In MongoDB news today, the company announced with RMS the first cloud-based real time risk management platform ontop of MongoDB.

RMS was founded at Stanford University in 1988 and has grown to be a leader in the risk management space.  Now they provide the technology to the top insurers for risk pricing, management, and transfer. In an industry known for resisting change, RMS is shaking things up in a big way with its investment in emerging technology.

RMS has for many years centralized all the information insurance companies need to manage and quantify risk from natural catastrophes, such as Hurricane Katrina or the recent tornados in the U.S. Midwest region. The platform can now be accessed by RMS competitors, customers and industry partners, with the goal being to build a risk management platform where all the risks in the world and all the exposures in the world would live and be updated in real time.

This is a huge validation for MongoDB in terms of credibility in a very conservative vertical.  The insurance industry is know for resisting change and taking on risk so this is a “crossing the chasm” moment for MongoDB.   MongoDB has been answering the scale questions that skeptics have been saying for years.  Now this is an interesting announcement because you have a risk management leader in the insurance vertical validating the scale for huge catastrophes.

Cloud development and devops has been the megatrend for Mongo.  Last November I talked about this in detail with the cofounder of MongoDB Eliot Horowitz at AWS Reinvent this past November.  Eliot Horowitz (@theCUBE alum) has a great vision for developer productivity and the future of devops.

Watch the full interview below or go to this link to here where Eliot thinks Mongo is badass.  Highlight:  Why Mongo is badass link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czPn5Ag26MU#t=685

MongoDB solved a big problem when it came to developer productivity and this announcement is a great endorsement for Mongo.  One area MongoDB is doing well is in the API developer market. Anyone doing Json is going to love MongoDB so seeing vertical successes for Mongo is very positive.

MongoDB is growing up fast right in front of our eyes.   The question is will the skeptics keep bringing up the scale question?

Here is the release.

NEW YORK—January 14, 2014—MongoDB today announced thatRMS, the leader in catastrophe risk modeling, has selected MongoDB as the data store forRMS(one)™, the insurance industry’s first cloud-based, open, real-time risk management platform. Developed by RMS, RMS(one) securely centralizes all the data and analytics insurance companies need to evaluate the risk from global catastrophes. The high-resolution, single-source of risk analytics will enable insurance companies to plan new growth strategies and manage their capital more effectively.

The MongoDB-based platform currently stores in excess of 100 billion documents per year and will scale to support trillions of documents,representing hundreds of terabytes of data. Leveraging MongoDB’s flexible document model, RMS is able to create different attributes for risk exposure data, including detailed property, business and policy information, which vary greatly across clients. RMS(one) is currently in beta and will become generally available in Spring 2014.

“RMS(one) is a unique platform; nothing like this has ever been built for the insurance industry,” said Philippe Stephan, chief technology officer at RMS. “By providing enterprise-wide access to comprehensive risk information, we’re opening up a completely new way of doing business for our clients, who will benefit from greater efficiency in underwriting portfolio management.”

“Compared to technology of the past, MongoDB delivers massive horizontal scale with a highly secure, reliable and resilient back-end data store,” said Stephan. “MongoDB’s schema extensibility, ease of use and robust deployment features enabled us to rapidly develop RMS(one), moving from our current deployed enterprise product to a MongoDB-based cloud system.”

RMS(one) combines diverse data sources into a single application to deliver an innovative experience to users that sets a new standard in the insurance industry. MongoDB provides consistently high performance at scale and secure access to the data, as mandated by industry standards.

“The RMS(one) platform is an ambitious project that has the potential to transform a multi-trillion dollar industry,” said Max Schireson, CEO at MongoDB. “As evidenced by the complexity and scale demands of this platform, MongoDB continues to be the NoSQL solution of choice to support big data applications. RMS’ focus on using innovative, forward-looking technology, along with their 25 years of expertise in the industry, offers a powerful combination to help their clients realize the business benefits of a truly real-time and resilient enterprise.”

MongoDB has a thriving global community with over 6.5 million downloads of its open-source database, 145,000 online education registrations, 28,000 user group members and 20,000 MongoDB Days attendees.

All over the world, thousands of organizations use MongoDB for its agile and scalable approach to data management. Common use cases include operational and analytical big data, content management and delivery, mobile and social infrastructure, user data management and data hub.

RMS is the world’s largest catastrophe modeling company and the only one of its kind to deliver its global suite of catastrophe models within a rich ecosystem incorporating all sources of risk.