UPDATED 10:00 EDT / SEPTEMBER 24 2014

InfiniDB bows out of the database wars the open-source way

closed signConsolidation is a natural part of any industry’s maturation, especially a segment as fiercely competitive as the database space, which has witnessed a massive influx of new players in recent years each vying for their own slice of the market. The resulting overlap in products and capabilities is starting to claim its first victims.

The latest name to have been crossed off the list is InfiniDB Inc., one of the first of the new generation vendors that set out to rebel against Oracle Corp.’s database dominance. Founded as Calpont Corporation at the turn of the millennium, the company has developed a columnar store for distributing vast amounts of data across low-cost commodity servers.

The platform is geared towards performance-intensive analytical applications that require exceptionally fast response times and boasts Warner Music Group, British biotechnology powerhouse Genus plc and a number of notable companies among its users. A major advantage of the database over some of the other distributed storage solutions out there is that it employs MySQL to power queries, which eliminates the need for organizations to hire specialized talent in order to make use of the technology.

But that alone wasn’t enough to set InfiniDB apart from the pack. Vertica, the closest alternative in terms of functionality, became part of Hewlett-Packard Co. in 2011 and has lapped ahead with the hardware juggernaut’s resources at its back. To make it worse, InfiniDB also found itself competing against Couchbase, MongoDB and the countless other smaller non-relational databases that sprung up in the wake of the unstructured information explosion.

InfiniDB CEO Bob Wilkinson said in a statement that he and the rest of leadership team spent several months “exploring all possible investment options that could take the company forward” before making the decision to cease operations. He added that while the firm itself is shutting down, its namesake technology will live on as an open-source GitHub project.

photo credit: Iguana Jo via photopin cc

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Support our open free content by sharing and engaging with our content and community.

Join theCUBE Alumni Trust Network

Where Technology Leaders Connect, Share Intelligence & Create Opportunities

11.4k+  
CUBE Alumni Network
C-level and Technical
Domain Experts
15M+ 
theCUBE
Viewers
Connect with 11,413+ industry leaders from our network of tech and business leaders forming a unique trusted network effect.

SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation serving innovative audiences and brands, bringing together cutting-edge technology, influential content, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — such as those established in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology, and AI. .

Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a powerful ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands, with a reach of 15+ million elite tech professionals. The company’s new, proprietary theCUBE AI Video cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.