Asked to confirm the deal, first reported by TechCrunch, Apple responded by saying that it from time to time buys smaller companies but doesn't discuss its plans. On its part, FoundationDB said that it will no longer offer downloads of its database, and that "we have made the decision to evolve our company mission."
Apple could use FoundationDB's technology to improve the performance of its own infrastructure. The reported acquisition comes just a couple of months after FoundationDB announced a major upgrade of its flagship NoSQL database. The database was redesigned to handle millions of random writes per second and make it a better fit for IoT systems.
Apple should be able to take advantage of this performance across most of its services, including iTunes, the App Store and a rumored TV streaming service. FoundationDB's technology could also be used to power a future IoT expansion. The company has already dipped its feet in that rapidly growing sector with HomeKit, a framework in iOS 8 for communicating with and controlling connected things in a user's home.
Apple is just like any company that offers a wide breadth of services dependent on having a bullet-proof infrastructure to keep users happy. The more services it launches, the more crucial scalable IT systems become. The recent DNS-related outage that crippled services such as iTunes highlighted that there is room for improvement.
It seems like Apple has gotten a bit of a taste for buying smaller companies to boost its internal IT systems. Earlier this year it acquired Semetric and the company's analytics platform Musicmetric.
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