13 Big Data Vendors To Watch In 2013

By Doug Henschen 12/11/2012 From Amazon to Splunk, here's a look at the big data innovators that are now pushing Hadoop, NoSQL and big data analytics to the next level.

Couchbase Targets A NoSQL Divide

A top contender in the NoSQL movement, Couchbase is a key-value store that is chosen for its scalability, reliability and high performance. As such, it's used by Internet giants (Orbitz), gaming companies (Zynga), and a growing flock of brick-and-mortar companies (Starbucks). These and other customers need to scale up much more quickly and affordably than is possible with conventional relational databases. Couchbase is the developer and commercial support provider behind the open-source database of the same name.

Key-value stores tend to be simple, offering little beyond record storage. With Couchbase 2.0, set for release in mid-December, Couchbase is looking to bridge the gap between key-value store and document database, the latter being MongoDB's domain. Couchbase 2.0 adds support for storing JSON (Java Script Object Notation) documents, and it adds tools to build indexes and support querying. These basics may not wow MongoDB fans used to myriad developer-friendly features, but Couchbase thinks scalability and performance will win the day. Look for a pitched battle in 2013.

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