For the sake of unambiguity: Open source software (OSS) primarily means that the source code of the software is accessible and users are free to use the code as they please. Depending on the license, you might be expected to attribute the source code to the authors and / or commit code enhancements back. Note: It’s “free” as in “freedom” not as in “free beer”.
Open Source and Commercialisation?
The origins of open source did not entail commercialization thoughts. However, in the last 20 years a lot of things have changed, and open source projects have seen commercial successes – though not always by the creators and maintainers… Open source is in its core tied to a philosophy and value set for many people. Simplified: For the developer community by and large open source is considered to be “good” versus proprietory source code is considered to be “evil”.
In any case, open source is one way to keep up an active vibrant developer ecosystem that empowers individual developers as well as startups and smaller players. Open Source is actually one piece of the IT ecosystem that helps balance the Big Tech and drive overall innovation. However, we also believe the open source ecosystem needs more balance to be successful longterm. If widely used open source repos cannot even sustain the half or full developer resource needed to maintain them, then there might well be a flaw in the system. If startups cannot build a business around their widely used open source code to sustain it longterm, it is to the disadvantage of the community, especially for the individual developers and SMEs. And likely, the learning at some point will be to keep the source closed instead.
In the following we will share, why we believe now is the unique opportunity to add fairness and balance for the value creators to the open source ecosystem to keep that ecosystem thriving and successful longterm.
What do we mean with “building a business on open source”?
In many talks with many people, we found there’s at least two diametric conceptions of building a business on open source:
1) using open source software for free and building something around it to earn money 2) developing a solution and open sourcing it or parts of it as part of the business model
In this article, we mean the latter and it inherently entails contributing a useful part of a solution to open source. For some open source enthusiasts a company needs to open source everything to be an open source company, and that’s ok. It is just our definition for this article.
A look at the market – the struggle of open source businesses
The Open Source Gold Rush: Success Stories
In the last years there have been many open source success stories, e.g. MongoDB, elastic, Cloudera all IPOd very successfully. There seemingly is a lot of money in open source businesses, e.g. a study by Fraunhofer concluded that “the EU economy is hugely benefiting from global OSS.” [1] Also, companies and big corporations are way more open to work with open source software, indeed 2020 was the first year where open source databases were on par with closed-source databases with regards to corporate adoption (see chart). [2]
And a recent (2021) report showed that across 17 industries, from 1,546 codebases 98% contained open source code. [3] There even is a bit of a hype that open source is the path to success. Now that it’s clear that it is possible to build a business with open source software, VCs also are more open to funding open source businesses. An Andreessen Horowitz report reveals that OSS companies have raised over $10B in capital with a trend towards bigger and bigger deals. [4] Annual invested capital in open-source and related dev tools has increased at around 10% CAGR over the last 5 years. [5] In the years 2018 and 2019 acquisitions, mergers, and IPOs from open-source companies generated over 80USD billion liquidity value according to Bessemer Venture Partners. [6]
The struggle of turning Open Source into a Business
Historically, open source companies have struggled with turning open source adoption into monetary success, “less than a decade ago open source was considered almost impossible to monetize.” [7] Sadly, that’s still a reality today for many open source maintainers and companies alike. Lots of open source maintainers with widely used open source code (“successful open source”), cannot get enough financial support to maintain the code. Of course, there are some successes, but in the end that might also be a question of ratios. For example, in 2020 GitHub reported having more than 190 million repositories. Even if only 10% of those do want to build a business on top of their code, how many of those see a financial reward? Gut feel: Far less than typical startup success odds. On top: What looks successful from the outside, might not really be a viable self-sustained business. Despite its many users, MongoDB spent $100M on development, and it took them more than 10 years to become profitable according to their own statements. [8]
A lot of tech companies struggle with – and spend a lot of time on – all the decisions around an open source business model. It isn’t easy, read up how GitLab struggled with finding a business model, or look closer into the MySQL story, and the MariaDB journey (which is a MySQL fork by the founders and original authors of MySQL); look at blog posts from CockroachDB, MongoDB, or elastic on open source – and what you see is a constant re-positioning of open source strategies.
As Mike Volpi from Index Ventures noted at the Index Open Source Summit (2021): “It took Mongo DB 10 years to derive the business model they run now and monetize successfully…” Wow, 10 years to somewhat successful monetization – and that is one of the major open source success stories.
Open sourcing your main technology as a strategy
In this article, we take a deeper look at open source as a pro-active business strategy.
Open Source to Build Traction
Traction is the most obvious reason to open source your product. It works like Freemium in the Mobile Games market – or more generally the Mobile Apps market. It’s a great way to evaluate product-market-fit and build traction. When you have that, you can think about monetization.
However, there is a big difference between giving something away for free and open sourcing it. If we stay in the mobile app world: Would open sourcing the app help with traction? Would it jeopardize the business model? Unless the main target users are developers, at least in the beginning likely not – less than making the app / game available for free in any case. However, once the app grows at amazing pace, open source availability could become a challenge in several respects.
The most obvious would be fast followers entering with that same game and potentially much bigger marketing budgets and better customer access (e.g. on the apps store). Think what would have happened if WhatsApp would have open sourced all its code from day 1 on top of giving the app away for free? It is a legit hyothesis that a fast follower could have scraped some of the market, changing the whole story. On the other hand, if they would open source all their code base now, how much would it harm them? At some point, it beame all about the traction, brand, customer access, so, I would think, it wouldn’t harm them at all at this point. So, driving traction with open source is probably only a viable idea if you address developers or engineers. It’s clearly a phenomenon of the developer-led landscape, and acts as a developer distribution channel. This being said, the price of open source traction is commercialization. It’s a straight forward trade-off: The more open and free your license is, the harder it is to monetize later on.
Open Source to Build Trust
Trust is something that is likely more important for certain software types (e.g. B2B and core tech).
ObjectBox is a database and with that it is a data-centric “core technology” / software infrastructure, sitting at the heart of a company’s solution. Anything that gets used at the heart of other companies or their solutions needs a lot of trust. Trust is easier to come by with size, “no one was ever fired for choosing SAP.” Being a small startup lies at the opposite on that spectrum for many decision makers. Open Source can be a way to overcome this specific challenge and build trust in three ways:
Transparency: The freedom to verify what the code enables; the internal developer team can check the code and vouch for the solution
Risk-reduction: The freedom to change and maintain the code oneself gives independence from the authors and the success of the solution
Quality: If an open source solution is actively used by a large number of developers quality inevitably goes up
So, if you are looking for adoption from big players in heavily regulated or security-concerned industries, e.g. medical, manufacturing, automotive, anything with mission-critical networks, open source can help you overcome many of the adoption hurdles you are facing.
Open Source as an IP Strategy
Seems counter-intuitive, right? Well, if you are not aiming to patent your technology, you still might not want someone else (who has been working on the same problem) to patent the same technology harming your freedom to operate. You can protect yourself from that risk by open sourcing it. This can come in the form of a copyleft license, designed to encourage further innovation advancements to the benefit of all, but also limiting the commercial exploitation opportunities for everyone. Or, you can choose a more permissive license, allowing people with commercial interests to keep any advancements they make to themselves.
Note: Open source code is not a blueprint with exact instructions; there are no obligations to provide clear docs or explanations. While a majority of open source projects strive to deliver a code base that is readable by others, it is not controlled. So, while open sourcing a technology harms patenting it, unfortunately, a way to still protect it, is making it hard to understand. On the other hand, a patent must have an extensive explanation. This makes it easily repeatable by others in the future, after the end of the patent protection, or as a basis for further research (and ways to tweak it in a novel enough way).
Although it often feels like open source is on the other spectrum of patents, a patent has a limited timeframe and people can learn from it even before it expires. The deal is basically an exchange of knowledge (to be used in the future) for protection (for commercially exploiting it). Keeping it a trade secret has other risks, but could mean that an invention wouldn’t be shared with others for a truly long time. And of course the protection encourages big companies to invest big budgets in R&D too. Delayed open source actually has many similarities with a patent, in both cases the tech is only made available for advancements and unrestricted use after a certain time frame has ended.
Open Source for the sake of it
There are a lot of ideas floating around open source, and some pressure from the developer community to open source everything. Among developers, open sourcing is considered to be good, social, fair, transparent, and worthy. While there are many advantages in open source, it has turned into a kind of “political tool”, and that’s a downside – and probably the opposite of the original idea.
Consideration 1: How is a great software supposed to be maintained and advanced without anyone providing funds? When MMOGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Games) became a thing, people understood that there was a constant cost associated with it and were willing to switch from a one-off fee to monthly payments. Software typically needs to be maintained too. So, there are ongoing development costs associated with a piece of software, even if it is not hosted. So, who benefits from open source in the end, if the original creators cannot keep up their work (assuming they need to eat and sleep)? Before pushing everyone to open source, maybe read here, here, here, or here about open source maintainers struggling under the pressure and dealing with burnout. On the flip side, if a company markets itself heavily as an “open source company”, they should give considerable parts of their own value creating solution back to the community. Using open source tools and building on top of open source code (and even committing back to these solutions) does not mean you are an open source company: If you want to reap the marketing benefits of calling yourself an “open source company” then you should truly be one and commit your value back to open source.
Consideration 2: Who benefits if another company pulls the repo, adds “sparkles”, maybe even some “missing features”, or merely a big “brand name”, or the “marketing budget” and makes a ton of money selling the solution? This is of course assuming a permissive license was used. Well, from an open source perspective that is perfectly fine, and part of the intention of open source. So, it’s great, right? We think, it is easy to understand that some authors who have put all their “free time” / unpaid time into that code struggle to accept when this happens, especially if they have a hard time supporting themselves. But we also understand that big companies with investors (stakeholders…) that have invested heavily in R&D and might or might not yet have reached profitability, don’t really like to see this happen. Unless you are really in it for the fun and driven by altruism and will be in perfect harmony with other people using your code to make money, you should look closely if and how you want to open source your code.
Open Source to save development costs
There is the idea floating around that you can develop your project for free using the open source community. We doubt it works out for many. Of course, if Google maintains a repo that is a base technology used by many developers, developers might want to commit something (anything really) for fame, to be part of it, maybe to get noticed. However, the “anything really” is already a problem: Someone needs to review the submission, respond, potentially rework it and so on… Most other repos will probably not get too many commit requests (let alone from the best tech talent around). Even then, onboarding a large community of unknown developers and letting them commit to your code has its challenges – especially if you are quality-conscious and / or trying to build a business. It creates a lot of work to review commits and reject / merge them. And on top of that from a legal perspective you need to have a waterproof contributors license signed by anyone committing. There clearly is some work involved in the process, maybe more than what it is worth sometimes.
Also consider this: Most successful open source projects that turned into a business success have limited contributors and / or only internal (contracted) contributors. For example, SQLite 99% of the code was done by Richard Hipp (author and founder of SQLite), and MongoDB stated that about 98-99% of the code was done internally. Redis was almost exclusively coded by Salvatore Sanfilippo. In a presentation from Index Ventures (one of the most renowned open source VCs), one criteria for potentially successful open source businesses was that at least 90% of the code base was developed internally – and of course that the team owned all the IP. If you are after cheap development and external help with your project, maybe take a closer look if open source is the right path.
What open source business models exist?
The following open source business models are common, but typically used in combination and not as pure models, e.g. most open source companies offer paid support, but rarely only paid support. Note: With time the examples may become wrong/outdated, because once you look into it, you will notice that companies adapt / change their model regularly. If you need to understand one specific company’s model you need to dig into it individually at that time.
There are three basic open source licenses to be distinguished: permissive, weak copyleft and copyleft.
A quick high-level note on the major license effects
Copyleft – major point is that derived works must be open sourced with a compatible copyleft license, meaning any advancements and changes to the work will be contributed back to the community and freely available for unrestricted use.
Weak Copyleft – the weaker copyleft refers to licenses where not all derived works inherit the just described copyleft effect; typically used in software libraries, e.g. a database library used in app development, so the library can be used in a mobile app without needing to contribute the whole app to open source; only changes to the database library itself would carry the copyleft effect.
Permissive – a permissive open source license allows you to do anything with the source code including keeping derived works to yourself and commercialising on it.
Description
Examples
Note
Paid Support
Providing paid support, trainings, certificates
RedHat
Where has this approach been working – as a pure paid support approach – ever since Red Hat?
Open Core
The core product is free and open source, extra features are paid; have an open-source core and sell closed-source features on top of it
SugarCRM, MySQL
It is basically the widely successful freemium model just with open source; typically you expect the large majority of users to use it for free. The open source part of course enables anyone to build the same features as you
Dual Licencing
The free open source sw uses a copyleft license, whereas the paid license is a commercial license without copyleft effects
MySQL, elastic
This kind of license enables you to monetize your commercial (typically bigger users) and still enables the community to expand the product landscape and innovate based on the code base
Delayed Open Source
All code will be fully open sourced with a time delay (details and timings vary)
MariaDB, Cockroach DB
The effect depends also on the licenses used, but typically it protects you from competition for a given time frame, so only you can exploit your development commercially and gain market share / develop an advantage based on market entry time. At the same time it reduces the risk for adopters, because they know the code will become available to them
Open SaaS
Offering the software open source and hosted as a service (SaaS), which is the primary source of revenue allowing anyone to do the same with the software with a permissive license (self-host or host for others)
WordPress, Sharetribe, MySQL, MariaDB
This model has been the major point of discussion in the last 3 years and is seen by many as the holy grail for monetizing open source software; it also triggered many companies to move away from an open source licensing model as large cloud providers can easily host an open source product at better rates
“Closed SaaS”
Strictly speaking / officially not “open source”. Offering the solution open source and hosting it as a service (SaaS) while NOT allowing anyone to host it, often times unless they contribute the whole solution back to open source (copyleft effect))
MongoDB, elastic, Cockroach DB
The first license that built this specific copyleft-effect into its license was MongoDB (SPSL). The license has since been adopted by e.g. elastic, …. Since then similar licenses have been developed. OSI did not approve the license as an official open source license.
“Ad model”
For lack of a better name, I called it “Ad model”; it’s really having so much reach and traction that companies pay for customer access through your solution or similar co-operations
AdBlock Plus, Firefox
Can take many variations: For instance, the open-source application AdBlock Plus gets paid by Google for letting whitelisted acceptable Ads bypass the browser ad remover. Or, in 2014 Yahoo struck a deal with the Mozilla Corporation to make Yahoo the default search engine in Firefox
Created SSPL in 2018 causing much debate in the community. SSPL is not an open source license
Database
“we own 100% of the IP”; 99.9% developed in house and the few contributions accepted were from people who signed a CLA
US-based
According to statements fromMongoDB, adoption went up after the license change (15 mill dwlds, more than in the prior 10 years together). In 2016 they launched their database-as-a-service offering, which is considered the game changer w. regards to building a business. Until Oct 2017 MongoDb downloads were >30M with 10M from the prior 21 months.
Total funding 1.9B; last round: Series G; Feb 2021 $1B
proprietary PaaS
their main service is proprietary, but they use a lot of open source software and have a strong footprint in the open source community
Backend
NA
US-based
“Databricks is the original creator of some of the world’s most popular Open Source data technologies” – open source is a large part of their positioning and marketing. However, it seems their main offering, while based on open source, is proprietary. So, not an open source business as defined here.
Total Funding Amount $455.9M, last round: series E
Unlike Apache Kafka which is available under the Apache 2.0 license, the Confluent Community License is not open source and has a few restrictions
Kafka is open source, Confluent isn’t
Devtool
NA
US-based
“Founded by the team that originally created Apache Kafka” – the team behind Confluent contributed a lot to open source prior to Confluent, but the Confluent code itself isn’t open source as far as we understand. They heavily rely on other open source software for their tech stack though.
2011, before the founders did “TightDB” on which the Realm DB was based
4 investment rounds. Then MongoDB acquired them for $39M on Apr 24, 2019
started out closed; then open sourced the database and went for the open core model, then subsequently open sourced the Sync solution too, going for the hosted (SaaS) model
from closed to open core to open SaaS; acquired by Mongo to push their backend offerings and complement with an edge and sync (serving Mobile and IoT better)
Database
looks like they accepted contributions
Started in Europe, but HQ went to the US when joining YC 2014; it was since bought bei MongoDB
The founders both left the company the year before it was acquired by MongoDB. The acquisition prize was a little less than what Realm had raised in the years before. The Sync solution is now tied to using the Mongo servers / cloud and a huge part of their push for the IoT market.
Public Domain, which we always considered one of the most “open source” ways to open source but in the light of recent discussions around the SSPL license, strictly speaking it is at least not OSI-approved
Public Domain, mainly monetize big corporates for being in a Consortium; also offers services and since xxxx? encryption (basically paid feature); our guess is that this is not really a repeatable business model
Database
Richard Hipp owns all IP, 99% is developed by himself; very limited outside support (2 part-time freelancers that we are aware of, both don’t have any rights to the IP)
US-based (privately held by Hipp, Wyrick & Company, Inc (author: Richard Hipp and all stock held by his wife G. Wyrick; both work for the company)), HQ
The company has always been and still is run by Richard Hipp and his wife; from a development perspective it is a one-man-show. Richard wrote SQLite himself, as far as we are aware they have no other employees apart from 2-3 part-time supporters for specific versions; very special Open Source Story.
2009 – Couchbase, Inc. is a merger of Membase + CouchOne in 02.2011; both former companies were started 2009 and had funding
251 million USD total funding; 8 rounds with latest Series G for $105 million
Apache 2
Delayed Open Source
Database
US-based (both entities were US-based already before the merger)
Couchbase now mainly sells Couchbase Servers; Couchbase Lite is the smallest part of their business; in 2020 there seemed to be a shift towards the Sync Gateway and Edge Computing market in communication; however, the main business still seems be on the server side and based on cloud lock-in.
redis the database itself is and always was BSD; redislabs is the company that has secured certain rights for redis and sells extensions and add-ons under several licenses, they changed from APGL to Apache 2.0 with Common Clause to a proprietary license called “Redis Source Available License”
redis itself is BSD but features / extensions around it from RedisLabs are licensed uner prorietary licenses
Database
Any contribution needs a CLA that is provided by redislabs; we believe anything committed under this CLA could also be used in redislabs proprietary products (which typically is the same for anything committed under a permissive license, but which has attracted some criticism from the OSS community)
Linux, which was the core of the success of RedHat, is GPL (though of course not the company’s decision)
RedHat is a huge company, definetely not a single product company, and thus also does not really fit into this matrix, however, it is THE example for successful commercialisation of open source and we feel the matrix would lack without it
Backend / Data centric
we believe you can contribute to most (all?) projects without a CLA
US-based
Read here why there will never be another Red Hat (and there is no “Red Hat Model”). Note that of course the Red Hat founders did not write Linux (on which the majority of their success is based), but at the very least they (as well as VA Linux) gave option shares to Linus Torvald out of gratitude (at lest not out of obligation). When both companies successfully IPOd, Linus made 20 Mill USD (in total) from both sales.
Total Funding Amount $39.8M, sold to Sun in 2008 for 1 USD billion
started out with AGPL; several license adaptions and changes in the open source business model over the years, e.g. for a long time they had a 2 year delay for the open source version, but changed that to no delay at some point.
Dual Licensing and Paid Support
Database
Yes, even though called OCA (Oracle Contributor Agreement)
Sweedish company until it was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 (who then were acquired by Oracle)
The founders forked the latest MySQL version when Oracle acquired it. Most of the original database code base was developed by Michael Widenius; with regards to database technologies a pattern emerges: Often the core / most of the base technology is developed by one person – as building a database is a rather huge endeavor that’s kind of striking, isn’t it? BTW: MySQL is named after Monty Widenius daughter (“My”)
Apache 2.0, plus a proprietary license for enterprise features
Started as open core, now a form of closed SaaS with delayed open source: They changed to a proprietary license in 2019, called BSL, which prohibits users from offering CockroachDB as a service (DBaaS, SaaS), and each release converts to an open source license after three years. CockroachDB is therefore officially not considered open sorce anymore
Database
CockroachDB received significant contributions from the community (“we have had over 1590 commits from over 320 external contributors across all our open source repositories” (2020)), CLA: Yes
US-based
In June 2019, Cockroach Labs announced that CockroachDB would change its license from the free software license Apache License 2.0 to their own proprietary license, known as the Business Source License (BSL), which forbids “offer[ing] a commercial version of CockroachDB as a service without buying a license”, while remaining free for community use.
Microsoft bought GitHub for the developer access; that would not have changed if it would have been open source and I do wonder what would have happened to GitHub if it would have been open source; one thing is for sure: GitLab wouldn’t have been able to position themselves as the open source alternative; however: the closed source model worked for them well, even though it is a developer tool.
US-based (development was started in Europe, the founders incorporated in the US in 2014 when joining YC)
GitLab used being open source as a strong positioning factor against GitHub (which was never open source). It was an odyssey to find a sustainable business model (and it seems it is not SaaS). Note: The pure service model and the donation model did not work for them. Again: The code base of the core system was by and large developed by one person.
Yes, and the CLA is shared under a creative commons license that allows you to use it as you like https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mca/
Sweedish company
10 years after it was forked, MariaDB has 20M users, a fast growing database business and has >€100m backing. Note: The pure service model as well as the donation model did not work for them.
Building an Open Source business Exec Summary – TL; DR
There is a lot of evidence that open source companies struggle with open source models and licenses – this is also true for successful companies
There is no “Red Hat Model” – just selling services has rarely worked
There is a trend from successful open source companies towards Source Available licenses instead of “official Open Source licenses”, e.g. MongoDB, elastic, CockroachDB, …
There is an indication that successful open source companies are US-based (even if founded / started in Europe), which we believe is due to the funding opportunities provided in the US: 1) the US provides generally more funding (more and bigger funding opportunities; there is lots of market research on that), 2) US VCs and Silicon Valley have the reputation to also fund at earlier stages, e.g. idea stage, and companies with traction (instead of revenue), investing in a longterm perspective. Traditionally, European investors don’t.
Public domain is strictly speaking also not considered to be an open source license 😮 (at least not if it needs OSI-approval; does it? 🤔)
While Open and Closed SaaS seem at this moment to have been the most successful models, it is no holy grail and definetely does not work for everyone, e.g. it didn’t work as the sole business model for GitLab
Conclusion
The open source market lacks flexibility and transparency from a licencing / legal perspective, and ever more Source Available licenses don’t help: A “license stack” with building blocks like the Creative Commons would be helpful to mark software easily and clearly with regards to the main terms, e.g. “source available”, “free for commercial use”, “attribution necessary” etc. It would help maintainers and users alike, but needs bigger entities to drive this (like an OSI).
The open source market also needs more balance, at the very least more understanding and “love” towards maintainers. More finanical support as well as other ways of giving back to demonstrate the appreciation of well-maintained repos and great free software, will keep the ecosystem healthy and thriving. That’s a community effort; everyone can contribute.
“Why does database performance matter?” “What is the business value of database speed?” “Why should I care about the performance of a database?”
Why database performance matters in a nutshell
Make Faster Decisions
Database speed is the key to compute more data faster and make data-based decisions quickly. Faster decision-making drives business value.
Save Resources & Costs
Database speed translates into resource efficiency. Saving resources (like battery, CPU, memory) saves money and reduces waste.
Better UX & Response Rates
Database speed affects end user response rates significantly – smooth and fast user experiences keep people happy and more productive.
As a developer, it seems clear that database performance matters. At the very least, a fast database that gives you out-of-the-box speed saves time and nerves during development. Any piece of the tech stack that works super-fast makes a developer’s job easier. But there is more to it. Learn, why and how database performance impacts business value and get ideas on how to quantify this for your business case.
Data should be available when need where needed
We all dream of a future transformed by data. Cars that drive themselves to be repaired before a failure occurs. Fridges that are restocked while we are at work. Reducing resource waste to an absolute minimum. Building sustainable cities and communities.[1] It is truly amazing what is possible today…
Then reality hits: Before you can implement amazing solutions to make the world a better place for everyone, someone needs to solve the technical challenges, including hidden requirements. For example: you need the necessary data, and you need it available when needed where needed. This often isn’t that simple. Data persistence, database speed, and data synchronization are typical non-functional or “hidden” requirements. These are prerequisite technologies to allow the application to access, process and possibly depict the data required to answer a request (from another application or from a user), and thus enable the functionalities / features. All in all, this is a pretty fundamental requirement. And it pays off to build your app on top of a solid foundation. Because, if you built your application on a solid foundation, every feature you dream up, no matter when, and any next feature will be easier and faster to implement.
Functional and non-functional requirements – the hidden challenges of your IoT project
While you need data in any application, most often no one will write down where and how to handle it as a user story or requirement. As opposed to features, e.g. “being able to search for names in the address book”, data persistence, database speed, and often even data synchronization are “hidden requirements”. Data is just expected to be available where needed when needed. Whether the data you need really will be available when you need it, depends strongly on the database the application is using and and where this database runs. On top, the mechanisms you employ to exchange data between different devices (end devices, servers, ….) matter.
Hidden requirements are one of the major reasons why the Industry 4.0 dream is still in many respects a dream and not a reality – in Europe at least. Despite it being a topic for more than 10 years. [2]
Database performance
What is a database?
A database is a piece of software that allows the storage and systematic use of digital information. A database typically allows developers to store, access, search, update, query, and otherwise manipulate data in the database via a developer language or API. These types of operations are done within an application, in the background, typically hidden from end users. Most applications need a database as part of their technology stack.
What is database performance?
We like and therefore use the following definition from Craig Mullins (2002): “Database performance can be defined as the optimization of resource use to increase throughput and minimize contention, enabling the largest possible workload to be processed.” [3]
Why does it matter if the database runs on the edge or in the cloud?
An edge database holds data on the (end) devices, where the data is used – and typically additionally sends some parts of the data to a central place like an on-premise server or the cloud. As opposed to this, a server / cloud-based database holds all data on the server / in the cloud. Where the data sits, determines from where, when and how it can be accessed. If all data is on a central server or the cloud, the prerequisite to accessing this data is a working network connection.
Online
Offline
It follows that edge applications are based upon a distributed computing paradigm, allowing edge devices to be autonomous. On the other hand, cloud-based applications are based on the centralized computing paradigm, where one central instance is in charge, with all other devices being dependent upon this central instance. This significantly affects the response time of the application, the availability of the application, and last not least the bandwidth needed for the application, which also translates into cloud costs.
Location matters: while a fast database gives you fast response times, if the database sits in the cloud and needs to be called from edge devices, you need to factor in the duration it takes to request the data and get a response. And with any networking you cannot guarantee response times or ensure it is always available. While this is not the database performance itself, it highly affects application performance.
The impact of database performance on your business
Database performance matters. Whether your solution needs the speed, because of the necessity to re-act in (near) realtime, or to keep your users (customers, employees, …) happy, productive, buying, or just to save costs for stronger edge hardware and the cloud. “Considering that even a single moment of latency or downtime can cost companies thousands of dollars, the speed advantages of edge computing cannot be overlooked.” [4]
The necessity of database speed for mission-critical, security relevant, (near) real-time functionalities
If you need near real time functionalities, every piece in the tech stack matters, but the database has a particularly strong impact on the response rates of your application. Consider autonomous driving, healthcare and security applications, or IIoT solutions for production lines: Any application supporting such a scenario needs to respond reliably with speed. “This is not the same as a lag in loading your favorite cat pictures. A lag in a moving vehicle scenario is a matter of life and death.” [5]
Accordingly, if end devices like cars, smartphones, health trackers, machines on the factory floor are involved, a purely cloud-based application is not an option. Data needs to be stored and used on the devices directly. Thus, an edge database is necessary. Ideally, an extremely fast one.
Examples of use cases with a need for database speed
Anything running on a car really needs to be highly ressource efficient and fast. Ressources on the car are highly limited and database speed translates into ressource-efficency. Autonomous driving capabilities are a special case requiring significant compute power to run the algorithms in real-time within the control unit of the car. As can be easily deducted from first-hand driving experience, during this kind of constant information processing and instantaneous decision making, every fraction of a millisecond counts. Information processing speed and reliability (guaranteed QoS parameters) is of the essence for driver assistance and autonomous driving.
Moving to a purely monetary example, let’s consider roadside tolling. In roadside tolling, the edge devices on the side of the road need to process the information from a moving vehicle in order to identify the car, bill according to usage, and detect violators. Ideally, it even informs the car owner of the result. As the car is constantly moving and can be going fast, all of this needs to happen in a very short amount of time. A super fast database lookup on the edge is key to avoid money loss and deliver good customer service.
For a final example, let us look at an Industrial IoT (IIoT) application: Additive manufacturing. 3D printers use layering techniques with a variety of materials to quickly create custom designed parts. During the layering process, the controller needs to quickly and efficiently incorporate small changes in the environment (e.g. an increase in temperature) to ensure quality and accuracy of the part. Faster and more precise manufacturing is currently limited by the I/O throughput. With a fast database, the I/O throughput is higher, allowing for more complex and finite production.
In short: A superfast database is not a nice to-have, it is a must-have. The database speed a database brings out-of-the-box is critical for such an application.
The impact of database speed on Sales, Conversions, Retention (or at least, nerves)
There is a reason Google forces companies to optimize their websites and mobile applications for performance: There is a wealth of research and evidence that suggests response rates of websites and mobile applications impact user behavior significantly.[6] Even more, there are several studies providing evidence that response rates impact actual buying behavior.[7] While there is less research on other digital applications like e.g. a desktop app or workplace software, some studies have shown that needing to work with slow applications decreases employee satisfaction and productivity. [8]
The impact of database speed on battery, CPU, hardware and related resources
Another hidden requirement typically is resource-efficiency with regards to CPU, RAM, Disc space and battery / electricity. For any application running in the cloud, these requirements are balanced in the backend as the cloud scales vertically. It “only” adds to cloud costs (and is a waste of energy – not to mention all the infrastructure / hardware enabling that waste).
On the edge, you typically work with restricted devices, meaning you can only use the devices’ resources, which can be pretty limited. Therefore, inefficient applications can push a device to its limits, leading to e.g. slow response rates, crashes, and battery drain. Security is a very necessary cross-the-stack functionality that often impacts performance. While data that stays on the edge is challenging to hack, edge data needs to be protected just like data in the cloud.
How database performance impacts the business value of your IoT application
All applications on one device share the available hardware capabilities; resource allocation is managed by the operating system. Accordingly, the more resources an application or the database uses, the less resources are available for other uses. The faster a database executes its operations, the less CPU it uses, the less battery / electricity, and typically also memory. In practice that means there are more resources available on the device to run e.g. Edge AI or Edge ML applications.
From a business value perspective that means:
You can save on hardware costs (CPU, RAM, Disc, Memory, …): either do more on existing / chosen hardware, upgrade hardware later or choose smaller and thus less expensive hardware.
You can save on energy and cloud costs: The more efficient, the less electricity, the less cloud costs. This can add up tremendously as projects scale.
You can add more features, deliver more functionalities, make your application more secure within a given environment.
You can deliver a smooth, fast user experience, enabling applications that deliver in near-realtime. In sum, it clearly impacts the cost structure and value you can deliver.
Database performance impacts business value, directly and indirectly
As projects scale in size and scope, hidden requirements like database performance often become clear. At scale, small issues like delayed data, or data volumes, become big headaches. Ideally, these sorts of requirements would be at the heart of the design stage of any project – and budgeted for at the beginning. The choice of database clearly has a huge impact on the business success of IoT applications.
The world has been forced to digitize more quickly and to a greater extent in 2020 and 2021. COVID has created the need to remodel how work, socializing, production, entertainment, and supply chains function. Despite decades of digitization efforts, with the pandemic upon us, digitization challenges have become transparent. Many companies and countries realize now, they have fallen behind. And those that have not yet digitized were hit hardest by the pandemic. [1] With people leaning heavily on online digital solutions, internet infrastructure is at its capacity limit. [2] Accordingly, users are seeing broadband speeds drop by as much as half. [3] In Europe, governments even requested to reduce the quality of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube and other streaming services to improve network speed. [4]
These challenges demonstrate the growing need for an alternative to cloud computing. Cloud computing is an inherently centralized computing paradigm. Edge Computing is a decentralized topology that is based on keeping data local, at the ‘edge’ of the network, as close to the source as possible. Edge Computing is ideal for applications that are data-intensive, have high latency-requirements, or need to work offline, independant from a cloud connection. Using data on the edge, directly on or near the source of the data, not only increases the efficiency and speed of data use, but it reduces unecessary network burden and data traffic waste.
Coronavirus accelerates the need to digitize
It was clear even before the outbreak that internet infrastructure was struggling to keep up with growing data volumes. However, the pandemic has made broadband limitations more apparent to everyday users.
Projections estimate that by 2025 there will be 20 million IoT devices [5] and 1.7MB of data created per second per person. It is slow, expensive, and wasteful to send all of this data to the cloud for storage and processing. This practice overburdens bandwidth and data center infrastructure. It makes projects expensive and unsustainable. Working with the data, locally, on the edge, where it was produced and is used, is more efficient than sending everything to the cloud and back. It brings reduced latency, reduced cloud usage and costs, independence from a network connection, more secure data and heightened data privacy – and even reduces CO2. Indeed, prior to the pandemic, edge computing was on the strategic roadmap for over 50% of mobility decision makers. [6]
As the world begins to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, digitization efforts will no doubt increase. We will see intelligent systems implemented across industries and value chains, accelerating innovation and alongside: data volumes and subsequent strain on network bandwidth. Edge computing is a key technology to ensure that this digitalization is both scalable and sustainable.
Edge Computing takes the ‘edge’ off bandwidth strain
What is Edge Computing?
With edge computing, data is stored and used on devices at the “edge” of the network – away from centralized cloud servers. Computing on the edge means that data is stored and used locally, on the device, e.g. a smart phone or IoT device. Edge computing delivers faster decision making, local and offline data processing, as well as reduced data transfer to the cloud (e.g. filtered, computed, extra- or interpolated data), which saves both bandwidth and cloud storage costs.
The Edge complements the Cloud
Although some might set cloud and edge in competition, the reality is that edge computing and cloud computing are both useful and relevant technologies. Both have different strengths and ideal use cases. Together they can provide the best of both worlds: decentralized local storage and processing, making efficient use of hardware on the edge and central storing and processing of some data, enabling additional centralized insights, data backups (redundancy), and remote access. To combine the best of both worlds, relevant and useful data must be synchronized between the edge and cloud in a smart and efficient way.
Edge computing is an ideal technology to reduce the strain on data centers, so those functions that need cloud connection have adequate bandwidth; while those use cases that benefit from reduced latency and offline functionality are optimized on the edge.
The Edge: interface between the Physical and the Digital World
Edge devices handle the interface between the physical world and the cloud, enabling a whole set of new use cases. “Data-driven experiences are rich, immersive and immediate. But they’re also delay-intolerant data hogs”. [8] And therefore need to happen locally, on the edge. We may see edge computing enabling new forms of remote engagement [9], particularly in a post-corona environment.
Edge devices can be anything from a thermostat or small sensor to a fridge or mobile phone or car – and they are part of our direct physical world and use data from their local environment to enable new use cases. Think self-stocking fridges, self-driving cars, drone-delivered pizzas. In the same way, Edge Computing is the key to the first real world search engine. I am waiting for it every day: “Hey Google, where are my keys?” Within a location like a house, the concepts and technologies to enable such a real-world search engine are all clear and available – it is just a matter of time and ongoing digitization. The basis will need to be a fast and sustainable edge infrastructure.
Sustainability on the Edge
Centralized data centers consume a lot of energy, produce a lot of carbon emissions and cause significant electronic waste. [10] While data centers are seeing a positive trend towards using green data centers, an even more sustainable approach is to cut unnecessary cloud traffic, central computation and storage as much as possible by shifting computation to the edge. Edge Computing strategies that harness the power of already deployed available hardware (like e.g. smartphones, machines, desktops, gateways) make the solution even more sustainable.
Intelligent Edge: AI and Edge advance hand in hand
The growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Edge will go hand in hand. As more and more data is generated at the edge of the network, there will be a greater demand for intelligent data processing and structured optimization to reduce raw data loads going to the cloud. [11] Edge AI will have the power to work with data on local devices, keeping data streams more useful and usable. In the near future, Machine Learning applications will have the ability to learn and create unique, localized, decentralized insights on the edge – based on local inputs.
“With Edge AI, personalization features that we want from the app can be achieved on device. Transferring data over networks and into cloud-based servers allows for latency. At each endpoint, there are security risks involved in the data transfer”. [12] Which is part of the reason why the Edge AI Software market is forecasted to reach 1.12 trillion dollars volume by 2023. The development of AI accelerators, which improve model inferencing on the edge, namely from NVIDIA, Intel and Google are helping to make AI on the edge more viable. [13] A fast edge database is a necessary base technology to enable more AI on the edge.
Edge Computing – an answer to Data Privacy concerns and a need for Resilience
As data collection grows in both breadth and depth, there is a stronger need for data privacy and security. Edge computing is one way to tackle this challenge: keeping data where it is produced, locally, makes data ownership clear and data less likely to be attacked and compromised. If compromised, the data compromised is clearly defined, making notification and subsequent actions manageable. ObjectBox, in its core and as an edge technology, is designed to keep data private, on those devices it was created on, and only share select data as needed.
The more our private and working lives as well as the larger economy depend on digitalization, the more important it is that systems, underlying computing paradigms as well as networks have strong resilience and security. In computer networking, resilience is the ability to “provide and maintain an acceptable level of service in the face of faults and challenges to normal operation.” [14]
ing initEdge Computing shifts computer workloads – the collection, processing, and storage of data – from central locations (like the cloud) to the edge of the networks to many individual devices such as cell phones. Accordingly, any strain is distributed to many devices. Therefore, the risk of a total breakdown is reduced: If one device does not work anymore, the rest is still working. Depending on the setup, the individual devices could even compensate for devices that have a problem.
The same applies to security risks: Even if data from one device is compromised, all other data sets are still safe; the loss is thus very limited and clear. Overall, as a complement to the cloud, edge computing provides improved strength and security in local networks around the world. These local infrastructures can relieve the pressure on the existing complex dependencies, and in turn make the wider system more resilient and flexible. With Edge Computing crisis response can therefore in all likelihood be faster, better informed, and more effective. [15]
Why Corona-Tracking-Apps need to work on the edge
There was initially quite some debate about taking a centralized versus decentralized approach to Corona-Tracking-Apps. [16] Many people were worried about their data. Edge Computing – storing most parts of the data locally, on the user’s device – is a great way to avoid unnecessary data sharing and keep data ownership clear. At the same time, data is by and large much more secure and less likely to be attacked and hacked, as the data to be gained is very reduced. An intelligent syncing mechanism like ObjectBox Sync ensures that the data which needs to be shared, is shared in a selective, transparent and secure way.
The next few years will see big cultural changes in both our personal and professional lives – a portion of those changes will be driven by increased digitalization. Edge computing is an important paradigm to ensure these changes are sustainable, scalable, and secure. Ultimately, we have the chance to rise from this crisis with new insights, new innovation, and a more sustainable future.
Note to Readers (2024 Update) This white paper, originally published in 2020, explores key projections, market dynamics, and trends in digital healthcare. Since its publication, the field has evolved significantly, and the accompanying detailed report has been updated to reflect the state of digital healthcare in 2024. For the most current insights and analysis, please refer to the updated report (also linked at the end of this blog).
If you work in the healthcare industry, you are likely familiar with some uses of IoT devices. According to Gartner (2020), 79% of healthcare providers are already successfully employing IoT solutions.[1] However, this is just the beginning. While before COVID-19, the growth of digital health adoption had stalled [2], the market is picking up speed again. Indeed, Q3 2020 was a record year for investments in healthcare companies [3] and the market expects rising investments in healthtech for next years [4]. Today, underutilized data plays a major role in healthtech innovation [17] and the growing importance of healthcare data for future offerings is evident [5]. Take a look how analyts from Gartner to Accenture and Forrester expect the market to grow:
The digital healthcare market 2020 and beyond
Analysts expect Artificial Intelligence in healthcare to reach $6.6 billion by 2021 (with a 40% CAGR). [6]
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) market is expected to cross $136 billion by 2021. [11]
Analysts expect the healthcare wearable market to have a market volume of $27 billion by 2023 (with a 27.9% CAGR). [7]
The IoT industry is projected to be worth $6.2 trillion by 2025 and around 30% of that market (or about $167 billion) will come from healthcare. [8]
Analysts expect the global Medical Health Apps market to grow to $236 billion by 2026, reflecting a shift towards value based care. [9]
The projected global digital health market is estimated to reach $510.4 billion by 2026 (with a 29% CAGR). [10]
The Healthcare industry has been struggling with shrinking payments and cost optimizations for years. [18] Fueled by the need to adopt in light of the COVID pandemic, digital technologies bring extensive changes quickly to this struggling industry now. Data is moving to the center of this changing ecosystem and harbors both risks and opportunities in a new dimension. [21] The basic architecture and infrastructure to have the data reliably, securely and quickly available where they are needed will be decisive for the success or failure of digital healthcare solutions. [17] [21]
We recommend keeping an eye on the following five trends
The 5 biggest digital healthcare trends to watch
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Accenture estimates that AI applications can help save up to $150 billion annually for the US healthcare economy by 2026. [6] Therefore, it is no wonder that the healthcare sector is expected to be among the top five industries investing in AI in the next couple of years. [19] The top three greatest near-term value AI applications in healthcare are: 1. robot-assisted surgery ($40 billion), 2. virtual nursing assistants ($20 billion), and 3. administrative workflow assistance ($18 billion).
Big Data / Analytics
The goal of big data analytic solutions is to improve the quality of patient care and the overall healthcare ecosystem. The global healthcare Big Data Analytics market is predicted to reach $39 billion by 2025. [12] The main areas of growth are medical data generation in the form of Electronic Health Records (EHR), biometric data, sensors data.
Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
IoMT is expected to grow to $508.8 billion by 2027. [13] According to Gartner, 79% of healthcare providers are already using IoT in their processes. [27] During COVID, IoMT devices have been used to increase safety and efficiency in healthcare, i.e. providing and automating clinical assistance and treatment to the infected patient, to lessen the burden of specialists. Future applications, like augmented reality glasses that assist during surgery, are leading to a focus more on IoMT-centric investments. [14]
Telehealth / Telemedicine
Telecommunications technology enables doctors to diagnose and treat patients remotely. Consumer adoption of telehealth has skyrocketed in 2020 and McKinsey believes that up to $250 billion of current US healthcare spend could potentially be virtualized. [25] Also, many patients view telehealth offerings more favorable and – having made good experiences – are planning to continue using telehealth in the future. [26] Not astonishingly, telemedicine stocks also grow rapidly. [14]
Edge Computing
Edge computing is a technological megashift happening in computing. [23] Instead of pushing data to the cloud to be computed, processing is done locally, on ‘the edge’. [15] Edge Computing is one of the key technologies to make healthcare more connected, secure, and efficient. [22] Indeed, the digital healthcare ecosystem of the future depends on an infrastructure layer that makes health data accessible when needed where needed (data liquidity). [21] Accordingly, IDC expects the worldwide edge computing market to reach $250.6 billion in 2024 with a (12.5% CAGR) [24] with healthcare identified as one of the leading industries that will adopt edge computing. [16]
The healthcare market is in the middle of a fast digital transformation process. Drivers such as COVID, growing IoT adoption in healthcare, and underlying social mega-trends are pushing digital healthcare growth to new heights. Therefore, the digital healthcare industry faces many challenges, both technical and regulatory. At the same time the healthcare market is offered a wealth of opportunities.
ObjectBox is proud to be officially recognized as a sustainable and efficient solution by the Solar Impulse Foundation. Although we have self-identified as a #sustainabletech company since our induction, we’re proud to be recognized as an “efficient, clean and profitable solutions with a positive impact on environment and quality of life,” after taking part in an in-depth technical and business evaluation with the team at the Solar Impulse Foundation.
Empowering tech innovation
This label recognizes that ObjectBox empowers innovation with a highly efficient and sustainable technology. The Solar Impulse Efficient Label identifies sustainable tech solutions from around the world to help companies choose their tech stack responsibly.
UN Sustainable Development Goals
All Solar Impulse awardees contribute to one or several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals; ObjectBox received the globally recognized label for supporting three of the Solar Impulse focused initiatives:
Affordable and Clean Energy: ObjectBox
Clean Water and Sanitation
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure : ObjectBox
Sustainable Cities and Communities: ObjectBox
Responsible Consumption and Production
How is ObjectBox sustainable?
ObjectBox enables scalable and sustainable digitalization with a high performance edge database solution and synchronization solution. The ObjectBox database empowers local data storage, while ObjectBox Sync reduces unnecessary data traffic. ObjectBox is therefore ideally suited for efficient, useful, and sustainable Edge Computing.
Comparing the transmission of the same data sets, ObjectBoxsaves 20-60% on transmission data volume. By combining delta syncing with efficient compression based on standard and proprietary edge compression methods to keep data small, ObjectBox can reduce device energy consumption and thus CO2 emissions for data transmissions.
As our digital world grows, we all need to do what we can to structure these digital environments in an efficient and sustainable way. ObjectBox helps reduce digital waste. Digital waste unnecessarily burdens bandwidth infrastructure and fills cloud servers, forcing the expansion of cloud farms and in turn, contributing to the pollution of the environment. Therefore, we are excited to be part of the 1000solutions program.
The Solar Impulse Label: a label focused on both the environment and profitability
The first label to assess the economic profitability of products or processes that protect the environment. The Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label is attributed following a strict selection process performed by external independent experts. By ensuring high standards of sustainability and profitability, this internationally recognized label is considered as a credible marker of quality for solution seekers in business and governments, facilitating their sourcing of solutions to reach environmental commitments.
About the Solar Impulse Foundation
The Solar Impulse Foundation aims to identify clean, efficient and profitable solutions in order to accelerate their implementation and the transition to a sustainable economy. Thanks to the awarding of a label with high standards of sustainability and profitability, the Foundation can support political and economic decision-makers in their efforts to achieve their environmental targets and encourage them to adopt more ambitious energy regulations, necessary for implementation at large-scale of these solutions on the market. A way to take the success of the first round-the-world solar flight further.
Interesting in finding out how ObjectBox can make your edge computing project more sustainable?
What do self-driving cars, smart homes, autonomous stock/crypto trading algorithms, or energy sensor systems have in common? These applications are all based on a form of data that measures how things change over time. It’s called time-series data and it plays a very important role in our lives today.
Accordingly, time-series databases also became a hot topic.
What is a time-series database?
A time-series database (TSDB) can be defined simply as a database optimized for storing and using time-stamped or time-series data. You don’t need to use a TSDB to work with time-series data. Any relational or NoSQL database or a key-value-store will do, e.g. MongoDB or redis. However, when dealing with time-series data (e.g. temperature, air pressure or car velocity data), a TSDB makes your life as a developer a hell of a lot easier.
Indeed, the two main reasons why TSDBs is the fastest-growing category of databases, are usability and scalability. A purpose-built time-series database typically includes common functions of time-series data analysis, which is convenient when working with time-series data. Because time-series data typically continually produces new data entries, data grows pretty quickly, and with high-frequency data or many time-series data sources, data ingestion quickly becomes a challenge. Time-series databases are optimized to scale well for time-series data with time being a common denominator and outperform any other database without specific time-series optimizations. This is why more and more people are adopting time-series databases and using them for a variety of use cases.
What are time-series database use cases?
Monitoring sensor data
One of the use cases is the monitoring of sensor data for safety measurements, predictive maintenance, or assistance functions. E.g. a car stores and uses all kinds of sensor data like tyre pressure, surrounding temperature and humidity for driver assistance and maintenance support. An aircraft monitors gravity and aerodynamic principles to reassure pilots that everything is alright – or to alert them that something has gone wrong. In fact, a Boeing creates on average half a terabyte of data per flight, most of which is time-series data. [1]
Tracking assets is ideal for a time-series database as you constantly want to monitor where assets are, e.g. the cars of a fleet or any goods you might be stocking or shipping. These applications typically include unique vehicle or asset IDs, GPS coordinates, and additional metadata per timestamp. Apart from keeping track of the assets in realtime, you also can use the data for logistics and optimize e.g. your stocking and delivery processes.
Analyzing and predicting shopping behavior
Or, many e-commerce systems store all information of an item from product inventory, logistics data and any available environmental data to transaction amount, all items of the shopping cart purchased, to payment data, order information etc. In this case, a TSDB will be used to collect these large amounts of data and analyze them quickly to determine e.g. what to recommend to customers to buy next or optimize the inventory or predict future shopping behavior.
What are the most popular time series databases?
Well, here is our list of popular / established time series databases to use in 2020 to get you started:
InfluxDB: an open-source time series database, written in Go and optimized for high-availability storage and retrieval of time series data for operations monitoring, application metrics, IoT sensor data, and real-time analytics
KairosDB: a fast distributed scalable time series database written on top of Cassandra.
Kdb+: is a column-based relational time series database with a focus on applications in the financial sector.
Objectbox TS:superfast object persistence with time-series data on the edge. Collect, store, and query time-series data on the edge and sync selective data to / from a central location on-premise or in the cloud as needed.
TimescaleDB: an open-source database designed to make SQL scalable for time-series data. It is engineered up from PostgreSQL and packaged as a PostgreSQL extension with full SQL support.
For an overview of time-series databases currently available for productive use, see DB Engines. The database of databases is also a good resource if you are deeply interested in the database landscape; it is more extensive, but it includes any DB available independent of the level of support or if it is still maintained, also hobby projects.
What do you do when you have more than just time-series data?
Typically, a time-series database is not well suited to model non-time-based data. Therefore, many companies choose to implement two databases. This increases overhead, disk space, and is especially impractical when you deal with edge devices.
Time Series + Object-Oriented Data Persistence
Storing and processing both time series data and objects, developers can collect complex datasets and combine them with time-series data. Combining these data types gives a more complete understanding and context to the data – not just what happens over time, but also other factors that affect the results.
The best option is a robust object-oriented database solution that lets you model your data as it reflects the factual use case / the real world in objects and on-top is optimized for time series data. You can model your world in objects and combine this with the power of time-series data to identify patterns in your data. If this is indeed a database optimized for restricted devices and Edge Computing, you can even use this data in real-time and on the device. By combining time series data with more complex data types, an object time-series edge database can empower new use cases on the edge based on a fast and easy all-in-one data persistence solution.
Still have questions? Feel free to contact us here!
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[1] Time Series Management Systems: A Survey Søren Kejser Jensen, Torben Bach Pedersen, Senior Member, IEEE, Christian Thomsen
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