CumuLogic, a cloud computing software company with a focus on Database as a Service (DBaaS), has expanded its support for NoSQL through a partnership with Couchbase.

CumuLogic Database Service is not a database, nor is it on the data path between a database and an application. It is a unified self-service mechanism for provisioning and managing disparate database services on cloud or bare metal—a Platform as a Service (PaaS) for databases. It can be used for both traditional SQL databases and the more exotic NoSQL databases. Until recently, NoSQL database choices were limited to only MongoDB. CumuLogic has now introduced Couchbase into the mix of supported databases to reflect the increasing use of that technology, especially in mobile applications. Couchbase, it is claimed, has higher sustained transaction throughput rates than competitive document-based NoSQL databases, and so it is better suited to high-volume mobile applications. It also comes with a client-side mobile version, which simplifies the process of building native mobile applications.

As developers enthusiastically download and install the latest NoSQL technologies, there comes a point when NoSQL databases need to be supported in production. Many operations teams struggle to gain the skill set to install and configure all of the available NoSQL options. Through its integration with Couchbase, CumuLogic offers a simple on-ramp for operations teams and database administrators. It allows them to manage, monitor, and control Couchbase—adding and removing shards, for example—without directly installing instances of Couchbase, reverting to command-line tooling, or needing a particularly sophisticated understanding of the topology and performance behaviour of a Couchbase cluster. CumuLogic claims that its platform “eliminates over 75% of administrative tasks with automated provisioning, configuration, performance optimization, scaling, failover, backups, updates and patching, and more.”

CumuLogic also provides a mechanism of encapsulating the deployment and management processes for unfamiliar NoSQL databases in a controlled and repeatable manner to allow database environments to be spun up for staging and testing at whatever scale is required to provide an acceptable performance metric, populated with data cloned from production and destroyed on demand.

Through the partnership with Couchbase, CumuLogic also plans to integrate into their platform support for the Couchbase Server Sync gateway, which provides an HTTP bridge between a mobile client application (speaking to a local shard in Couchbase Lite) and the replicants of those shards in a Couchbase server, again without directly installing instances of the gateway or reverting to command-line tooling.

The CumuLogic platform is packaged in a number of ways:

  • As an on-premises Database as a Service inside the enterprise datacenter: essentially a one-stop shop for provisioning and managing multiple database servers on demand within an enterprise, be they SQL or NoSQL.
  • Database as a Service inside an IaaS cloud, giving enterprises that deploy to public cloud an alternative to their IaaS vendors’ own DBaaS offerings. This provides self-service databases over a greater choice of database technology and better control over the locality of data with respect to processing for regulatory and performance reasons.
  • Database as a Service for service providers, allowing companies offering IaaS cloud services to have their own-label DBaaS service, including a selection of SQL and NoSQL databases.
  • White-label packaging around a specific database solution, allowing a database vendor to quickly offer an on-demand version of its database. The database would usually also be supported as part of the general-purpose version of the CumuLogic platform in the other three configurations.

Couchbase and CumuLogic are working together to approach the marketplace with the joint offering. The partnership with Couchbase also gives CumuLogic access to Couchbase support. Support is provided by the database vendors rather than by CumuLogic, which supports the orchestration layer.