Percona expands into NoSQL turf with TokuDB purchase
With the purchase, "we're becoming more of a database performance business rather than one focusing on a particular type of technology like MySQL," said Jim Doherty, Percona chief marketing officer. "We're broadening the scope of our technologies to better serve our customers and the market."
Tokutek offered a commercially supported distribution of the open source MongoDB NoSQL database, TokuMX. Percona will continue to offer TokuMX alongside its own enterprise-grade edition of the open source MySQL database, called Percona Server, which is a competitor to Oracle's own MySQL commercial distribution.
In the acquisition, Percona also gets Tokutek's Fractal Tree, an indexing technology -- developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stony Brook University and Rutgers University -- that reputedly can significantly speed the performance of databases.
Percona had already offered Fractal Tree as an option for its own customers, through a partnership with Tokutek.
The acquisition transforms Percona from being a software vendor with a single database, along with related tools, to one offering both a standard relational database and a NoSQL database, said Peter Zaitsev, Percona cofounder and CEO.
Percona had noticed among its customers that many were looking to MongoDB and other NoSQL databases as an alternative to relational databases such as MySQL, or wanted to run both types of databases for different types of jobs. An organization may have experts on staff for different types of databases, or have existing applications that are equipped to interact with one type of database or the other.
Tokutek had garnered about 100 enterprise customers, including Cisco Systems and electronic payment system vendor Paybox.
Terms of the acquisition, which closed April 7, were not disclosed.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com