is what customersare ultimately looking or: new platorms that will insure ailure resilience, high availability, and

perormance scalability as a top-tier architectural component. Tese sorts o requirements wouldbe very expensive to ulll under a relational database scenario where the task o increasing capacitytypically involves months to provision new hardware and databases.

Te cloud computing phenomena has urther increased interest in the technology, which has theability to provide elastic scale with low latency or more e cient data sharing across broad cloudenvironments. For example, Sotware AG agged the cloud as the most immediate opportunity thatwill come rom its acquisition o in-memory technology rom erracotta. Red Hat JBoss EnterpriseData Grid, a new product based on the Innispan JBoss community project, is part o Red Hats

Report:

In-Memory

Technology Brings

Performance and

Scale to Modern

Apps

Application Infrastructure


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strategy or a comprehensive, open source, distributed service abric to help developers develop,deploy, and manage applications in the cloud.

Emerging technologies are not without their problems, and application platorm vendors need toaddress a number o important issues beore in-memory will be widely adopted. While some RFPshave been submitted to standards groups, there has been little progress made in the efort to build

standards around in-memory computing, or example. Until that happens, we anticipate highcosts associated with proprietary technology, ofset by open source projects such as those underwayby Red Hat. Furthermore, challenges remain in terms o turning complex memory technologyinto consumable products. Until in-memory is more transparent and compatible with traditionaldatabase technology, inertia will slow adoption.

Report:

In-Memory

Technology Brings

Performance and

Scale to Modern

Apps


Vendor Current Capabilities/Future Opportunities In-MemoryStrategy Score

(5 best)

IBM IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale is IBMs distributed caching solution which addresses scalability issuesand provides an enhanced quality of service for building high-performance, data-intensive applications.The technology is also appropriate for cloud technologies because of its support for high availability. IBM

recognizes the potential opportunity in this market based on a growing mobile market and is thereforedevoting large efforts towards improving the consumability around the application architecture choices ofthis complex technology.

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Oracle Oracle Coherence represents the industrys leading in-memory technology, delivered in the form of adata grid solution, providing scalability to companies mission-critical applications. The mature technolo-gy enables real-time analysis, extreme transaction processing, and event processing. Oracle CoherenceEnterprise Edition is a distributed data management solution for Java applications and a component ofOracle Fusion Middleware, providing enterprises with deeper integration with the application infrastruc-ture server to support features including Web session management, persistence, and transaction. It isnot clear, however, where Oracle is going with this technology in terms of further Fusion Middleware inte-gration and broadening its customer reach beyond non-capital markets firms.

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TIBCO TIBCO ActiveSpaces Enterprise Edition is the companys in-memory data grid product. When embeddedinto Business Events 5.0, the ActiveSpaces technology is called BusinessEvents DataGrid, which sup-ports complex-event processing, operational intelligence, dynamic business process, and stateful eventrule-type applications. TIBCO ActiveSpaces Transactions is a fully distributed, in-memory transactionalapplication server with an in-memory object store which embeds the ActiveSpaces Enterprise Edition as

well. These capabilities allow it to place all data in-memory for lower latency when doing transactions.Typical customers have been credit card payments systems, mobile payments, and other extreme trans-action use cases.

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Software AG Software AG confirmed its commitment to in-memory caching when it acquired market leader Terracottaearlier this year. Terracotta provides Software AG with the de facto caching standard for enterprise Java,which is involved with hundreds of thousands of deployments in the open source community. The acqui-sition helps Software AG eventually fulfill its plans to offer its middleware as a platform-as-a-service byincreasing the performance and scalability of its app platform, webMethods. After successfully complet-ing integration of IDS Scheer with its software portfolio, the company is poised to take on new acquisitionand integration challenges.

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Red Hat Red Hat recently announced a limited release of JBoss Enterprise Data Grid, a product based on theInfinispan JBoss community project. The scalable, distributed data cache aims to ease the load on da-tabase servers, improve response time in applications, and improve resilience. It is part of Red Hatsstrategy for a comprehensive, open source distributed service fabric to help developers develop, deploy,and manage applications in the cloud. Red Hat is emphasizing the need for open standards around thisevolving technology, and it is in a good position to continue this discussion. The company is also clearly

articulating its strategy and roadmap around in-memory technology, which is expected to evolve into adistributed data service platform eventually.

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Microsoft In recent months, Microsoft began including new caching technology available in Windows ServerAppFabric, called Caching Services, to enable distributed in-memory caching for ASP.NET applications.The technology requires no code changes, but is simply plugged into the ASP.NET model to enable Webapps built on that framework to apply elastic caching and add or remove resources as Web apps needto scale. As an extension to this product, Microsoft has also just released into production Windows Azure

AppFabric Caching for the cloud. The service caches all types of data and provides multi-tenant caching.

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A Scorecard Illustrating Application Platform Providers Different Approaches to In-Memory Computing

Continued


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Advisory Report

Recommended Actions

Recommended Vendor Actions

Application platorm vendors should outline their strategy or enhancing core platorms with in-memory technology, either through acquisitions or in-house development. Tese companies are ina position to get in ront o an emerging, advanced technology and take advantage o new businessopportunities and customer markets. In-memory is an important technology that can help positionvendors as thought leaders, able to anticipate where the market is going.

Vendors moving into this space need to work toward moving their high-speed tools into ull data

services platorms, which include unctionality such as security, caching, perormance availability,and real-time analytics.

Vendors need to improve their messaging around in-memory technology roadmaps and in provid-ing general knowledge around this evolving technology. A number o vendors are limited in theirmarketing collateral and need to make such material available to the industry and especially custom-ers, considering this is a new concept or many.

Recommended Buyer Actions

Customers o application platorms need to begin to understand in-memory technology and itsgrowing importance in helping increase application perormance and scalability. Some customerswill be interested in using in-memory computing or enabling event processing and real-time analyt-ics.

Enterprise customers with growing volumes o client-based applications should have discussionswith their application platorm providers regarding the best methods o adopting in-memorycomputing with minimal disruption to the business. Users should be looking or vendor roadmapsand strategies around distributed in-memory and data platorms.

In-memory computing technology will likely impact broader numbers o enterprises sometimeover the next 12 to 24 months, beyond traditional users (such as nancial rms) o high-peror-mance, analytical technology. Organizations should be looking at how vendors are simpliying thecomplexity o in-memory technology into easy-to-use and manageable data platorms.

Report:

In-Memory

Technology Brings

Performance and

Scale to Modern

Apps


Vendor Current Capabilities/Future Opportunities In-MemoryStrategy Score

(5 best)

VMware In Q4 2011, as part of its vFabric cloud application platform, VMware will release SQLFire in-memorydata management software, which includes the SQL interface to make it easier for SQL users to add a

distributed data platform which supports applications that experience changing user workloads and needextremely high performance. Stemming from its GemFire technology, SQLFire enables scalability withinits application platform by providing elasticity at the data tier so (typically Web-oriented) applications canscale to accommodate spikes in users. The technology also represents an opportunity to help VMwarebetter establish itself as an app platform provider with scalability and reliability on par with its leadingcompetitors.

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ProgressSoftware

Progress Softwares ObjectStore technology is distributed data caching targeting customers with real-time applications. ObjectStore Enterprise aims to simplify development of enterprise applications thataccess relational data through either model-driven or schema-driven development. The technology sup-ports cross-platform deployment of high-performance applications written in Java, C++, or C# and isused for development in BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, and Microsoft .NET frameworks.

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SAP SAP received worldwide attention following the release of its in-memory application acceleration technol-ogy, called HANA, which uses sophisticated data compression techniques and emphasizes advancedanalytics. The appliance will initially be positioned as a data warehouse enhancement tool for accelerat-ing large-scale analytics; however, SAP claims the technology has the potential to be the data platformfor massive applications as they are built, eventually replacing maintenance-intensive database manage-

ment systems, calling it a major disruptive play for the industry. Under HANAs unique engine, not only isthe data held in RAM vs. disks, but it is more intelligently organized to eliminate duplication.

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A Scorecard Illustrating Application Platform Providers Different Approaches to In-Memory Computing (Continued)

CurrentAnalysis in Memory Tech

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