Rackspace follows Amazon in beefing up its database tools

Network World - Following major announcements from Amazon Web Services in recent weeks around data warehousing and management, Rackspace today announced new capabilities for database hosting and management.

A NoSQL database as a service (DBaaS) from a company named Cloudant is now available in Rackspace's cloud. The service adds to database tools Rackspace already provides, including its services in hosting a variety of database platforms in cloud or managed hosting formats, the company stated.

Cloudant provides database clusters on dedicated machines that can be dynamically scaled across multiple data center sites, the company says. Its DBaaS is CouchDB compatible, has a Restful JSON API and a MapReduce engine to perform analysis of data stored in the product using text search. It's optimized for hosting web and mobile applications, the company says. Cloudant's DBaaS is available starting today in the Cloud Tools program of Rackspace Hosting.

The service adds to Rackspace's database management tools, which already include cloud or managed hosted databases such as Microsoft SQL, including SQL Server 2012, as well as MySQL and Oracle databases.

Rackspace's chief competitor, Amazon Web Services, made a big deal out of its data management products at the company's first ever user conference late last month. At the conferenc, it released Redshift, a cloud-based data warehouse tool that is built from ParAccel technology. AWS also has a range of other tools including its DynamoDB NoSQL database and AWS Relational Database Service (RDS). Google Compute Engine, the company's public cloud has its BigQuery database tool, while Microsoft Azure has a series of SQL databases available from its Azure cloud.A

Some still question if data warehousing is ready for the cloud. Some enterprises have perceived security concerns and are not comfortable putting sensitive or mission-critical data in a public cloud environment, even if they are intrigued by the scale public cloud resources can offer.

Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.