MarkLogic
Cutting Out System Complexities In Big Data

Today, enterprises realize that Big Data has a wider role to play than the traditional approach of mere storage and retrieval of data. Corporate, business and government bodies generate terabytes of data every second in structured and unstructured formats making it difficult to search across and extract the value held by the data. This is exactly where MarkLogic comes into the picture.

MarkLogic's Enterprise NoSQL database helps enterprises fuse this multi-structured data with its built-in search and application services so it can be stored, managed, searched – and actually used. "Structured and unstructured data are often siloed from each other – and it is the combination of the two that provides actionable information for risk mitigation, decision support and customer engagement," says David Gorbet, VP, MarkLogic.

Founded and incorporated in San Carlos, CA, MarkLogic uses XML documents as its data model, and stores the information within an ACID, fully transactional NoSQL repository. People in the NoSQL world have been taught to believe that NoSQL can not have the same characteristics as the grand-daddy of databases, the relational database. But when MarkLogic Founder Christopher Lindblad designed a "database built for search" nearly 15 years ago, he knew that to be government-grade and enterprise ready, his database had to have the very features that they most coveted in their existing relational databases: consistency, transactions and durability. And he built search right into the technology stack; if data is going to be stored, it has to be searchable, and bolt-on search engines cause synchronization and latency issues (as well as development resources) that he felt should and could be easily avoided.

The result is the company has become a staple in the intelligence, defense and media sectors and is quickly being adopted in the enterprise market. The company's unique approach to the vast data management sector has been boosted with its adoption of even more enterprise features including complementing, leveraging, and enhancing investments in Hadoop - for example, letting clients easily move data between MarkLogic and Hadoop within applications. The company's NoSQL solution, a specialized and flexible database with world-class authentication, authorization and agility, allows organizations to more quickly and easily derive value out of their vast stores of Big Data.

"Last year we introduced features such as REST & Java APIs, JSON Support, and In-Database Analytics to improve accessibility and power for a larger development community," says Gorbet.

And this Fall the company is particularly excited for its latest enterprise features that help organizations better adapt their infrastructure to their fast-changing requirements and budgets by giving CIOs the tools to be more innovative and proactive – while being responsive to the bottom line.

"No one wants to overbuy capacity," says Gorbet, "but no one wants to be caught short-handed either. So this year we are introducing a fully automated and dynamic approach to scaling – that allows contraction as well as expansion. It’s pretty much unheard of, and our customers who were part of our Early Access program were thrilled with our Elasticity features. And, we've made our search capabilities work across storage tiers, so organizations can keep their information in the most cost-effective place - yet still use it in applications."

And while MarkLogic is known for its unique ability to search across documents and values, the new release will mark the introduction of MarkLogic Semantics, which allows RDF triples to be natively stored and searched - and combined with all other data types such as text, temporal, and geospatial, to enable even greater power when it comes to discovery, making better-informed decisions, and delivery of the most comprehensive, contextually relevant information to users.

Having been in business for over a decade, MarkLogic has successfully pinned great companies to its client list including BBC, Dow Jones, Warner Bros., University of Toronto, Reed Business Information, Citigroup, Press Association and most three-letter government agencies. All these companies pretty much come to the same conclusion, says Gorbet. They want an enterprise solution that is future proof.

"Choosing an infrastructure is a big decision," says Gorbet. "You can't just change it every couple years. So before choosing MarkLogic, companies will conduct a tremendous amount of due diligence to test performance and reliability. At the end of the day though, CIOs choose MarkLogic to solve the enterprise-class problem – while providing an extensible and flexible platform that lets people get to all the data – and build those mission-critical applications that really add value to companies."